I too want a post-scarcity luxury space communism utopia. Unfortunately most iterations of communism feel more like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic than actually plugging the hole in the fuselage.
It’s just human nature in my eyes. Power attracts many people and the less positions of power to fill, the fiercer the competition and the more ruthless the ultimate victor. Communism focusses too much power in too few positions, so ultimately, corrupt people are almost guaranteed to win. Democracy is spreading out that power more. It is still not perfect, corrupt people are still regularly found at the top, but they wield less power individually and they have to do it more in the open.
Any socialist society needs to be democratic first, socialist second. Many more democracies have gotten closer to socialism than socialist societies have gotten close to democracy.
It would, but communism on a decently large scale needs someone to allocate resources. And that jon comes with a lot of power. Which brings us back to marxism.
Communism is a part of Marxism. Communism is the utopia, aka the fantasy world, of Marxist ideology. It’ll never happen because perfection can never be achieved.
We should select leaders by lottery from a pool of those who have passed a civics exam instead of elections. Maybe that would help with the problem of corrupt people seeking positions of power.
The ideal of communism, maybe. Yet every country that called itself communist became authotarian. Why is that? Evil tongues might suggest that the ideal of communism simply fails to prevail when confronted with reality.
No country has claimed to have achieved communism. Many other places have tried but it’s usually crushed by capitalist or sometimes even by states claiming to be socialist. It’s also a really simple and tbh ahistorical explanation to claim that communism didn’t work simply because “it was confronted with reality”.
In theory yes, and you are going to say all communist countries were not “real communism” now ?
The USSR was known for its ruthless and violent political scenes. Leaders condemning their opponents’ families to discredit them for example.
North Korea gives all power to the supreme leader (a communist monarchy lmfao).
Communist China is the closest to what you might you believe in but it’s insanely violent in the backstage. The closer you are to higher seats of power, the more in danger you are.
On top of that any individual at the top can effectively enact their preferred policies over everyone. Millions died simply because the supreme leader ordered so.
The “authority” exists to defend socialist states from the imperialist capitalist states, dummy. Communist states are not going around establishing hundreds of military bases, carpet bombing and genociding countries and creating a media-military propaganda machine for their citizens to fear boogeymen for the horrors their own politicians and corporations are committing against them. This is something Britain, USA and other colonial European states have done and/or are doing to this day since over 5 centuries. In fact, all Western countries that claim to be democracies were full on dictatorships until they looted off hundreds of trillions from Eastern and colonised countries.
@TheAnonymouseJoker@Alpharius >Communist states are not going around establishing hundreds of military bases, carpet bombing and genociding countries and creating a media-military propaganda machine for their citizens to fear boogeymen for the horrors their own politicians and corporations are committing against them.
China does a solid chunk of that - they broker deals to use other country’s ports as naval bases, they have an ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs and Falun Gong, they were responsible for the mass spread of COVID in late 2019/early 2020, and their propaganda machine is strongly tied to their military.
It is disingenuous to pretend communist states do not do things that the largest communist state in the world does.
I too want a post-scarcity luxury space communism utopia. Unfortunately most iterations of communism feel more like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic than actually plugging the hole in the fuselage.
What if we plugged the holes with the corpses of the workers we had to sacrifice to achieve a hole-free hull?
It’s just human nature in my eyes. Power attracts many people and the less positions of power to fill, the fiercer the competition and the more ruthless the ultimate victor. Communism focusses too much power in too few positions, so ultimately, corrupt people are almost guaranteed to win. Democracy is spreading out that power more. It is still not perfect, corrupt people are still regularly found at the top, but they wield less power individually and they have to do it more in the open.
Any socialist society needs to be democratic first, socialist second. Many more democracies have gotten closer to socialism than socialist societies have gotten close to democracy.
Which societies are those? Because all the world’s most democratic countries tend to be the most capitalist.
marxism would be a better term instead of communism as true communism requires no one having economic or political power over someone else
Marxism, and certainly
marxism-leninism(stalinism) are so diluted by the bears of hex and the grads of lemmy.But Marx’ evaluation of the might of the kapital is important, the thing is to find a way to do politics without money or the loudest shouters.
It would, but communism on a decently large scale needs someone to allocate resources. And that jon comes with a lot of power. Which brings us back to marxism.
That just isn’t how scarcity works unfortunately
Communism is a part of Marxism. Communism is the utopia, aka the fantasy world, of Marxist ideology. It’ll never happen because perfection can never be achieved.
We should select leaders by lottery from a pool of those who have passed a civics exam instead of elections. Maybe that would help with the problem of corrupt people seeking positions of power.
I don’t think you want to give nuclear codes to a random person, though.
Could it be worse than giving them to power hungry octogenarians?
Literally the opposite of communism
The ideal of communism, maybe. Yet every country that called itself communist became authotarian. Why is that? Evil tongues might suggest that the ideal of communism simply fails to prevail when confronted with reality.
No country has claimed to have achieved communism. Many other places have tried but it’s usually crushed by capitalist or sometimes even by states claiming to be socialist. It’s also a really simple and tbh ahistorical explanation to claim that communism didn’t work simply because “it was confronted with reality”.
In theory yes, and you are going to say all communist countries were not “real communism” now ? The USSR was known for its ruthless and violent political scenes. Leaders condemning their opponents’ families to discredit them for example. North Korea gives all power to the supreme leader (a communist monarchy lmfao). Communist China is the closest to what you might you believe in but it’s insanely violent in the backstage. The closer you are to higher seats of power, the more in danger you are.
On top of that any individual at the top can effectively enact their preferred policies over everyone. Millions died simply because the supreme leader ordered so.
The “authority” exists to defend socialist states from the imperialist capitalist states, dummy. Communist states are not going around establishing hundreds of military bases, carpet bombing and genociding countries and creating a media-military propaganda machine for their citizens to fear boogeymen for the horrors their own politicians and corporations are committing against them. This is something Britain, USA and other colonial European states have done and/or are doing to this day since over 5 centuries. In fact, all Western countries that claim to be democracies were full on dictatorships until they looted off hundreds of trillions from Eastern and colonised countries.
@TheAnonymouseJoker @Alpharius >Communist states are not going around establishing hundreds of military bases, carpet bombing and genociding countries and creating a media-military propaganda machine for their citizens to fear boogeymen for the horrors their own politicians and corporations are committing against them.
China does a solid chunk of that - they broker deals to use other country’s ports as naval bases, they have an ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs and Falun Gong, they were responsible for the mass spread of COVID in late 2019/early 2020, and their propaganda machine is strongly tied to their military.
It is disingenuous to pretend communist states do not do things that the largest communist state in the world does.
Comrade, the ship will not sink if we abuse the workers enough!
The ship is not sinking, the sea level is simply rising to its rightful place
In an orderly manner