There were no actual efforts to establish communism in eastern europe. Only autocratic regimes backed by soviet russia.
It’s like saying democracy sucks because look at states like Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo and German Democratic Republic.
When people proclaim to be something doesn’t make it true.
I’m no too learned in the subject but what would “true” communism even look like on the large scale like a country? Would it even be feasible?
True communism in a country is impossible.
You can have socialism, or anarchy, which we’ve seen before, but communism cannot function in one country alone, unless said country is completely and absolutely self reliant.
A major part of communism is internationalism, which is why socialist countries had the Comintern. (Communist International). Besides a political/social system, communism has a strong basis as an economic system. You can’t apply communist economic system principles to the capitalist market.
To my knowledge, no existing country is self reliant to the point that they can completely cut off trade with the rest of the world. USSR didn’t do it, China didn’t do it and they were the two biggest countries at the time.
That, of course is all a very surface level ELI5, and if you want to ask something more specific or in depth, feel free to.
Unless you’re an ultra-orthodox marxist, there is no such thing as trüe communism™.
There always have been many different ideas what „communism“ is, e.g. there have been various „nationalist communist“ ideologies (complicated by the fact that the Russian SFSR called everything „nationalist“ that wasn’t 100% aligned with its ideas of the Soviet Union, e.g. Hungary).
There are also no clear boundaries between communism, socialism, and anarchism, e.g. Kropotkin with his theories of anarchist communism.
That being said, I don’t think communism is a system (either social or economic), it’s strictly an idealogy, meaning it’s a way to achieve something, i.e. the classless and stateless society. If you follow that thought to its logical end, you cannot even „achieve“ communism at all, since at this point e.g. the proletariat ceases to exist, and as a result you cannot have a „dictatorship of the proletariat“.
It’s… complicated.
In feel like you make it complicated to arrive at your conclusion here. Communism, as described by Marx and Engels and to some degree Lenin, is something very specific that covers most aspects of the society. Political, social and economic. Marx himself wrote books upon books on the economy of a socialist, communist system.
It is not an abstract “I don’t like capitalism so let’s try something different” approach. And yes, many have tried to adapt it, as you mentioned which is why those different approaches carry a different name ‘anarchist communism’ in your example. Because they are different enough from flat out communism.
No, I have a very easy explanation what communism is, it’s just that nobody else agrees is the issue.
different approaches carry a different name
Yeah, well… So let’s see, we have: Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Titoism, Gulyáskommunizmus (both, as mentioned before, considered „nationalist communism“ by other communists), Rätekommunismus, Realsozialismus, Maoism …
So, which one of those is the true communism?
Joking aside, most of the 20th century was spent with people killing other people because they had slightly different opinions on what true communism means, so it’s really not me who made things complicated.
And you keep using different names to describe them. As you should. Communism is not one thing and never was. But when people refer to base or true communism, the answer is just one.
It’s how it was defined in the communist manifesto in 1848. You could say it’s Marxism, but I dislike that naming since others played a big role on forming it as well, like Engels and others who based on Marx’s mostly economic study added the philosophical and political angles.
Every theme or name change after the manifesto (that is not found in later revisions by the communist international) is attempts at adapting it with different angles and for different purposes and circumstances, aka NOT base or pure communism. Don’t bundle everything in one basket and try to make sense, same way that bundling Putin’s Russian form of Capitalism with US’s imperialism and French Revolution’s early capitalism together doesn’t make sense either.
He asked for pure communism, I answered for that. If he asked about Trotsky, I’d focus more on the permanent revolution and the Fourth International. If he asked of Stalin, I’d talk about his socialism in one country theory
I’ve got no horse in this race, I just want to point out the irony of asserting that there is only one “true” communism in reply to a comment about how leftists have spent the last century arguing over what “true” communism even is.
Yeah well, so you’re an orthodox Marxist and I disagree with you ¯\(ツ)/¯
But when people refer to base or true communism, the answer is just one.
Aha, is that so?
I dislike that naming since others played a big role on forming it as well
Yeah, you could say that!
So! Let’s talk about Restif de la Bretonne who was using „communist“ and „communism“ 60-70 years before Marx writes the „Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei“. Babeuf (who called himself a „communalist“) already tried to incite a communist revolution in the 1790s. De La Hodde calls the Parisian general strike in 1840 „inspired by communist ideas“. In 1841 the „Communistes Matérialistes“ publish „L’Humanitaire“, which Nettlau calls „the first libertarian communist publication“.
And how come that a certain bloke named Karl Marx in his 1842 essay „Der Kommunismus und die Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung" finds that communism had already become an international movement. Hey, I know that name! 🤔
Tell me, how exactly is Marxism (or whatever you want to call it) the one and only trüe communism™ when there’s decades of different variances of communism and movements of people calling themselves communists before the „Manifest“?
Just face it: your beloved Marxism is just one variant of communism, which for a variety of reasons has become the best known. But it’s certainly not „base communism“.
Bojler eladó
What do you think is anarchy? Without searching engine please.
Without search engine and without going into detail that is out of the scope, anarchy is a different path to a classless system. Said classless system is different enough from communism to warrant discussion but close enough for that discussion to be devolving into anarchy vs socialism most of the time to differentiate the path to that system.
Said path in anarchy is comprised of setting up collectives that start small, neighborhood small, and gradually evolve. Each collective shares almost everything between its members and there’s no leadership or ranking across its members.
Anything deeper than that leads to a long discussion that is out of the scope of this thread and definitely out of the scope of the ELI5 the post I originally replied to needed or had the philosophical basis to understand possibly. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but they are quite different approaches to a similar goal, a classless society that money does not rule all.
Anarchist checking in, so, y’know, bias and all that. But I’d say it’s just as impossible to have anarchism in one country. Bearing in mind, I’m an anarcho-communist, and not terribly familiar things like mutualism, so that may be different. I tend to view, as do (to my knowledge) most ancoms, communism and anarchism as synonyms. The difference is how we get to the end point, not the end point itself. A stateless, classless, moneyless society. We’ve had the Spanish anarchists, and some examples of societies like Madagascar, where there are villages and region that function in an anarchistic way, but True Anarchism™ couldn’t function in a single country/region. It needs to be international in it’s scope for all the same reasons communism needs to be international in it’s scope. Anarchist political methods can function at a smaller scale, but we can’t have a fully anarchist society until it’s global.
Which all just means that I’m an anarchist because I prefer the methods to achieving the shared goal, not because I disagree on the goal itself, if that makes sense.
So i was wrong. Sorry for the ‘nuanced’ question.
Well, it is feasible. You just need to give people replicators and free living space, and they will eventually learn to use their skills to enrich the world we live in. And boldly go where no one has gone before.
True communism is pretty much impossible, same as true capitalism.
