Stalin: “Why not both?”
He did adopt a tougher stance, because of the looming world war. However, Stalin wasnt nearly as much of a tyrant the west paints him to be. Not to the honest working class.
Ah yes, my grandparents, the landlords. Wait hol’ up, they were working people, not landlords. GDR fucked them regardless.
“bUt tHAT wASn’T rEaL ComMunIsM” If neither the USSR nor China could achieve true Communism, then maybe it isn’t so much a realistic goal as a utopian ideal, a convenient justification for all kinds of crimes against humanity that occur in its pursuit.
It’ll be different this time guys, no really, just one more time guys, we’ll get it right, it wasn’t even a good try, let us go again, this time for real, no way it’ll be anything other than a utopia guys, the people will have the power, guys.
Lol it sounds like someone trying to defend capitalism. “No, it’s totally fine, we just didn’t implement it right. There are certain laws and regulations that can fix it, we swear!”
Yet for some reason any flaw with a communist country is endemic to communism itself, instead of the implementation, contexts of their outside conditions, or foreign influence, or general state of economic development.
The thing is, both USSR/China and USA don’t fit the ideals of Communism. While in USA suffers from the gap between rich and poor, USSR/China suffered from the difference between the people and the government. Just because you get rid of economical suppression doesn’t mean you can’t have political suppression. Sure these countries had economical problems but a lot of their problems could have been avoided if the government would have actually worked for the people and not for themselves.
Neither the USSR or China fulfilled Dialectical Materialism yet either. That’s a prerequisite for the ideals of communism.
it WAS real communism and ur grandparents probably deserved it. absolute worst case senario no system is perfect and good people still get fucked over sometimes for no good reason, difference is under capitalism it is constant under socialism it is rare.
Just… no. Coming from an anarchist communist
it WAS real communism
I mean, it wasn’t, at least not according to the actual people who ran those governments. The USSR and the CCP were/are revolutionary governments, real communism happens when/if the revolutionary governments succeeds and transitions the means of control back to the proletariat.
and ur grandparents probably deserved it.
Really working hard to build those bridges of mutual respect and cooperation I see. This is one of the key reasons the USSR imploded in the first place.
The expansion of Soviet influence happened under the influence of Russian chauvinism, a major contradiction with the more successful maoist ideology today. Instead of allowing communism to be shaped by individual ethnicities or nations they did their best to russify or simply purge the base of power in the country, bolshevists or not.
Stalin and Beria did a whole bunch of purging of leftist to secure their control over the party. If you actually think everyone the Soviets killed deserved it, please go read about the Makhnovist, the Mensheviks, the Georgian bolshevist, hell go read what the Soviets did to the original leftist leader in North Korea.
difference is under capitalism it is constant under socialism it is rare.
Unfortunately that’s just not true. Revolutions are highly hierarchical due to their inherent need to react to militant reactionaries. As they begin to solidify their revolution and take over the responsibilities of the state, this hierarchy gets transferred from the the state.
Authoritarian governments are highly efficient, but are extremely hard to get away from once established. Often times the militant leader of the revolution is not the guy you want to be in complete control of the state after establishing a revolutionary government.
Mao was decent enough to accept this after the failure of the cultural revolution, Stalin on the other hand…
saying that lower stage communism as marx called it or socialism as we call it today wasnt real communism is meaningless, and at best petty. the argument was never a semantics one about the specifics of what communism is and where the lines between socialism and communism are, what was said when they said it wasnt real communism was that it wasnt led by communist and that it did not adhere to communist ideals and goals which it did. u would have to be some kind of alien lizard to not understand the context here which is why i know u are arguing in bad faith.
also some idiot lib going around saying that the gdr wasnt real communism because their ancestors had a bad experience with that system (or more likely they were landlords or capitalist and go what they deserved) isnt gonna change their mind cuz some random person on the internet told them otherwise nor do i care to make that argument.
saying that lower stage communism as marx called it or socialism as we call it today wasnt real communism is meaningless, and at best petty.
The problem is that the Soviet Union couldn’t even be correctly defined in Marxist terms to be socialist. Socialism according to Marx was a lower form of communism, one described as a transition from democratic capitalism to communism. The Soviets did not transition from a democratic state to communism, there were no valid democratic election from 38’-89’.
what was said when they said it wasnt real communism was that it wasnt led by communist and that it did not adhere to communist ideals and goals which it did.
I mean I still think there’s room for debate depending on who you’re talking about. I tend to think that the most simple definitional test whether or not you are adhering to communist ideology is to examine how the means of production is being managed.
Has the state expanded the means of control over the production to the workers in an equitable manor? Is the equity created by the workers being shared to the entire population of workers? By what means do workers negotiate their control over the means of production?
My arguments against Soviet communism is that workers had no meaningful control over the means of production. Groups of workers had no real access to influence the government such as voting as Marx described. The equity created by the workers was not shared equitably throughout the Union, with non ethnic Russians generally acting as a resource to be extracted from.
u would have to be some kind of alien lizard to not understand the context here which is why i know u are arguing in bad faith.
