I’ve never met anyone who hates communism more than the colleagues of mine who grew up under communism. Their neighbours disappeared for saying the wrong things. They were hungry and cold as children every day. Sometimes they didn’t have any shoes. They weren’t allowed to leave their country for holidays. They couldn’t afford it, even if they were allowed. They couldn’t study what they wanted. Their entire educational system was political propaganda. Freedom of religion didn’t exist.
It always amazes me how the most vocal proponents of communism come from the most sheltered, most privileged people alive who would retch from learning about the atrocities committed in the name of communism. If they only spent a few minutes on Google.
You’re technically describing the downsides of authoritarianism, bordering on dictatorship, not communism. That being said, I don’t believe communism would work either. Communism isn’t the only system at play in those scenarios. Again, not defending communism as a good thing, just that the given reasons aren’t actually due to communism but other parallel systems that were implemented at those times.
The only way communism can work is if it’s not run by people.
You’d need something like a benevolent AI overlord.
The problem with all forms of government and economy is that it involves human beings.
This is a truly unpopular opinion but i will stick my neck out to say i fully agree.
Power corrupts, humans are flawed with greed and bias. The bigger a society becomes the more impossible it becomes for humans to properly remain in charge.
AI today is far from perfect and more then flawed but it keeps evolving faster, infinitely faster compared to how biological life can. The potential for AI to grow into something much more capable, unbiased and fair then any of is can be is obvious, so is its potential for the exact opposite.
Summarized: i don’t trust humans in positions on power at all and i wont start to just because i don’t know if i can trust something not human instead.
If you burn a pastry, you don’t just give up baking pastries. You declare that the burnt one isn’t a real pastry and start over.
Likewise with communism. Oh a few million people died? No biggie just try again 😚
This is a ridiculous analogy. It’s also to the point of technically arguing one side while sarcastically supporting the other.
And it also ignores my actual point and sets up a straw man anyway. All you’re doing is trying to claim I’m making a no true Scotsman fallacy. I am not. I never said every case of communism wasn’t communism. I even implicitly stated otherwise by saying communism hasn’t been attempted that many times for a statistical significant trend. I stated the failures mentioned were do to other problems. I’m not even claiming communism can or can’t work. Just that the arguments provided don’t support the conclusion. Being quippy doesn’t give a free pass to avoid using logic and reason. I’ve even made comments against people making bad arguments in support of communism. I just want to see real discussions about it and not folks repeating sound bites from their favorite talking heads.
If communism devolves into authoritarianism every time it is attempted, I don’t see the practical distinction.
How many times has capitalism become dictatorships or fascists? Yet we continue to do it.
Not to mention all those attempts have died in the socialism phase, because surprise surprise consolidation of power doesn’t lead to it being distributed.
You act as if it’s been tried any amount of time that would be statistically significant. Sometimes it’s not even communism other than in name and folks still count it.
And it doesn’t devolve into it. It’s simply always been done at the same time. When you have essentially a dictatorship, absolute power will corrupt absolutely.
A practical distinction historically speaking, but not philosophically speaking. If you’re unable to differentiate between concepts in history, I don’t know how you can ever effectively discuss them objectively. Though, this should have been evident with your comment initially. Communism doesn’t devolve into authoritarianism. They’re not even the same types of philosophies. One is about governing and one is about commerce. It’s like claiming capitalism devolves into a plutocracy. It does help to produce a plutocracy, but it didn’t devolve into one. They’re not the same thing.
These are some societys which are at least socialist and some of them on the way to communism If you want to simplify it heavily: the means have to mark the ends ergo you can’t use the state to destroy the state (communism describes a stateless moneyless and classless society)
Also adding to the list of nice things - a picture of the current dictator on all public offices and classrooms. Work and school weeks from Monday to Saturday and a Sunday in which you had to do mandatory free time activities, like go to communist youth clubs, participate in parades for the glory of the state, or plant flowers or do random maintenance work in the park.
I’ve noticed the arguments tend to center around the notion that ‘that wasn’t true communism’ and that the notions presented by Marx et al. were not properly implemented.
Fair enough, I can agree with that, but I’d wonder what makes us think that we would do it better next time? How do you actually prevent consolidation of power in the hands of the select few (in any system, for that matter, not just the ideal communism)?
Obligatory capitalism is bad too (but at least I’m in less danger of getting vanned in the middle of the night for insulting random great leader - attemtping to undermine the social order or whatever they called thoughtcrimes).
Obligatory capitalism is bad too (but at least I’m in less danger of getting vanned in the middle of the night for insulting random great leader - attemtping to undermine the social order or whatever they called thoughtcrimes).
Capitalism requires the limits imposed by a strong, functional democracy, otherwise it drifts into horrifying tyranny.
Unrestrained capitalism can give communism a run for it’s money in terms of genocide.
Edit: typo
Obligatory capitalism is bad too (but at least I’m in less danger of getting vanned in the middle of the night for insulting random great leader - attemtping to undermine the social order or whatever they called thoughtcrimes.)