There have been some short-lived small-scale experiments like the “United Order”, but nothing that actually survived more than a few months with more than a few thousand people.
Realistically, it would look something like how the Anarchists organized society in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, or how Rojava is organizing today with communal federations. Anarchism sidesteps the inevitable authoritarian regime that various Marxist theories have by not installing a ‘temporary’ vanguard state that quickly becomes autocratic and dictatorial, they just jump straight to decentralizing power immediately by giving it to the people.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War
Rojava is organizing today with communal federations
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
And here comes the guy who thinks he can do it better, this time without mass killings.
With capitalism we just outsource the death to 3rd world countries.
Hey, I can think what happened in Eastern Europe was just authoritarian dictatorships, backed by Muscovite colonialism & branded as communism just the same as what happened in parts of South America was just authoritarian dictatorship, backed by American imperialism & branded as laissez-faire capitalism.
Also I can think communism has never actually been tried, and that it’s functionally impossible (therefore people should stop advocating for it).
Implying capitalism does not regularly do mass killings.
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This time without hierarchy wherever possible. And we’ll keep most of the capitalistic economy as is, just redistribute the wealth so that everybody is safe and happy. Cut the bullshit jobs, make produced goods more durable and sustainable, so that the last at least ten times as long, cut more jobs in producing, distribute the remaining work to all the people, everybody who wants to get a little extra can do this by working, most will. I certainly would still work even if i did not have to, even if there is no monetary benefit. Doing a job that is nice and that you like is fun, because you’re doing your part.
Hey, I can think what happened in Eastern Europe was just authoritarian dictatorships, backed by Muscovite colonialism & branded as communism just the same as what happened in parts of South America was just authoritarian dictatorship, backed by American imperialism & branded as laissez-faire capitalism.
Also I can think communism has never actually been tried, and that it’s functionally impossible (therefore people should stop advocating for it).
Can’t critizise something that has never been tried! Also we already got a comment critizising capitalism as a counter argument :D
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America is very close to being real market economy, that’s why it sucks so much.
And that’s why we have barriers to entry stifling competition lobbied for by the big players in said industry? Insulin is only the price it is because the government enforces the patent that says pfizer is allowed to have a monopoly on it, if other people were able to produce and sell affordable generics pfizer would have to drop their price or go out of business, but if you try the government comes, kidnaps you, and if you resist kidnapping, kills you.
Try to sell a product that the government decides you owe them money for: Weed? Jail. Moonshine? Jail. Weed in a legal state but didn’t break off the 50% protection money to the government? Jail. Unlicensed insulin? Jail. Drawing of a mouse too close to a famous one? Jail.
The US has what is called crony capitalism, not free market capitalism. Free market
capitalismeconomy is what the Agorists like SEKIII want (but they refuse to call capitalism arguing that “real capitalism” is crony capitalism and “free market economies” are not “capitalist” at all and is actually leftist in nature.)Crony capitalism is just capitalism. The agorist free market capitalism is just starting the whole thing over under the mistaken belief that it’ll end up different.
Yes yes and communism will never repeat it’s past mistakes because that wasn’t real communism, I know.
I know you’re trying to use sarcasm, but communist countries don’t generally repeat the mistakes of other communist countries. They famously at least try to share knowledge openly with each other.
Hey at least millions of people die in new mistakes! Or is that all “western propaganda товарищ?”
Lol, what utter bullshit.
Pfizer doesn’t have a monopoly on insulin, it’s primarily produced by Eli Lilly (who were the first), Novo Nordisk and Sanofi.
„The government“ also doesn’t „enforce“ patents, companies have found a way to make small changes to drugs to keep them perpetually patented. The recent price drops of insulin in the US are the *result of government intervention *.
Please do get lost with you Alex Jones r/conspiracy drivel, thx.
You mean the cheap kind you can get at walmart, or the fast acting stuff everyone complains about being expensive? I mean, I don’t think anyone is claiming that the cheap atuff is too expensive, they’re always talking about the fast acting kind or so they say, so that’s what I’m talking about too, since I was directly referencing people complaining about expensive insulin, you see.
Nonetheless, though I may not be super up on which megacorporation holds patents for which drug, and in essence they’re all exactly the same to me since they operate the same way in terms of patents, the fact that corporation “A” holds the patent instead of corporation “B” is a nonfactor, just replace the name in your head. Hit f12 and edit it if you really lack the imagination to just insert the correct corporation and keep reading.
The government doesn’t enforce patents, eh? Ok, so what specifically happens if you start selling shit patented by “a corporation of your choosing?” Pinkertons? Well maybe if we’re talking about 1800s Wells Fargo, or current WOTC, but that is rare. No unless I’m mistaken it’s usually “court” which unless I’m mistaken is part of “the judicial branch” of “our government.”
Face it, the government and corporations being in bed is not only “a bad thing” but is just as much a fault of “the government” as “the corporations.” Hating one is only hating half the problem.
And that’s why we have barriers to entry stifling competition lobbied for by the big players in said industry?
Yes. That’s how capitalism operates. There is nothing in capitalist system that prevents monopolies from happening, in fact they kind of encouraged. And patent system is as capitalist as it gets. It was born as an answer to a question “how do we collectively insure that companies can own everything they want to own”, and the government exists to enforce the rules that rich people and companies want to have (getting back to lobbying). If you get rid of the government, you will get cyberpunk corporate wars, and then when people will get tired of that, they will come up with the same government-like structure.
That’s how crony capitalism works, free market capitalism is free from such bounds by definition. Monopolies could also form without the government but they clearly form with the help of those government regulations allowing them to do so as well, see: basically the entire medical industry. We have the worst of both worlds, tbh either socialized healthcare or an end to the racketeering scheme we call the medical industry by freeing the market (things like removing drug patents to make the market competitive and lowering price, etc) would he better than this crony capitalist bullshit we have now. Patents are again antithetical to free market capitalism, that is literally part of what is referenced by “free” in the term. Proponents of free market capitalism ignore patent and IP laws entirely or think they should be limited to a short period (typically 15-20y with no renewal depends on who you talk to).
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According to https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking for instance, there are 24 countries in the world with freer economy than USA.
The right wing, climate change denying, Heritage Foundation is not a reliable source. That’s nowhere near an unbiased analysis, but an opinion piece. No one can seriously believe the US to be less “free market” than like half of western Europe.
That’s like asking the North Korean government to create an index of democracy.
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In what sense was it not an actual effort? Just because it quickly slid into non-marxism doesn’t say anything about the initial idea of the revolutionaries. Bakunin predicted exactly what would happen with Marxism, and it did every time.
If you are against an authoritarian state, the only viable way to communism is to skip the dictatorship part directly and just have anarchism.
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That’s a joke, right?
Right?
If you want to argue against that, fine by me. I have nothing against an honest duscussion. But this comment is neither funny nor smart.