I think the misunderstanding comes from the fact that when Marx was dreaming of a communist nation, he was not thinking it was going to start in Russia. It was an absolute shock when the 1rst country to commit to communism was autocratic Russia instead of Democratic Germany. Meaning a lot of Marxist writing isn’t really applicable to the Soviet State, Marx didn’t think about revolution occuring in a authoritarian state.
also some idiot lib going around saying that the gdr wasnt real communism because their ancestors had a bad experience with that system (or more likely they were landlords or capitalist and go what they deserved)
Or, they were one of the tens of thousands of leftist that were purged by Beria or Stalin. Pretending that the Soviets only killed landlords is not only academically dishonest, it’s harmful to future leftist endeavors. Self criticism is essential to eliminating internal contradictions from arising within the state.
As I understand it, “real communism” is supposed to be some kind of stateless society. As the GDR was, well, a state, it clearly did not achieve that. Nor would it ever have been likely to, as actually doing what was ideologically promised would have required those with power within that system to relinquish that power, which is incredibly rare as it conflicts with human nature.
i wonder what planet u came from; clearly u arent human cuz any human would understand the context here. actually u are human (probably) and u are just making a meaningless semantics argument in bad faith.
In what sense is this semantics or bad faith? I meant this sincerely.
fine ill humor ur bad faith argument.
when left leaning libs defend their ideals from right leaning libs by saying “it wasnt real communism” like in this case. they mean that the thing being talked about did not adhere to communist ideals.
when u say that “it wasnt real communism” u mean that there is a distinction between communism and socialism or lower stage communism as marx called it.
the gdr was a socialist country led by communist with the goal of establishing communism when they original lib said it wasnt real communism what he mean was that “the gdr was not a socialist country and it wasnt led by communist”, then when i said it was real communism i meant to re state the fact that the gdr was a socialist country led by communist. so it is self evident that ur argument is irrelevant no one was actually talking about where the gdr was a stateless, money less, classless society, we were talking about whether the leadership of the gdr truly adhered to communist principles.
as to why ur argument looks to be in bad faith u would have to live under a fucking rock not understand this context or far more likely u are arguing in bad faith.
I think you have an unrealistic estimation of how much most people understand the topic of communism, if you think not labelling different types of communism as the same ideology is living under a rock. More than half the country doesn’t even realize that socialism and communism aren’t complete synonyms, and a good fraction think paradoxically that center right liberalism is somehow communist.
Basically, I think you’re doing this: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/average_familiarity_2x.png
Real Communism, along Marxist lines, has a government. Marxism isn’t anarchic, the “stateless” part is specifically referring to instruments of the government by which one class oppresses another. Marxism has always been about achieving a global Communist republic.
Take it from a self-identified pinko commie and someone born in one of those regimes, it was not real communism. It was authoritarianism with a strong (but at times selectively applied) social safety net. To say that their grandparents deserved it when you know nothing about them is fucking absurd. You’re not helping your point or cause. You’re just being a child.
first anyone who would call themselves a pinko isnt a communist, ur probably a rad lib. second do u truly think that some lib the grandchild of gusanos can even be convinced by a random person on the internet to be a communist im not helping my cause sure, this is just for fun but if i had wrote some essay pointing out why the gdr was a real socialist country led by real communist which really adhered to communist ideals and said that its unfortunate what happened to his gusanos but that bad shit still happens everywhere i wouldnt be helping anything either.
first anyone who would call themselves a pinko isnt a communist, ur probably a rad lib
Gatekeep harder
It’s weird, we tried having a small group of people control the flow of capital and it was unpopular each time. Let’s try it again but call it something different or say it was something else when we tried it before.
Communism isn’t a series of sacrifices for an eventual greater good, Socialism is definitely better than what preceeded Socialism in Russia and China. The idea of True Communism can only be achieved globally, sure, and in the far future, sure, but Communism is about building towards that through gradual improvements.
You’re implying that any progress forward is useless if it doesn’t immediately achieve a far future society, it’s devoid of logic.
No, I just have very different ideas what progress is.
Progress in my eyes is made when a society becomes more democratic, and when we solve conflicts without bloodshed.
In that sense, sure, the GDR was a step in the right direction, but nazi germany didn’t exactly set the bar very high.
The idea of socialism is nice, but you hardly have any progress if the system (be it built on free markets or planned economies) doesn’t work to improve ordinary citizens’ lives, but only to keep the powerful in power.
Personaly, I don’t care much about free markets or planned economies. I think the best approach, as so often, is a kind of blend, a social market economy that allows independent companies in a framework that protects workers, consumers and the environment.
Thing is, the specifics of the economic system aren’t important. What matters is that the people are the ones who decide them.
There is nothing wrong with pursuing a utopian society, but ultimatly you have no control over what happens in the far future (neither should you, future societies need to be ruled by future people).
The only thing you can control is the present and the near future, so what really matters aren’t the ends you strive for, but the means you employ while doing so.
It wasnt the GDR, it was the totality of global Capital conspiring to defeat the biggest threat to their power structure. What did the GDR do specifically that ‘fucked’ your grandparents?
ITT: That doesn’t count!!!
Well. Stop using strawmen. Communism is defined by progress through dialectical Materialism. Has any nation finished that progression?
‘We’re only defending the imaginary ideal!’
That’s not how words work. Things mean what they are used to mean.