Maybe you are, currently, in the United States of Europe. But this is really more a function of liberal democracy than capitalism. You could get vanned for saying the wrong thing about the great leader in quite a few capitalist countries. You’d be in high danger of having pretty terrible things happen to you for saying the wrong thing in the US until pretty recently, and the US has been capitalist pretty much since its inception.
I don’t think anyone is advocating for literal communism. They are advocating for social programs like, you know, universal healthcare and good public schools. Which the Gop and Fox have to scream is communism to scare people.
My state has communist background (kerala,India) I spent only 0.06USD for tetanus injection and consult Never had spent any penny on education(I have completed degree and diploma). Its because we had that kind of social programs. I am not advocating for stalin or mao. Evil is evil. Takes the benefits rather being inside capitalism and suffer.
There are definitely people advocating for actual communism. Social programs in a democracy are worlds away from communism. We have universal healthcare in Europe without communism.
There are definitely people advocating for actual communism.
No I really don’t think there are. If there are then it’s incredibly, incredibly, minisculy few, but the gop and Fox have to portray that it’s the entire democratic party.
Social programs in a democracy are worlds away from communism.
That’s the whole point of what I’m saying. Social programs are worlds away, but the gop and Fox have to conflate everything to call it communism in order to have a bogeyman.
We have universal healthcare in Europe without communism.
Again, that’s the whole point of what I’m saying. Social programs like universal healthcare? The Gop and Fox call it communism to scare people. I know it’s not, you know it’s not, but the gop and Fox scream loudly enough that it’s communism that they scare enough people to get their votes.
This take comes from a place of assuming there will be a government of the state that wields all the power and controls everything.
That is totalitarianism, not communism.
The capital owners don’t want to you take the means of production from them. They don’t want you to have a fair wage, they want you to slave away to keep them rich.
They want totalitarianism for them.
None of that is communism though, that’s authoritarianism. Like this isn’t even a “not real communism” thing, it’s just objective facts. Communism is an economic system, NOT a government system.
But you know what, I AM gonna say not real communism anyways, because they weren’t. The direct stated goals of communism by Marx is the workers owning the means of production, and the abolishment of both private property(which is different than PERSONAL property, btw. i.e It’s still “your” toothbrush, not “ours”) AND the STATE. Many definitions also include the abolishment of money in of itself.
Only one of those goals were achieved by the USSR. Private property was abolished, but the state owned the means of production, which is a double fail as not only do the workers not own them, the state owning them means the state still exists. Money still existed as well. So overall, they met 1 out of 3/4 of the minimum requirements to be communism, and thus they weren’t communist.
Same story with China and basically every other “communist” country you could gotcha me with, abolishing private property is the only requirement they have met.
Meeting only one of multiple requirements to be something and calling yourself it anyways does not mean you actually are that thing. By that logic, I’m a good singer; I’m not good at it, but I CAN sing, so calling myself a good singer is perfectly valid.
I’ve never met anyone who hates communism more than the colleagues of mine who grew up under communism
Of course they do. They grew up in an authoritarian country calling themselves communist. Whether that country was actually communist or not doesn’t really matter; if you don’t actually know what communism IS, you won’t be able to recognize that the entity harming you is communist in name only. If they hadn’t actually read stuff like Marx, which most people likely didn’t seeing as google didn’t exist and you had to research stuff the old fashioned way(and even if you did do research, censorship is a concern), their definition of communism will be entirely based of the actions of their authoritarian government that claims to be communist.
To put a more modern perspective on this, North Korea calls itself a Democratic Peoples Republic despite being none of those things. But to a North Korean citizen isolated from outside information, NK is ALL of those things; if NK collapsed, there would definitely be some former NK citizens proclaiming the horrors of democracy, and there would definitely be people replying explaining how that “wasn’t true democracy”; sound familiar?
Communism is a flawed system because it can never work in reality, not because it’s inherently bad. For it to work, all forms of inequality have to be not just abolished, but abolished by total unanimous agreement by humanity; which will never happen, because there will always be people who care only for themselves or their “chosen people”.
Capitalism, on the other hand, is inherently bad. Evil, even. It “works”, but only by exploiting those beneath you. If you’re on the bottom rung with no one under you to exploit, or if you’re just too ethical to exploit those under you, it no longer works and you are left being a wage slave just to survive.
That’s literally nothing to do with communism and everything to do with iron fist rule under an authoritarian dictatorship.
It amazes me that the most vocal opponents of communism are the same people creaming their pants over handing their democracy over to the next Putin / Kim Jong Un, who have equally demonstrated the horrors of “democracy” when implemented in bad faith by sociopathic authoritarian dictators.
I think you are confusing communism for authoritarian socialism. If only you’d spent a few minutes on google.
If communism becomes authoritarian every time it is attempted, I don’t see the practical distinction.
Meanwhile, capitalism not only reliably devolves into dictatorships of the wealthy, but also dictatorships of whichever caste or ethnic group manages to rise to political dominance.
Or do you think the consistent and aggressive disenfranchisement of people of colour is just democracy in action or something?