I was about 99% this was a joke because I thought nobody could be this stupid. I don’t argue with jokes, that’s pointless.
But that is no joke at all. It is what every honest historian will tell you. If you take communism as it was defined by Marx (not that this would be the best system or even what I would propse, parts of it maybe) then no society actually tried that.
Full no true scotsman.
Communism fails every time it is tried because it goes against human nature of constantly comparing yourself to others and trying to improve yourself. You will never do harder work if you can get the same reward for easier work, and you will look for other, less moral ways of getting the bigger reward.
Communism sounds great but it will never work until we have unlimited resources and completely automated labour.
Nah, that’s just wrong. You can compare yourself in other ways than how much fake money you earn. Fun thing is: truly communistic society would mean easier work for most people.
And communism does work in small scale enviroments. Families, cooperatives, tribes. Sometimes neighborhoods.
This whole “Sounds great but won’t work” rhethoric is just what the ones that would loose their power in communsim want you to think. If you dig into it you will see, that there were and are a lot of efforts to discredit the idea.
That’s funny because I do easy work for a great paycheck yet we have a harder time hiring than in my previous job which didn’t pay as well and was harder.
Can you say what are the jobs?
I’m in my mid thirties, my current job (first time for this employer) is the best paid and offers the best conditions and is the easiest one I’ve ever worked and they need to give us a retention bonus so people don’t leave for another department.
I’ll leave it at that so I don’t dox myself.
Edit: Don’t know why people are downvoting? It’s an office job that requires a high-school diploma, I’ve worked physical jobs before that paid less and where we weren’t short staffed as we are in my current job. Happy?
You can tell us the field of work, that wouldn’t Dox you to know it’s programing versus electrician or something.
While I agree with you, this doesn’t mean that Eastern Europe was communist.
They did attempt to be communist, but they failed like every other attempt will fail. Greed is basic human nature, and those who have it more than others will find a way to abuse the system, get in charge and ruin it.
Greed is basic human nature
I’m not arguing your other points, but this isn’t always true. Humans seem to crave respect, not necessarily monetory wealth. If you want you can read more about gift economies.
What did they do to be communist? And what about a society where there is no such thing as ‘in charge’?
How would a society like that work?
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
Yeah, it’s basically “If you keep calling all of the stuff I like ‘communism’, then I guess that makes me a communist.”
Or if you’re not a Nazi you’re a communist, then I’m a communist I guess.
To be fair, depending on the european country the spectrum is quite broad.
For example Norway has both literal marxists and full on “gay people should be put in camps” christian conservative nutjobs in parliment.
Sure, but the meme refers to the communities on the internet that unironically go full tankie, praising Stalin and Mao.
Worst of all, tankies tend to inflitrate sane leftist spaces and slowly transform them. I’ve witnessed it many times, and that just makes me think that Marxists-Leninists are just the most dominant form of leftism on the internet, which is horrible.
This doesn’t mention Stalin or Mao.
It doesn’t, but in this thread’s we see a simultaneous claim of “We aren’t tankies, of course Stalin and Mao are not good examples of communists” and “Eastern european people were better off under the USSR”. Of course, I don’t think the same people are making both claims, but just the fact that some people can claim the latter and not get collectively shunned is indicative of a huge problem in leftist spaces, it’s disgusting frankly. Tankies are significant force, at least partially representing leftism to everyone else.
I think a lot of people give Mao a bad wrap.
For what it’s worth, Stalin is a monster, and the state of China right now is repugnant.
Mao didn’t intentionally lead tens of millions of people to starve in the same way Stalin did. Mao was trying to revolutionise agriculture (The Great Leap Forward) but didn’t understand the ecological and logistic principles required.
I’m convinced his intentions were good, he just wasn’t educated enough to implement something like this.
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McCarthy propaganda go brrrr
Well we’re not praising fascism and corruption.
The main issue is that they communism is economic policy, NOT social policy. While they do go hand in hand people often conflate the two. Many dictatorships use communism as a way to control the people but that doesn’t mean that communism leads directly to dictatorships.
If they’re using “communism” to control the people, then they’re not really using communism
Is true Communism even possible if it’s being attempted by flawed humans? Seems like it doesn’t matter the economic system so much as the fact that people will ruin anything given enough time.
It’s about incentives. Worker oppression in Monarchy requires a bad King, in Feudalism bad lords, in Capitalism bad shareholders, and in Socialism self-hating workers. If you shared your workplace, would you push to remove your rights? Or to screw over your customers? And then argue for that against everyone else you share power with? The incentives are plainly better in a worker owned economy.
@tara @Sharkwellington, agree, it is precisely one of the many reasons why I use Vivaldi, it is from a European cooperative, owned by it’s employees and without external investors who can influence in it’s decisions. Company ethics are important.
Do you want to know what’s not controlled by a company at all, doesn’t give google a monopoly in web browsers (google “chromium” in a search engine like libreX or searxng), respects you freedom through a foss license? Librewolf
Better than Vivaldi could ever be
Respectfully, I can easily see a shared workplace at least encouraging screwing over customers. To me its an even more intense instance of the shareholder problem. Shareholders are obsessed with the money they’re getting back with no real work but the risk inherent in the bet they made. The workers are working, for a livelihood, and of course will want to improve their quality of life. They’re even more motivated to do so. And some of the best ways to do that, in the “make monkey brain happy” obvious short-term are the same policies the shareholders are already pushing. Will there be some pushback? Definitely, but you only have to sell a bunch of people on short-term easy money. And the lottery isn’t popular because people are smart about this stuff.
Exactly, like we’ve done with capitalism
“That wasn’t real communism” eh? First time I’ve ever seen this one…
I guess the main issue is with the government having absolute control over the economy. I would not want the most prominent politicians in my country having control of the economy. No matter how much I dislike capitalism.
Just put the people who work for a company in charge of the company. Have them elect who calls the shots. Also have them directly benefit from the company doing well. I guess that is like end-stage unions or smth. All power to the workers. Should be doable within capitalism, maybe, probably.“All power to the workers” is a communist principle, though. It’s the main political slogan of the communist manifest by Marx and Engels.
Its a principle, but is it used in practice?
There was no country that followed the principles thought out by Marx and Engels, yet.
Yeah, any economic system that concentrates power into one group is bad, whether it’s corporate monopolies or a single government (which ends up kind of like the ultimate monopoly in a communist state). Communists IMHO have a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and how incentives can be exploited for the benefit of everyone. We need a form of capitalism that promotes competition (because profit is possibly the most powerful motivator of innovation), but also keeps companies in check with strong regulations, strong workers unions, and profits taxed appropriately. It’s also important to recognize that some basic needs should be met by the government like public education, public utilities, correctional systems, national defense, welfare, healthcare, etc. But even with public services, there should be room for private companies to innovate and provide premium alternatives to keep the government in check (with exceptions obviously, we don’t want private military and private prisons for example).