Y’all understand this perfectly when describing “capitalism.” That word becomes synecdoche for every level and aspect of modern reality. By definition, capitalism is only really the part where having money makes money, but nobody has any trouble understanding what you mean when you refer to its consequences and implications. Nor would you respect if libertarians split hairs about “corporatism.” Like oh, this isn’t capitalism, because it lacks X and Y and Z, which have never existed, so how dare you talk about bad things that actually happened.
It’s more that anticommunists judge Socialist states by their inability to fulfill Communist ideals at the level of development AES countries are at, as though they exist in a perfectly frozen picture absent history and trajectory.
Yeah sure dude, existing in a context is why people condemned police states.
‘People who don’t know the difference between these terms must be using the more-recognizable one as an oblique criticism of the gap between theory and practice’ is the most .ml take I have ever seen.
Condemning the USSR and PRC for not achieving a global stateless, classless, moneyless society is ridiculous. This isn’t a gap between theory and practice, lol. Communism isn’t anarchism.
… do you understand that criticism can come from outside your own belief set?
Yep, but I also understand what Communists actually advocate for and understand that countries building Communism should be judged like every society: with respect to trajectory, not as a snapshot.
Communism isn’t a goal because it is stateless, classless, and moneyless. Rather, Communism is a goal because the process of getting there is to create a society benefitting all and directed for the working class, by the working class.
Communism is a goalpost on wheels, that’s why no nation has “finished that progression”
No. Moving goalposts means there is no definitive measure of completion. Communism has one. If you’ve read anything at all about it, you would know that. But hey you were told it was bad in school, and thinking for yourself is difficult. You do you.
Without regard for the political content (which I agree with), this is a very bad and unfunny meme.
Ahhh more propaganda that hand waves away the millions of people also starving away under communism. Of course it’s .Ml
There’s never be a full communist or capitalist society. What wears arguing over how far towards either we should go. Also, FYI for those that don’t know The USSR and China are not communist. Both are/were dictatorships that call themselves communist.
Look up dialectical Materialism. China is ‘communist’ as they are progressing along the roadmap Dialectical Materialism provides towards achieving communism.
Are they making actual progress on that path, though? They have tons of billionaires, lots of people go bankrupt there from medical bills or are homeless (unlike some other communist countries). The state owns a lot of businesses, but then so does Norway. All their initiatives seem to be related to hurting gay people or making it harder for kids to play video games. They’ve arrested some rich people and cracked down on some corruption, but that also sounds like it could come from a capitalist country. I can’t really find any sort of long-term plan.
The problem is that you won’t ever get a full communist country, at least not for a very, VERY long time, because you always get those few fartweasels who end up hijacking it and turning it into a dictatorship. You need to eliminate that problem first, and with how the world is sliding into fascism, it doesn’t look like we’re any where near close to solving that dilemma
Read ‘State and Revolution’ by Lenin. It’s quite short and not that bad a read. Addresses exactly what you are talking about.
I thought I was still on Lemmy.world and was wondering why this thread was going so hard on theory. Carry on.
Upvote for fartweasel.
I thought I blocked this shit hole instance a couple days ago. Apparently it didn’t work. Time to add them again!
Nobody starves under capitalism /s
Bruh i see people starving in the streets of America every damn day.
Tankies have a lot of confirmation bias. Facts alternate to their beliefs that communism is the be-all, end-all of human suffering don’t go over well with them.
It might be if it were actually achievable in the way it was envisioned, but ideal communism isn’t the communism we see anywhere in reality.
Russian and Chinese famines weren’t intentional though. In China, because they were literally coming out from being the hungriest country in the planet, and decided to change too much too fast, you can’t really turn such a huge country around overnight. In Russia because they needed to collectivize really quickly in preparation for WW2, and the landlords at the time decided to literally burn grain and kill cattle instead of handing their big estates. The numbers offered by western authorities on both are greatly exaggerated without adequate proof.
After the tragic events, both countries saw unprecedented improvements in quality of life, nutrition and life expectancy. These events didn’t really repeat after they stabilized, something that can’t be said of most capitalist countries to this day.
In capitalism the owner class needs people to be in despair for them to be willing to work such shitty, desperate jobs. Millions of poor and starving people have to exist either in your own country, or elsewhere in a neocolony for one billionaire to be able to steal so much accumulated capital to himself. It’s common to see them taking decisions that help with their accumulation at the expense of everyone else (eg. Oil companies covering up climate change). We are already making more food than we would need to be able to feed everyone fairly, yet capitalist countries don’t.
You could do that with any country that’s had famines and disasters.
United States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
Ireland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
Nice…
I’m sure they were able to pick themselves up by the bootstraps right?
Keep in mind that many Americans don’t know Socialism from Communism, as they’ve been schooled that everything responsible for happy Scandinavians is somehow bad.
Should I also keep in mind that most people don’t know how nice Communist counties were to live in? Seriously, give me one, just one country that did communism successfully and where all the people could live in freedom and pursue happiness. Just a single example.
Is there a Capitalist country where all people can “live in freedom and pursue happiness?” What does that even mean? What are the solid metrics by which you track that, so you can say a country passes or fails that?
Yeah, try just about all northern European countries. Are there people that have fallen off the band wagon? Of course there are, shit happens everywhere. However, everyone there loves better and more meaningful lives than in ANY communist country.
I don’t recall the last time in northern Europe (second world war aside) where literally everyone except a few elites (hello Russia) had to stand in line for hopefully some food
First of all, communism isn’t utopian. Even communists don’t think it will be some paradise where all worries disappear. You’ll still have to fight racism, sexism, bad weather, famines, etc.
But it’s often better for an average person from a country of a starting equal level of economic development. You’ve got to give it the “If I was reincarnated in a random person’s body, where would I want to be?” test. US is a good answer, but it’s got a way higher level of economic development with a big headstart. Even then, you could end up in the hood and die early and stressed. When you give the test comparing countries of equal starting economic development, it becomes a lot more muddled.
Like, would you rather randomly live in Cuba, or Somalia? The place where you get free education, health care, etc or a place that is also extremely poor but you don’t get that stuff? You could reincarnate as some rich, warlord there, but would you want to take that chance when you could reincarnate in Cuba as literally anyone and not be worried about ending up homeless? When giving realistic comparisons like this with proper historical context, and you do it over and over again, they tend to come out on top.
There’s no country where every single person lives in freedom and happiness. But there are numerous countries that have significantly improved the quality of life for the vast majority of people compared to what they had before, including Cuba, Vietnam, and China.
It may be true that in some cases the quality of life is higher in capitalist countries. But there’s a good reason for that! Historically, the countries most prone to socialist revolutions… were countries with some of the lowest standards of living in the world!
Despite this, China has recently eclipsed the United States in life expectancy. If you compare the two countries’ life expectancies before the Communists came to power, no one would expect that to happen! Why? Because for the average rural Chinese person, their way of life was virtually unchanged since ancient times with a life expectancy of 35, comparable to that of the Roman Empire.
Anti-communists would have us compare communist countries against either an imagined utopia, or against countries starting from a significantly higher level of industrial development. But those comparisons are not relevant to the question at hand! In order to evaluate the efficacy of socialism, the relevant comparison is the system that actually existed before, and what it was on track to do! And in cases like China, we can clearly see that the quality of life was miserable and stagnant for the vast majority of people, until the communists came to power!
Why do Westerners fail to account for this vital evidence? Because people used to a higher standard of living would take these improvements for granted! For a village tailor, being able to afford a sewing machine could be life-changing - but someone living in the imperial core would have no relevant experience to relate to that! The only thing they would notice is how poor the person still is, regardless of how much or how quickly their life is improving!
Which is probably why they often confuse Socialism with Social Democracy.
Communism hasn’t yet been implemented the original way so we don’t actually know if it works
🤣🤣🤣🤣
It also keeps being built in third-world countries, usually blockade, sanctioned, or regime changed by Western countries so it’s also hard to tell without those variables. Although so far it has a pretty good track record for equal levels of starting development.
Real everyone-eats-ice-cream-and-dances-all-day hasn’t been tried either. Just because you describe a set of circumstances doesn’t mean those circumstances can exist, and it especially doesn’t mean they can be stable long term.
Scarcity is a fact of nature. You cannot rationally distribute scarce things without knowing people’s preferences, so you either need to continuously solve the economic knowledge problem (which requires a huge state apparatus, which will be taken over by a dictator), or a means of exchanging goods between people to better suit their preferences (at which point you have invented capitalism).
I know, also I didn’t say I’m a communist fan, all I’m saying is that they rebranded totalitarian form of governments under communism so we don’t actually know if Marx communism works or it’s a flop
The Western concept of totalitarianism was constructed by Hannah Arendt, who came from a wealthy family and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. It’s a bourgeois liberal, intentionally anticommunist construct that lumps fascism and communism in the same bucket.
Monthly Review, The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited
U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the “Democratic Left” and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.
Communism is still being built. What is the “original way?”
Pure Ideological Marxism Gang Will Rise Eventually
Whatever is written in a book is right — such is still the mentality of culturally backward Chinese peasants. Strangely enough, within the Communist Party there are also people who always say in a discussion, “Show me where it’s written in the book.” When we say that a directive of a higher organ of leadership is correct, that is not just because it comes from “a higher organ of leadership” but because its contents conform with both the objective and subjective circumstances of the struggle and meet its requirements. It is quite wrong to take a formalistic attitude and blindly carry out directives without discussing and examining them in the light of actual conditions simply because they come from a higher organ. It is the mischief done by this formalism which explains why the line and tactics of the Party do not take deeper root among the masses. To carry out a directive of a higher organ blindly, and seemingly without any disagreement, is not really to carry it out but is the most artful way of opposing or sabotaging it.
The method of studying the social sciences exclusively from the book is likewise extremely dangerous and may even lead one onto the road of counter-revolution. Clear proof of this is provided by the fact that whole batches of Chinese Communists who confined themselves to books in their study of the social sciences have turned into counter-revolutionaries. When we say Marxism is correct, it is certainly not because Marx was a “prophet” but because his theory has been proved correct in our practice and in our struggle. We need Marxism in our struggle. In our acceptance of his theory no such formalisation of mystical notion as that of “prophecy” ever enters our minds. Many who have read Marxist books have become renegades from the revolution, whereas illiterate workers often grasp Marxism very well. Of course we should study Marxist books, but this study must be integrated with our country’s actual conditions. We need books, but we must overcome book worship, which is divorced from the actual situation.