(because profit is possibly the most powerful motivator of innovation)
I agree with most of what you finished with, but strongly disagree here. Scarsity, artifical or natural drives a need for resource distribution which then gives rise to a greedy profit motive.
The internet and computers in general have largely shown that when resources are plentiful people will create for the shear desire to create. So much of the internet, and modern technology runs off software and hardware designed for free, or at extremely low cost.
Linux, OpenSSL, heck Open anything, all built because people were dissatisfied with the existing commercial available model, or just wanted to create something new.
Going beyond software the amount of free entertainment on the internet is staggering. Much of it created without seeking to use it primarily or even at all as a means of income.
I probably could’ve worded that statement better and you bring up good points when it comes to individuals. Innovation clearly does not require profit motive to occur. The type of innovation you’re talking about does require time to achieve, however. For individuals, this is leisure time, for organizations this is billable time. Regardless of the structure of an economy, the creative pursuits you’ve described can’t occur if people are being worked to death.
One thing I will say about open source software, though, is that a lot of projects don’t exist because of pure altruism. A lot of projects have been corporate funded (sometimes significantly funded) in order to specifically kill closed source competitors. I’m a pragmatist, though, I see open source software as a universal good for humanity regardless of its raison d’etre. Open source software is a form of competition that pushes closed source software vendors to innovate in order to justify their value. I could also argue that a lot of free content on the Internet is only free in the sense that it was produced by people who didn’t have a profit motive and it’s still often subscription or ad supported. YouTube, for example, still makes a lot of money on it.
The main point I was driving at is the choice of economic system doesn’t matter much for personal creative endeavors as long as it allows people time to pursue them. But market competition for profits is absolutely one of the most powerful motivators for product and service innovation for corporations. So if you adopt an economic system that essentially eliminates competition and profits, you kill that motivation to innovate.
While I mostly agree with you I don’t think country-owned companies or even monopolies are always bad. There needs to be a huge amount of real separation between politicians and those companies but it can work. In mine, both gambling and alcohol spirits stores are monopolies and owned by a country. Profits from gambling are distributed to grants for health and social welfare nonprofits. The question is if my country with very little corruption is the exemption that confirms the rule or if, if you do it right, it can work.
I also do not believe communism without very solid safeguards can work and those would need to be applied almost at the start. I am also pessimistic about human nature these days and am not sure if there can ever be enough safeguards to protect that model from misuse. I am what you could call a democratic socialist. I believe in mix and match where public and private companies can work in the same economy. Although I do oppose land resources being sold, especially as they are usually sold with a pittance for companies to profit. And I am not talking about private persons selling their land’s resources but government land resources. Selling them really doesn’t often make economic sense unless extraction would require a really high investment. Ecologic considerations should also be taken a lot more into account.
Social policy is socialism. Socialism is a different thing.
You can’t have a communist economic policy without being authoritarian. It’s human nature - once money is removed as a motivator, society breaks down unless you motivate people some other way (not being sent to the gulag).
The only thing that motivates you in life is money? How do you feel about that?
Don’t forget the times dictators try to enforce communism onto nature. Mao’s Great Leap Forward killed tens of millions.
Mao’s great leap forward wasn’t communism, your using association fallacy.
The introduction of mandatory agricultural collectivization and outlawing of private farming led by the Chinese Communist Party wasnt communist? That is an interesting take.
Eeehhhh there are plenty of Tankies around here that unironically simp for Stalin and Mao, (never Pol Pot for some reason though), and those regimes were frought with corruption and are often called “red fascism,” so I wouldn’t be so quick to say “we” here. “You” maybe, “me” definitely, but “we” is too strong of a word when there are plenty of people doing just that on lemmygrad right now, and lemmy.ml being a marxist instance some there as well (though the refugees mostly drowned them out now).
You know, you can be a communist without being a tankie.
And you can be a tankie without being a communist considering how many of them simp for Xi and China. Basically it is just pro-dictatorship with a very thin socialist façade.
The thing that sets off alarm bells in my head for “Tankie but not communist” is someone who uncritically upholds Russia and/or Iran. Take, for instance, one Caleb Maupin. A guy who calls himself a Marxist, but hangs out with noted fascist Alexander Dugin, and was recently outed as a creepy sex pest.
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While true, that still falls in the “you” category, not the “we” category. The fact that there are plenty of people here doing that very thing sort of precludes us from being able to use the word “we” in this capacity.
Again, “you” maybe, “me” definitely, “we” becomes no longer true once some of the “other we’s” do the thing.
Mao and Stalin (though to a noticably lesser extent) actually had insightful things to say though. Mao’s essays on epistemology are genuinely really fantastic. And that can be true alongside all of the show trials and sparrow murder which was genuinely really fucking bad.
Pol Pot meanwhile admitted to never having really ever read Marx, and his faction of the Communist Party of Cambodia was more concerned about Khmer ultranationalism and anti-Vietmamese sentiment that had been brewing over the course of French colonialism, then with anything to do with building socialism.
So, I guess what I’m saying is that we ought to take a nuanced, grounded view of historic socialisms that accounts for their success and failures, and doesn’t fall into either mindless exoneration of awful shit, nor reflexively screeching “TANKIE TANKIE!!!” Every time anything vaguely socialist oriented comes up in discussion.
Stalin botched Marxism into an authoritarian system that suited him. It was successful and he sponsored other authoritarians that liked his ideas. Those are all about the concentration of power and have fuck all to do with Marxs ideas.
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Mao and Stalin (though to a noticably lesser extent) actually had insightful things to say though. Mao’s essays on epistemology are genuinely really fantastic.
And Hitler was a Vegetarian. Does that mean vegitarians should simp for Hitler because “he had at least one good idea?” I should hope not! Furthermore if they do, even if they only simped for his vegetarianism and not his “political career,” it is gonna come off a bit different than they intend to most people.
By all means, keep those subs dedicated to defending all those atrocities and simping for despots, but people likely won’t be fooled into thinking they only care about epistemology while they say nothing happened in Tienanman Square without a shred of irony.
LOL I see I struck a nerve. Keep downvoting, the salt seasons my post.
And Hitler was a Vegetarian. Does that mean vegitarians should simp for Hitler because “he had at least one good idea?” I should hope not! Furthermore if they do, even if they only simped for his vegetarianism and not his “political career,” it is gonna come off a bit different than they intend to most people.
Hitler being a vegetarian had nothing to do with his fascism. Mao’s Epistemology was built on Stalin’s synthesizing of Marxism-Leninism from the works of Lenin and the experiences of the Russian Civil War, etc.
There’s actual political philosophy here that we can think through, debate, apply, update, and revise. Mistakes or outright malicious behavior can be learned from or discarded as necessary, because Marxism has within it mechanisms for self criticism and recitification.