How can we overcome book worship? The only way is to investigate the actual situation.
Good ol Marxism
Yes, which is and has been practiced in AES countries. Just because higher-stage Communism, ie a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society hasn’t been reached globally yet doesn’t mean we don’t know if it will work or not.
The less communist theory a lib has read the more of an expert they are. Every fucking time.
Yep, the “worst” is Anarchist-washing Marx in my experience.
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?
It won’t do!
It won’t do!
You must investigate!
You must not talk nonsense!
I don’t disagree but this meme is ass lmao
memes are usually all ass
I’m pretty sure the leftcommunists and anarchists and worker councils requesting for power to be really handed to the soviets which were purged by Lenin and Trotsky weren’t actually landlords. But you never know, people from .ml may think people unwilling to obey the bolsheviks get labeled landlords too.
Weird, I was under the impression that the purges happened after Lenin died. Can ghosts lead a purge?
Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror#Industrial_workers
Do also take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1917_Russian_Constituent_Assembly_election
And this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Revolutionary_Party
Selected quotes:
The SRs were agrarian socialists and supporters of a democratic socialist Russian republic. The ideological heirs of the Narodniks, the SRs won a mass following among the Russian peasantry by endorsing the overthrow of the Tsar and the redistribution of land to the peasants.
In the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly held two weeks after the Bolsheviks took power, the party still proved to be by far the most popular party across the country, gaining 37.6% of the popular vote as opposed to the Bolsheviks’ 24%. However, the Bolsheviks disbanded the Assembly in January 1918 and after that the SR lost political significance. (…) Both wings of the SR party were ultimately suppressed by the Bolsheviks through imprisoning some of its leaders and forcing others to emigrate.
Following Lenin’s instructions, a trial of SRs was held in Moscow in 1922, which led to protests by Eugene V. Debs, Karl Kautsky, and Albert Einstein among others. Most of the defendants were found guilty, but they did not plead guilty like the defendants in the later show trials in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and the 1930s.
Note that these guys won the elections because they were the actually existing socialist movement in Russia and had been for decades. Lenin only led the government instead of them because he had the organization to overthrow the Mensheviks, not because the Bolsheviks were a better representative of socialism.
That’s not true at all. The Mensheviks wanted to cooperate with the bourgeoisie and were therefore a bad representation of socialism. Lenin formed the Bolsheviks because the Mensheviks were being stupid. The country was also fractured after the revolution and many groups of counter-revolutionary groups were trying to overthrow the barely formed government. Meanwhile famines were ravaging the country. Understanding the historical context of Russia in 1917 and the economic struggles the people were dealing with is very important to understanding why things happened the way they did. Looking at the aftermath of a revolution where everyone is vying for power and killing each other doesn’t automatically make the winner of that power grab the bad guys.
How about you read anything of what I’ve sent you and you realize that I’m not talking about the Mensheviks
It was many factions. I’m just saying all of them were trying to have third revolutions while the people starved to death. At some point, revolutions end with a unifying government that isn’t trying to murder each other. Lenin was not the villain you’re painting him to be.
When your purges actually violate literally every Marxist principle and sabotage the revolution, isn’t it kind of fair to accuse Bolsheviks of being fake communists?
Stalin was a counterrevolutionary, die mad about it, we’re Menshevik posting in this bitch.
Yeah continue ww1, so fucking based
When people complaining about your side latch onto factions that they know nothing about it is kinda really funny
If you didn’t willingly ignore the sins of “your side” that’d be valid.
Meanwhile, the only criticism you launch at the Mensheviks is… They wanted to keep fighting the imperial powers?
Don’t get me wrong, it was just a bad decision, but it wasn’t, ya know, genociding fellow socialists.
Meanwhile, the only criticism you launch at the Mensheviks is… They wanted to keep fighting the imperial powers?
Bwahahahaha yeah that’s why Tsarist and Kerensky Russia was aligned with France and England
Bwahahahaha
At some point you gotta just come to the conclusion that you haven’t read enough on this topic and pick up some books instead of speaking garbage.
Also “the only criticism” that’s the fucking big criticism that got them overthrown, which you’d fucking know if you studied history.
The imperial powers that were direct threats to the revolution and they were already fighting, buddy, aka the Ottomans and the Germans. Hey, remind me how that worked out in the end? Did the People’s Government get a seat at Versailles? No? Had to fight a war against fucking Poland first and then get even more people killed by Germany later?
And your argument is “the decision was unpopular,” not that it was wrong.
You also find that they were not overthrown. Their political alliance was couped, like what happens in a “real democracy” when you push an unpopular policy. Even then, they supported the Bolsheviks anyways in the civil war.
Generally speaking, it’s considered rude to murder all of your fellow socialists anyways if that happens.
Hey, remind me how that worked out in the end? Did the People’s Government get a seat at Versailles? No? Had to fight a war against fucking Poland first and then get even more people killed by Germany later?
And your argument is “the decision was unpopular,” not that it was wrong.
Wait are you out here arguing that Russia should have continue fighting ww1? Seriously? And that refusing to fight the war led to nazi Germany and their exterminationist war against the soviet union?