You can ascribe to that philosophy or not, I don’t care. But this kind of kneejerk reaction isn’t in line with the way these discussions actually happen within Marxism.
Do dogmatic Marxists who blindly defend bad shit exist? Yes. But they’re commonly denounced and criticized for their garbage analysis.
You’re taking a small subset of, mostly online weirdos, and stawmanning my position, and an entire branch of political philosophy.
By all means, keep those subs dedicated to defending all those atrocities and simping for despots, but people likely won’t be fooled into thinking they only care about epistemology while they say nothing happened in Tienanman Square without a shred of irony
Buddy, I’m not trying to pull wool over your eyes or be sneaky. I literally said to not do this shit. I’m trying to get people to engage with these topics with nuance and critical thinking skills. Not blindly screech uniformed praise or condemnation based on kneejerk, emotional, preconceptions.
It’s difficult for people. When Mao/Lenin/Stalin or even Marx are discussed they all go to the “takie” slur. Their brains turn off and all they can think about is their propaganda.
Everyone is so quick to write off the atrocities of the USA and Europe. Japanese internment camps, destruction of democracies and creation of fascists dictatorships. The funding of terrorists (before and after we called them terrorists), the destruction of the environment in pursuit of profits, child labor and slave labor also in pursuit of profits.
But damn, because communists took businesses away from their oppressors, they are just as bad as fascists. /Shrugs
People gotta read more books.
@SpookyBogMonster @ArcaneSlime, I’m a left commonsensist in my ideology, and I only can say, that any system which lacks of the sovereignty of the people, based only on a leader or a small elite, be it from the right or the left, necessarily becomes a fascist and corrupt dictatorship. It is irrelevant if it is called Stalin or the fat boy of North Korea on the left or banks and multinationals in capitalism that make the rules, the result for the people is the same. Fascism
This I can get behind.
Ok so the analogy isn’t the best, but the point still stands that simply because they did a good, that doesn’t mean that simping for them and ignoring the bad is a good idea, nor does it mean that those simping for “the guy” will be taken as simping only for “the good” and not also “the bad” he did. Those subs/instances I mention and the people that populate them are literal genocide denialists, they aren’t posting on “c/epistemology” and they aren’t talking specifically about epistemology, they are denying the holodomor, the armenian genocide, and the tienanman square massacre, among other things they support like China’s current Uyghur genocide because “America did an Iraq, and while we said that was bad, China is good for doing the same thing, because America did the bad” which is among the dumbest circular logic available to be found on lemmygrad.
Yes yes, but the people I’m complaining about aren’t doing that, they’re simply doomposting about late stage capitalism and denying genocides, simping for their preferred cults of personality. In essence to use my bad analogy, it’d be like if an instance of nazis doomposted about communism and denied the holocaust, but it was fine because they could sometimes also discuss his vegetarianism if they so chose, they just happen to not do that very often.
In “marxism,” or on lemmygrad, “internet marxism?” If you suggest these things are different, maybe, but if you’re suggesting that I’m wrong about the specific people I’m talking about, I’ll have to disagree having seen it for myself.
Do dogmatic Marxists who blindly defend bad shit exist? Yes. But they’re commonly denounced and criticized for their garbage analysis.
Again, on lemmygrad or somewhere else? Because I’m complaining about the Tankies on lemmygrad specifically and all who think as they do, and they certainly do not denounce and criticize that garbage analasys, rather they encourage and fester it.
You’re taking a small subset of, mostly online weirdos, and stawmanning my position, and an entire branch of political philosophy.
Again, do you mean a small subset of lemmygrad, or do you mean marxists as a whole? In any case, I’m actually inclined to believe the subset isn’t quite as small as you believe, or would like others to believe. I run into those people all the time and rarely your camp, suggesting either they are more numerous, or they are more loud, in which case I’d suggest your camp attempt to be louder to drown those crazies out, because they’re doing a pretty good job at convincing people they’re the bigger camp.
That’s great that you’re trying to do that, but the people on lemmygrad still exist, and hand waving my complaints about them away as simply nuance saying they’re just discussing epistemology is patently false. You’re basically just saying “not all communists” here, like “not all men.” Well, as the “not all men” camp was told, “it’s enough that it’s a problem, and you need to teach
mencommunists not torapedeny genocides.”
Ahh so guilty by association McCarthy?
They literally said the exact opposite of that. Work on your reading comprehension.
whoosh
oka. explain how you centralize governmental control of the economy without enabling the government to profit from it.
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
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.
How else would it work? You need some power structure that actively forbids a free market and private ownership. And that power will sooner or later be abused.
You can’t just imagine some utopia where nobody has to work, and everything is free, and call that communism.
The core tenant of every form of Communism, regardless of if said party or organisation follows it, is as follows: that the means of production should belong to the workers who work them. If the means of production are not in the hands of the workers, then they are not communist. If they are in the hands of a CEO or a corporation, you have private capitalism or market capitalis like the US. If you put them in the hands of a state, they are in the state, you get state capitalism ala China or the USSR.
The power structure of the state protects an upper class, be it billionaires or “the party”. If you abolish the state, but not capitalism, capitalism will rebuild the state (which is why Anarcho capitalism fails every time) and vice versa (which is what happens with Marxist Leninism).
For a Communist or communalist society to work it needs to be Anarchist or classically Libertarian (aka like Bakunin or Kropotkin proposed, not “money first”). It needs to have a horizontal and democratic decision making process that is decentralised, federated, and involves all the members of the community or communities effected. If there is to be a state, it should be to facilitate the colaboration of communities in a bottom up manner. These are the features of almost every single effective or successful Anarchist or Socialist movements from Rojava or the Zapatistas, as well as non-political movements like the Open Source Movement, railway preservatiion movement, and even the early RNLI.
The power structure thant would forbid a free market would be the collective weight of everyone else rather than a state that, sooner or later, becomes the jackboot of capital.
how would such an anarchist/liberal stateless communist organization defend itself from invasion?
So the first thing to consider is that anarchy is a very diverse field of thought, so there isn’t one answer to questions about it.
An anarchist society faced with violence from outsiders could:
- Form militias on a voluntary basis. Transitive hierarchical structure can be voluntary and compatible with anarchism (think of a volunteer fire department). Remember, the key is such efforts are not coercive in an anarchist community, they are voluntary and collaborative so they require the community having the will to organize for its own defense.
- Employ decentralized resistance / guerilla warfare. This can be extremely effective.
- If allies and neighbors are watching, engage in nonviolent resistance. This is difficult and requires getting the message out to other groups and the attacker’s constituency to pressure them.
- Diplomacy. Anarchists generally don’t support representationalism and prefer consensus, but communities can choose to empower diplomats and make deals with others when the time calls for it. This could be with other anarchist communities, other states to ask for aid, or even with the attacker. Building solidarity with like minded and compassionate communities can endanger the attacking group’s reputation and resources, and can be a powerful deterrent to an aggressor.
Remember that an attacker wants something. If they aren’t getting what they want out of a conflict, or if the costs are greater than what is gained, they are likely to stop pursuing it. Anarchist communities likely have different values, and resource extraction is the most likely reason to attack such a community; making it extremely difficult or impossible to do that is something an organized community can achieve.
Think about Vietnam; while Vietnam was and is not anarchist or non-hierarchical, a decentralized military strategy with deep support from the population led to victory over a technologically superior invader. For an example closer to anarchy, you can read up on the Zapatistas, who employed decentralized resistance to the Mexican government and won.
Last, I want to add that the above is more or less true of any community or country that is attacked by a larger force, whether they are communist, or capitalist, or stateless. Economic and social structure are not going to protect any group from being attacked, and doesn’t guarantee victory no matter how organized the defense may be.
Transitive hierarchical structure
What do you mean by “transitive”?
Note that one of the merits behind an effective modern army is its ability to maintain regular troops that are trained, equipped, drilled and rotated with a reserve on a regular basis - something that’s usually achieved with a centralized form of organization and is backed by resources that in the current day are provided by a state. What’s the plan on providing modern weaponry, persistent intelligence, as well as infrastructures for logistic, communication, ordinance etc’ for a militia that’s “transitive” by nature? who’s going to keep an eye on those resources and make sure they don’t breed power tripping warlords, terrorists or even simple crime organizations? what’s the plan on keeping track of munitions and deadly weapons after the militia is disbanded?
Employ decentralized resistance / guerilla warfare. This can be extremely effective.
Highly effective to a degree and can still be bleed-out, toppled or at the very least kept under control with a more organized army. Also decentralization can easily turn to feudalism with armed groups if they start going against each other for whatever reason, such as in the case of political subversion exploiting inherit weaknesses in a non-centralized structure (divide and conquer, etc’).
If allies and neighbors are watching, engage in nonviolent resistance. This is difficult and requires getting the message out to other groups and the attacker’s constituency to pressure them.
What’s a nonviolent resistance going to do to a threat actor who’s eventual plan is political subversion and/or an incursion? why would they give a s*it as long as the war-effort on their side goes uninterrupted by the target or their allies until they decide to escalate?
Transitive wasn’t the best term to use, you’re right to ask about that - I was referring to structures that are temporary, voluntary, and established as necessary. Non-hierarchical communities can form such voluntary hierarchies for specific tasks, much like the fire department analogy.
Your comments seem to question the resilience of smaller, less militarized societies against well-resourced, aggressive forces. Unfortunately, the vulnerability to more powerful entities is not unique to communities practicing non-hierarchical or alternative systems; it’s a universal issue.
Examples like the Zapatistas, India’s independence, and Vietnam’s resistance against a superpower demonstrate that less militarized societies can sometimes successfully resist more powerful adversaries. These examples don’t guarantee success but show that various forms of resistance can be effective.
An ideal anarchistic community focuses on mutual aid and sustainable, non-coercive living. They, like any small community, are susceptible to violent disruption or displacement by larger hierarchical entities. The fear of warlords or similar figures, as you mentioned, essentially acknowledges the ever-present human tendency to consolidate power.
The Doukhobors offer another insightful case study. They’re not anarchists due to their patriarchal Christian family structures, but their community-oriented, pacifist lifestyle echoes anarchist ideals. Historically, they’ve been displaced by the state due to their rejection of many governmental norms. Wherever they resettled, they reliably transformed inhospitable land into productive farmland. Some argue this cycle of displacement and land cultivation was strategically orchestrated by the Canadian governmen to exploit their agricultural expertise. In their case, they demonstrate resilience instead of resistance.
It’s common for people encountering anarchist philosophy for the first time to question its practicality against militaristic threats and it’s a valid question. But the harsh reality is, regardless of a society’s structure or philosophy, it remains vulnerable to aggressive entities with superior military resources.
The system you describe cannot exist. An anarchist or libertarian state in the real world can neither regulate nor defend itself from other states. It’s a fantasy that would collapse immediately upon implementation in all possible real world circumstances.
@MostlyBirds @abbiistabbii, anarchy is the system to which a mature and sovereign society automatically converges, but for this current humanity is still too young as specie, the evolutionary state can be compared with that of a child in puberty, regarding behavior. An anarchic system would necessarily lead to a collapse total of the current society (Lord of the Flies effect). A long way still to go.
anarchy is the system to which a mature and sovereign society automatically converges, but for this current humanity is still too young as specie, the evolutionary state can be compared with that of a child in puberty, regarding behavior.
This is completely made up nonsense. There’s a reason no one takes anarchists seriously.
But nobody does that?
You can’t just imagine some utopia where nobody has to work, and everything is free, and call that communism.
Those are the anarchists (usually, definitions get fuzzy)
Most communists recognize the need for a transition state, we call that Socialism.
This isn’t a utopia we’re pitching, it’s hard work, and there will always be controversy, and people will have to work, we will just work less, and we will strive toward working even less over time.
And that power will sooner or later be abused
There’s LOTS of evidence that, right now, under capitalism, that abuse is veeeeery bad. We can learn the lessons of previous socialist attempts, but capitalism? That’s shown to be corrupt and beyond repair.
As well, right now, under capitalism, your politicians are bought and paid for by capitalists. Power is already being abused beyond control. Under a socialist system, it would be illegal to donate to politicians. Political campaigns would run within a short, standardized window of time, with equal funding, and commercials would be illegal, it would just be a platform of ideas and opinions. The people would vote for the person who best represents them, normal people.
This exist in Cuba, right now. It’s SO much harder to take power from a system that actually represents regular citizens, instead of a system that is bought and paid for by the highest bidder.
Careful now buddy, the internet is no place for common sense acknowledgement of reality.
Sad life you must live if your common sense is this…
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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.
I honestly just want a system that
- Gets all of us out of this climate mess
- Gets rid of poverty
- Doesn’t create a global and national elite of rich people
For a long time I’ve seen communism, as in: planned economy, and no ruling class (the latter the USSR failed to achieve, it seems) as the solution. But nowadays I don’t know. I don’t know if marxism in it’s original form is enough to explain society, and I don’t think anarchist communism, collectivism, mutualism whatever can work on a large scale. Social democracy doesn’t seem like it’s enough, either.
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.
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?
A meme like this is what happens when you believe the GOP that doing anything to benefit regular people is communism.
comment section frustratingly filled with McCarthy-brained liberals who have never critically examined their preconceptions about communism
Define communism.
What does “praising” mean? Being critical of what we learned in school about the USSR?
What does “communism” mean here? Advocating for the type of social democracy that’s done pretty well in much of Europe?