Bwahahahahahaha
Eh, as you mentioned, it was deeply unpopular.
But yes. It would have.
Why would you think changing history would not change history?
I don’t think the Mensheviks were the good guys either. Mensheviks would allow a way out for the old elites to remain elites if they kept on with the times (from aristocracy to bourgeoisie), the Bolsheviks just laid the way out for new elites (party apparatus) by choosing not to empower the working class. The leninist model followed somewhat similar structures everwhere from Hungary to Vietnam, and they always ended the same way: with the party elites opening the way to privatization after one or two generational changes and the heirs of the new system realizing that they’d get more material privilege by establishing capitalism, and without an organized, conscious working class capable of stop them.
I agree. A viable long-term economy needs an organized working class that isn’t sleepwalking through life. Would be cool to make the economic system not inherently hierarchical also.
Let’s see: Communism A system of government where the country’s wealth is concentrated into a small, ruling class of billionaires, who use the media they own to keep the lower classes fighting with each other while they . . . the rich . . . run off with all the farking money.
Oh wait. that’s capitalism. I don’t know how I got those two systems confused.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
Wow they sure got a lot of landlords
People are starving every damn day under Capitalism and there is no famine going on. This isn’t the dunk you think it is.
I’ve been to Capitalist countries, I’ve been to Communist countries.
Guess which system has their people immigrating to the other system on rafts with their children, just to try the other system. Guess which system builds walls to keep people IN, guess which system has beggars asking for milk for their children instead of money.
Your comment isn’t the dunk you think it is when it brushes up against the harsh truth that is reality.
Bruh I’ve seen families begging for food outside of grocery stores in the United States of America. Now what communist countries had beggers asking for milk?
China has over 3 million starving homeless people.
https://havanatimes.org/cuba/child-beggars-a-growing-problem-in-holguin-cuba/ Cuba has a huge child starvation problem.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-66924300 Laos has a huge poverty and homeless problem.
Vietnam has over 23k homeless street children https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/oct/05/saving-hanoi-street-children-vietnam-from-abuse-hunger-and-self-destruction
So to answer your question, every current communist country has a huge poverty and homeless problem.
Every source i can find puts homelessness rates in China at max 1,000,000 and all of them say that they live in shelters, not on the streets.
Cuba had been under embargo from the USA since 1962.
Laos has a massive poverty proborm because of debt which is a capitalist construct.
That statistic on Vietnamese homeless Children is 16 years old, and every source ive found states they have been making great strides since then to fight poverty and homelessness.
Lol, you extreme communists are hilarious.
No it isn’t, but it does highlight the main issue:
Communism would work if it weren’t for people trying to co-opt it for power
Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism is the end goal (since, it being automated, means there should effectively be no way to hijack it), but we ain’t getting there for a long time. Let’s go for socialism first and work from there
Communism would work if it weren’t for people trying to co-opt it for power
As long as there exists a way to gain power over others, someone will do it. That’s just the reality of our nature, unfortunately.
No it isnt.
This goes into a fight over philosophy of human nature. However, since the days of the Roman republic over 2000 years ago where capitalism wasn’t even a concept, people have used political systems to consolidate and gain power over others. It is undoubtabele that there will be people who try to co-opt the system for their personal gain
Depends on Mode of Production. Roman society was still a class driven society.
“No, Wrong”
Thank you Donald, very cool!
That’s just human nature unfortunately. We like to help one another and hate to see another human being suffering because we know that could be us. But capitalism has conditioned and limited us out of our human nature to help one another, because either there is no profit in helping the poor or destitute, or we lack the means to help.
That’s such a wide eyed idealistic view of the world. Let’s all come together and sing kumbaya.
All people throughout history have always tried to just help each other out, right?
“Nuh-uh!”
And here’s the list of 3.3 million landlords killed by communism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin
Those famines happened every 10 years before communism, they happened ONCE during in each location and not again since.
In the meantime capitalism had that death total due to forced starvation every 7 years on average.
Socialism is usually built from the remains of a previous brutal regime. Starvation doesn’t end overnight.
This is the case for both Russia and China. After stabilizing they had an unprecedented improvement in nutrition, longevity and such.
The same can’t be said for the vast majority of capitalist states, who still experience starvation despite being perfectly capable of feeding everyone.
Famines happen regardless of political system.
People fleeing communist countries en mass sure is a mystery. Who could ever know why they built the Berlin Wall or why Cuban families risk their children on rafts to get to a capitalist country
Living conditions for the majority of the population in Cuba are far better than in any capitalist Latin American country. This is despite the brutal blockade on Cuba by the burger empire. Please go make a clown of yourself elsewhere.
im on latin america and despite being bad over here, i’m a bit skeptical on this one. the blockade is currently making sure cuba can’t even get basic medication in sufficient quantities.
i’d say its safer to say they are much better in some aspects, the ones they can control.
The kind of abject poverty you see in Latin American countries simply does not exist in Cuba. Everyone has access to basic necessities, education, and healthcare. Cuba has even higher life expectancy than US.
when it comes to inequality i can agree its probably among the best, if not the best.
but despite efforts to provide it, they don’t always get basic necessities because of the embargo. there is a not insignificant amount of poverty in cuba too.