I mean I know tankies “exist” but I rarely see them. Just because we’re all critical of capitalism doesn’t mean we’re all dumb enough to want to re try what the soviet union did. It’s almost like our kids will die under capitalism so we’re willing to think outside the box for once.
I’ve never seen anybody advocate for recreating USSR the way it existed. What people actually say is that USSR managed to accomplish a lot of positive things despite the problems it had, and there are a lot of valuable lessons that can be learned from it both positive and negative.
It’s also absurd that people keep fear mongering about existing Communist projects because each one of them is rooted in history, culture, and material conditions that it arose of. It’s pretty obvious that if socialism ever came to the west then it would have its own unique characteristics based on western culture and values. These are idiotic arguments designed to shut down discussion and scare people away from even thinking about communism as an alternative to the capitalist hellscape they live under.
You could find plenty of Tankies back on Reddit with Sino and Genzedong
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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.
Fuck Communism and fuck unchecked capitalism
Interesting how capitalism needs the qualifier ‘unchecked’ while apparently communism has only one possible form.
But is it Communism’s Final Form? I think Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism is the best form.
The very concept of a free loader best represents the ruling class of capitalists interests. The ruling class does not contribute in any way to society, and instead steal billions of dollars of labor value from the working class and use it in ways that benefit only themselves. Allowing people to survive even without providing a capital benefit to the ruling class wouldn’t enable free loading, it would mean society actually does what its supposed to and looks out for the wellbeing of all people.
You shouldn’t have to work to exist. You shouldn’t have to be useful to anyone else to be a part of a community. Food and shelter are human rights. Water is a human right. Healthcare and education are human rights.
Toppling capitalism and wage slavery is the only way to a just world. Socialism doesn’t inherently belong to the soviet union. And the soviet union did not categorically fail at every single thing they did. Don’t mistake my words for endorsement of stalinism or of any of the many horrible things they did. But there were other aspects of their society and governance that were actually pretty great. Its not all black and all white. Life isn’t that simple in reality. A flat condemnation of communism is rooted in propaganda more than it is in reality.
And I’m an anarchist, before you accuse me of being a tankie. I do not advocate state communism. But to say “fuck communism” and be done with it just shows your bias towards socialism.
you shouldn’t have to work to exist, you shouldn’t have to be useful to anyone else to be part of a community
While I largely agree with your points (or at least some of the core of them) I think you’d have to flesh this out. For anything alive to exist, work needs to be done. And for anyone to be in a community people must mutually agree on membership. The “freeloader” problem isn’t a problem of ability where individuals “not useful” (and that gives me chills as much as it probably does you) to society can’t work, though it’s often framed that way to varying extents from both sides. I feel that it’s a problem where a large enough segment of the population would not be productive at what they could be doing simply because they don’t have to.
Our brains are literally wired to seek out more for less energy.
Again, I agree with most of your points, but these two could probably use a bit more explanation (at least to me)
We live in a time of unprecedented efficiency and automation. We over produce how much we require massively. Optimized, no not every human has to work. Work should be voluntary and without exploitation. Food water and shelter should be shared resources that no one is deprived of. We have the abundance to do this, we only don’t because of the capitalist economic political and social systems which promote wage slavery (the concept that you don’t deserve to live if you’re not capable of producing labor value for capitalists).
Everyone should be encouraged to work and contribute. But no one should face death for being unable to do so. All work should be voluntary and people should be encouraged to work for their benefit, their family’s benefit, and their community’s benefit. Universal basic income should exist (in our society today) so that if you’re being exploited you don’t face either further exploitation or literally death. Supporting yourself and your family and society should be done because you believe in those things and you see the direct benefits of your contributions. The problem is capitalism has indoctrinated people to believe that work is not a mechanism of direct survival. It is a mechanism for attaining capital value, which is traded for direct survival.
It goes beyond that even, they indoctrinate us to believe that:
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Capitalism is natural and can be found in nature.
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Human beings are inherently uncooperative and hate each other. Plenty of human beings are uncooperative, but capitalism literally makes people uncooperative by continually reinforcing the hopelessness of helping others. How can you cooperate when your own survival solely depends on you being willing to give your labor value to capitalists in exchange for indirect survival?
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The homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, all those who are unable or unwilling to give up their labor value to capitalists - they’re all the picture of sin and vice and they are to be derided and hated for their inability to provide labor value to capitalists. That they are worthless, and should be treated like wild animals.
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On that note, they also indoctrinate us to believe that homelessness is natural. That its a personal failing.
When examined separately you can see that they pre-construct people’s opinions to cooperation among the labor force. “Don’t be a failure by not giving us your labor value.” “Don’t help those who we deem failures.” “Being a failure, by our definition, is a personal choice and not a product of exploitation.” “Our system is natural, the natural world has capitalist-type hierarchies. So it is unchallengable.”
Bear in mind that politically I am an anarchist. In my eyes no society has ever done nearly enough to create real equality. And I fundamentally disagree with all social hierarchies.
That is very well-put. I would also add that to perpetuate the dogma that your only worth is your labor we have bullshit jobs.
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You shouldn’t have to work to exist. You shouldn’t have to be useful to anyone else to be a part of a community
I guess I’m not well versed enough on communist principles but how does this work even on the simplest level? Work has to be done for a person to have shelter, food, etc and that is pretty much unavoidable for now.
How can people both be not obligated to provide anything to the community, while the community is obligated to provide things for them? Is it just assumed that enough people will still want to work to keep the system sustainable?
Automation and efficient machinery have made most labor significantly easier and require significantly fewer people. The rise of corporate desk jobs and call centers pretty well represents this. A huge portion of society is already doing meaningless work that only serves capitalist interests.
This means a couple things. First off, far fewer working hours are required to maintain a community. People don’t have to work 40 hour weeks just to get by. Secondly, people can rotate what jobs they’re performing based on how they feel like investing their efforts. I’m an anarchist, not a communist, so my beliefs surrounding division of labor are different from, for example, a marxist-leninist.
Western society is far too indulgent with many things that cost massive amounts of resources and provide very little in the way of human benefit. Public transportation should be the norm everywhere for instance, because cars and roads are wildly resource intensive for really no reason. Every human being does not need to possess a personal vehicle. It does not actually serve our interests. It just pushes the cost of transportation onto the workers, instead of the ruling class funding actual comprehensive functional public transportation. This is just one example, but the way we approach food is also extremely flawed. Instead of primarily relying on our host ecosystems and local food production to feed ourselves we ship food all around the world at another massive resource cost. We are also over-reliant on resource intensive livestock, when much less resources intensive options exist.