Of course, the blockade is doing incredible amounts of harm. My point is that even despite that, Cuba manages to do a better job ensuring a minimal standard of living than capitalist countries in Latin America. What this shows is that communism performs better under extreme stress than capitalism does under best conditions.
This might help to explain the siege mentality of socialism.
You are aware that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are coming to America from other capitalist countries right?
This reply perfectly highlights why people who have issues with basic logic support communism.
What issues with basic logic do supporters of Communism have?
still
>many cases of people fleeing from communist countries to capitalist ones
>far less cases of people fleeing from capitalist countries to live under communism
most people don’t want communism, that’s why there are no democratic elections in communist countries and wrongthink is persecuted
Under communism wrongthink is wanting to profit off the labor of others.
no, under communism being gay is wrongthink, apparently
Lmao no it isnt.
didn’t the USSR prosecute gays?
>inb4 “b-but it wasn’t REAL communism, akshually”
the Berlin Wall
That was fascism.
or why Cuban families
That’s kleptocracy.
Theoretically, anyway
Yeah. Nobody’s ever done real communism on a national scale. As in, not just being a dictatorship in charge of everything that funnels money and power to the top while giving communism lip service and the people get screwed.
Do the people saying that communism is bad think capitalism is good?
No
As usual the best answer lies somewhere between the two extremes
Yes, we must have a middle ground between having parasites and not having parasites. Thank you enlightened centrist.
we tried that before though, improving things temporarily, but it will never be permanent until we extinguish the owner class.
The trick is not falling for the lie that social democracy is meeting socialism in the middle.
Social Democracy is just liberalism with enlightened self interest. Is it better than other capitalists models?
Sure. That doesn’t make it the end goal.
you put it in better words than i did.
you knoe there isn’t only 2 choices right? Thay can both have good and bad sides. Maybe try some mix of it fisrt
there’s capitalism and its variants (the current system), and there is anti-capitalism in various flavours. (socdem, ML, anarchism)
you can choose your favorite flavour, but its either moving towards capitalism, or moving away from it.
I would like a third pill.
Feudalism?
Traditionally the “Third Way/Position” is fascism. So, ultimately, kinda, but with race science.
Power dichotomy will always slander any “third option”. They’ll even say something dumb on its face like third way is “x”. There are only two solutions, “with us” or “against us”. Anything outside these choices is literally unthinkable for the power structure. The power structure cannot imagine a future where it does not exist. If you ask the unthinkable alternative, they will default to “oh you must be one of the enemy”. We know that category well. They stand for every thing we don’t stand for.
Describe what you consider the “third way” that isn’t capitalists owning the means of production, workers owning the means, or the state owning the means.
fascism is just extreme capitalism
Ok fine, 4th pill then. The nerve them ! Nazi think they own the idea of rejecting the current order and its ditect opposition.
fascism isn’t a third way. It’s liberalism in crisis
I mean, it’s just literally what they call themselves. Sure, they lie or don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, but that’s kind of their whole deal.
its take it or leave it i guess.
Dialectical Materialism. Right now, they are. You either work towards communism or capitalism moves towards consolidation of capital. Those are your choices.
also there are more than 1 proposed way to achieve communism, even though i tend to favor socialism.
Imma be real, chief, I don’t think DiaMat is going to work on Non-marxists, even if I agree.
Yes. It’s just those are the two mentioned, and I’m slightly communist. So there’s some bias.
We did that already. We could do it again.
thats not a mix though, it was just a bandaid over capitalism, borrowed from socialistic ideas. the capital accumulating class was never extinguished, eventually leading to the same problems today all over again.
hence why we advocate for a systemic change, if you can’t accumulate capital, you can’t buy back the system again like it is rn. this is pretty much the crux of the issue here.
Everyone is bad, nuke earth now
I think capitalism is good, but not perfect. Communism is bad.
Why do you think that way?
I think human nature is inherently greedy and selfish, and capitalism is best equipped to use this in a way that benefits society. Workers are motivated to work harder and learn new skills to find the most rewarding job they can. Businesses are motivated to create products and run as efficiently as possible. Consumers are motivated to get as much value as the can out of their money. Everyone in the equation is acting selfishly and in their own self-interest (which I believe humans are inclined to do anyway) but when applied on a societal level, everyone benefits. However I will concede that this is a balancing act that requires some level of government regulation to maintain.
On the other hand, I think communism only works when everyone acts altruistically. Which is noble, but unrealistic.
Not going to downvote, but I do think you’re lacking quite a bit of insight into the reasons human society exists at all. Cooperation is the reason human society exists at all, so saying we’re inheritly selfish is kinda laughable in that context.
I would encourage you to look up information on dialectical Materialism and the necessity of capitalism as a stage in that dialectical.
Capitalism had a purpose, and it’s past time for us to move on.
@Gigan @SouthEndSunset
Human nature is not inherently greedy and selfish because human beings possess an inherent capacity for empathy, cooperation, and solidarity, which when nurtured within equitable social structures, can create a collective ethos centered on mutual aid, communal ownership, and the pursuit of the common good, transcending the narrow confines of greed and selfishness perpetuated by systems of exploitation and inequality like capitalism.Lol, lmao even. Capitalism rewards greed it doesn’t mitigate it. You’ve got it twisted.
It’s the inability to see the forest for the trees. We were raised in a capitalist economic system, as were all of our past family members. The failings of capitalism appear to be the failings of human nature. In reality, meta analysis of multiple studies on human greed show that people will be inherently more kind to each other than be cruel. Quick search will bring up many articles on these studies. Plus, exchanges in material goods within communities where money hadn’t been invented would show that people didn’t barter, they gave their goods away to their neighbors, and the good deed would be remembered and reciprocated in times of need. You can look up “Gift Economy” in Wikipedia.
I also highly recommend reading or listening to the audiobook for The Dawn of Everything A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wingrow. It is extremely interesting and eye opening.
Explain open source, free software, linux community, lemmy / the fediverse, and many many other things not formed around profit, largely maintained by people in their free time motivated by community over profit.
People aren’t inherently greedy. People are born into a system that rewards greed, and punishes altruism. There have been many different societies with many different political and economic systems, and capitalism is a fairly new one all things considered.
Rational self interest is irrational. If only a few can succeed, chances are you fail. If everyone only looks out for themselves, then everyone fails. Humanity’s biggest strength — what set us apart from many other animals — is our ability to work together and look out for each other.
Capitalism doesn’t work, and is destroying the Earth.
You brought up open source and linux, but how many are maintainers vs. freeloaders?
If communism could be upheld by a select few and enjoyed endlessly by everyone… Utopia.
Freeloaders, like large corporations taking open source and then not giving back, is yet another symptom of a system that rewards extraction and self interest.
FOSS exists despite capitalism. The fact that people are willing to work on something out of their own passion, or sense of community, directly contradicts the fundamental assertion of capitalism.
Humans are not inherently greedy.
Nope.
Human nature is co-operative and altruistic, there’s evidence going back to barely recognisable AS human and it’s literally a key reason why we’re the dominant species.
Capitalism rewarding sociopaths is the outlier
@Taleya Is there any scientific material on this? I’ve had this discussion again and again with my family, from the far side of ultimately altruistic to vastly egoistic… and if there is (hopefully unbiased) scientific material on this, we might settle this argument.
off the top of my head there’s the ancient remains found multiple times of disabled and/or badly injured hominids who were treated (signs of healing) and lived long into adulthood despite requiring extensive care from others, the fact an extended childhood in our species means that our young are vulnerable for a far longer period than any other animal (a necessity since you can’t fit a fully formed adult brain through a human pelvis) and require cooperation with others to raise and continue the species, the fact we have developed specialised skillsets (that are shared between us rather than developing and being held isolate and then lost when the person who holds then dies).
When you have a group that works together go up against one that doesn’t, the former comes out on top. When this competition is for resources and survival, it becomes an evolutionary pressure.
If you do a quick googs you should find scores of whitepapers - but the egoistic argument falls flat on its face out of the gate because we have the word ‘sociopath’ and it’s not considered something to emulate. Neither is ‘egotistical’. We’ve literally got coded into our language that isolation, self-absorption and ‘self serving at the cost to others’ are bad concepts. Being a self absorbed shithead is documented as wrong as far back as our tales can possibly go.
@Taleya Will traue this to start the discussion again, maybe thanks. 🙏
See “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution” by Kropotkin
Even if it was true that human nature was inherently greedy and selfish then it would be an argument for creating systems that discourage such behaviors. What you’re arguing is akin to saying that you should encourage a person struggling with alcoholism to drink more.
Let’s concede the point: humans are inherently greedy and selfish.
But greed and selfishness are bad, right? We want less greed and selfishness in the world.
Given these two assumptions—humans are greedy, greed is bad—shouldn’t we architect society to explicitly disincentivize greed?
Fuck that, I do not concede the point. At least, I don’t concede that humans are /more/ selfish than we are compassionate. Our emotional wiring evolved for hundred-human tribes that required a lot more empathy and cooperation than competition.
You don’t have to go so far as to disincentivize greed. Greed is socially useful in small doses. Adam Smith wasn’t a total idiot. Just stop letting the people who shape society make it so only the greedheads survive.
You’re preaching to the choir. “Concede the point” is a figure of speech which means the speaker is going explore an assumption despite not believing it themselves.
My point is that the whole “capitalism is the best economic system we know about because humans are greedy” argument is sophistry. It doesn’t even make sense in the context of its own flawed premise.
Thank you for answering. The problem with capitalism is it’s got out of control.
I agree. Businesses and owners have too much influence. I want more unions, trust-busting, and consumer protections. Workers seem to be organizing more at least, which is a good start.
Delaware gave corporations the right to vote…
Greed, selfishness and our hyper-individualism is a product of our society, not society as a product of our nature
These sentiments are something encouraged by those in power as it is advantageous for them to have the masses in want
There are underlying instincts for survival and dominance that have manifested today as greed and selfishness, but that is something an equitable society can address given the chance
To suggest otherwise is incredibly degrading humanity
@Gigan @SouthEndSunset
There is nothing bad about the collective ownership of the means of production. I can, however, think of many things that are bad about one person owning the entire means production despite not doing any work, which is what exists under capitalism.
Some do