Put all things together, and it becomes firstly apparent that we are wasting the majority of our resources on stuff that has no actual real world benefit to us. So we could stop wasting those resources, and thusly not need to invest as many labor hours into production. So far fewer people need to work than currently do. And labor should be invested locally, into things that directly benefit you your family and your community. Instead of the present case where the majority of your labor hours are invested into things that have little to no tangible benefit for yourself or your community. So its much harder to see how your work is actually helpful.
Part of the propaganda you’re fed by capitalism is that cooperation can never work because everyone is selfish and uncooperative and “exploitation is just human nature”. Those things are not true. Exploitation is not human nature. Humans are naturally social and community oriented. We are naturally codependent and have adaptations for functioning within a community. Capitalism, and more broadly consolidation of power into a ruling class, has upset humans natural tendency to cooperate. Capitalism puts mortal pressure on our ability to expend labor hours for capitalists. You cannot help anyone else because it risks your own personal life, any time you spend money you’re spending your own survivability. It’s what means you can live at all. So people do not want to help anyone else. We are taught through propaganda that being homeless is a personal failing. That being poor is a personal failing. This is specifically to prevent human cooperation from expanding into a genuine desire to improve life for all workers.
So people don’t feel like they can cooperate, which leads to the general perception of human nature as being selfish. The idea that people will work to better the lives of everyone in their community is a completely normal idea.
While there’s a lot I agree with there, it seems like there’s some assumptions made that are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I guess it’s more of a difference in philosophy, but it seems like a core part of your statement is “people given the opportunity to cooperate without risk to themselves would provide enough for everyone, and whatever they don’t end up providing is unnecessary.”
It’s fair to say that there are a lot of things we don’t need, but it seems a bit flippant to say those things are completely useless. I’m all for strong safety nets that allow people to give to others without having to sacrifice their own wellbeing, but it seems like you’re talking about a quality of life decrease for a large number of people in order to achieve that.
True, in some senses I am definitely expecting a relative decrease in some aspects of quality of life for the middle class and upper middle class. Like decreased access to some food types that aren’t local to a community. Significantly reduced transportation and a much heavier reliance on a more robust public transportation system. Less access to new luxury goods and more recycling of technology and resources.
To homeless people, the mentally ill who cannot work, the disabled who cannot work, and to the severely impoverished - to all of them this would result in a huge increase in their quality of life.
Its also not like there would be no pressure to work, simply that you don’t face homelessness starvation and death if you are not capable of work. In that event I do believe most people would willingly work to provide for themselves and their communities.
Also, its only a quality of life decrease from our present perspective. The way our society currently functions will eventually result in total failure of supply chains as the climate crisis that we are causing continues to unfold. Which means people will have to depend on their local community to provide for them anyway. But even without that, I believe a society that consumes far less and is consequently much more effective at providing needs for everyone is possible.
Communism and socialism are completely different things. At least learn what they are before spouting nonsense about them
Not sure how you are defining them, but they are, and aren’t, the same. Socialism is a transitionary government to communism. It isnt the ‘exact’ same thing, but when a communist party is in charge, they create socialism, with goals to move towards communism.
Socialism is also a lot of things, but all those things are considered communist.
Democratic socialism is what Cuba has for example. Socialism run by a democracy.
Socialist democracy is what Sweden has, currently. It’s still capitalist, so is not communist at all, but regulates capitalism better than America and most of Europe does. They are slowly loosing the fight to Nazis though. Like literal Nazis, they call themselves nazis, That’s not a joke.
They aren’t completely different no. Communism is a form of socialism, socialism being the political movement that focuses workers rights to varying degrees. Communism came first though, and socialism just includes other things like democratic socialism. Socialism when discussing theory is often used widely to mean the global anti capitalist movement as it has existed since the beginning of worker’s rights.
You have the right not to be denied food or shelter… Are you saying everyone should receive free food and shelter? How will that work? I understand small scale communes can mostly work under that idea, but a country with millions of people? Scarcity is the basis of economic theory for a reason.
Currently, as much as 40% of food is thrown away in the US, while millions of people experience food insecurity. The scarcity is fully intentional.
Why is that food thrown away? You do realise that food can get thrown away for being bad? That at least takes up 10 percentage points, then there’s the question on how its measured. Who is throwing this food away? If its your average Joe then I doubt their throwing it away just to make artificial scarcity. How nutritional is the food that gets thrown away?
millions of people experience food insecurity.
The US has hundreds of millions of people those people experiencing food insecurity barely make up anything. Also would that food that gets thrown away even feed everyone?
those people experiencing food insecurity barely make up anything
Then it should be easy to feed them with just a fraction of the food that’s thrown away?? How you could possibly say that and think it helps your point is beyond me.
I said that because the person I was replying to was making it seem like millions of people was everyone and their mother, the truth is if they wanted artificial scarcity they would do it to more people
Ah got it, millions of people suffering is not a lot, so it must not be a real issue. You’re the worst kind of person.
Capitalism creates scarcity to generate profit. We live and have been living in a time of unprecedented efficiency productivity and abundance. Artifical scarcity is used to keep workers from resisting wage slavery.
Companies would rather sell more product then pretend for it to be rarer (except for stuff like diamonds but those are selled to rich, successful people anyway)
That’s such a naïve thing to say. Artificial scarcity is incredibly common and used as a marketing tool by nearly every industry. My favorite example is when digital content has “limited edition” copies.
Capitalism always leads to monopolies and will always be in conflict with workers.
Capitalism always leads to monopolies
No, no it does not. Competition for nearly everything exists, sure there might not be enough but saying “always leads to monopolies” is a lie. Anyway communism usually has monopolies too, just monopolies operated by the government
will always be in conflict with workers.
By workers I presume you mean employees. Yes, greedy people will try to abuse their workers but as the person you’re replying to said “unchecked capatilism is also bad”, we have minimum wage for a reason, and then there is also competition and if you have a valuable skill they can’t afford to exploit you
You can’t even live on minimum wage, WTF is your point? 🤣
Depends on the minimum wage
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A good minimum wage
Quite vague, I know but its the only way to explain it
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Fuck centralized power. By definition true communism shouldnt have any of that, and anyone considering the systems equal is butt chugging propaganda
Honestly, 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.
People deserve basic human rights. Free heallthcare, education, insurance and liveable basic income is a must.
I think the irony is that a significant portion of conservatives (not only in the USA, I speak from Brazil) see that as “evil commienism”. That and anything that even remotely attempts to reduce inequalities, like taxing the rich.
So what you’re saying is you don’t believe in labels.
not “fuck unchecked communism”, “fuck communism”. You have picked your side, it looks like
Who checks communism and makes it unchecked? Oh that’s right, the government - the people running the communism
I see a lot of empty slogans here. You sound like a politician.
Just because you don’t understand what words mean doesn’t mean they’re “empty slogans”.
It’s not that.
It’s the commenter rambling and wanting a unicorn of a social ideology. Those slogans aren’t real and will not work.
