What is it with these commie types that they believe communism will leave everyone to become hippies who can do whatever they want and all required resources just magically arrive when they need.
It really is watching children believe in Santa Claus
If we didn’t all work to produce excess wealth for the super wealthy, we’d have 20 hour workweeks. People can do a lot with that extra time.
And then surely people will start doing logistics for your fantasy farm in their free time right?
I mean, if they want to, sure. Point is society wouldn’t be reliant on that since everything necessary for society to function would be taken care of during the said 20 hour workweek. I don’t care if somebody wants to set up a tomato farm or a donkey ranch or whatever on the side, as long as they don’t exploit or mistreat anyone.
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Why would you need to hire someone? If it’s a farm meant to provide food for people then it’s commonly owned and the people who work there are state employees, the purpose of the farm being to make food, not profits.
If it’s something you do because you want to and out of passion, then why would you hire anyone? Sure, you might want some help, but then you just get people who are passionate about it as well, and you share the produce. Like a community garden.
What you describe is controlled capitalism. People can decide themselves what they want to do and try to get things done in the most efficient way directly without government interference.
The problem current capitalism faces is that there is too little control, too much allowance for monopolies, that sort of shit. Tax the crap out of the rich, limit what you can do “if you create polluting materials, you have to recycle them yourself”, “you cant corner more than 10% of a market”, etc, but allow people to freely do what they want to do. That would be capitalism, actually.
everything necessary for society to function would be taken care of during the said 20 hour workweek
Yeah that is not how society works, that is not how anything works at all. You don’t work 40 hours a week just to make somebody rich even richer. If they could pay you only for 20 hours, they would. You work 40 hours because you CAN have a job which is because they need somebody to do that work. If they don’t need you, they won’t pay you for nothing dummie. If you work on something not required, congrats, you have a dumb boss that wastes resources and you lucked out. Most people just have normal jobs that NEED to be done. Just saying “lets do communism and we only work 20 hours a week” is beyond naive. Reality is “Lets do communism and half of us will starve to death!”
I would suggest you look into socialism more because it seems to me you are mistaken in some aspects.
Capitalism is the economic system in which individuals can own the means of production themselves, so basically an entrepreneur owns a company and everyone working there are employees with no or very little ownership over the business.
Socialism is the economic system where the workers themselves own those same means of production. What you think of as socialism is most likely the Marxist-Leninist version implemented in the USSR.
Their thought process went like this: the people all own every business, but if everyone was the boss, nothing would get done. So they considered that since people, at least on paper, vote for their leader and the state supposedly represents the people, then if the state owned all businesses it would basically be the same as if everyone owned those businesses. The issue here is that the politicians and bureaucrats who make decisions regarding those businesses, being human themselves, will tend to skew them towards their own interests. Personally, I still think it is better this way than having billionaire leeches that drain the wealth from multiple countries, but that’s besides the point.
This isn’t the only socialist system imaginable, though. It could be as simple as the workers that are employed somewhere get a share of the company for as long as they work there instead of wages. That way, you get paid a portion of the profit, and as a shareholder, can vote on decisions about the business. It’s important though that only people who work there get those shares, no outside investors or sketchy things like that to take away the power from the people. There’s no business owner in this since everyone basically owns their workplace and bosses are democratically elected. This is market socialism, you’d still have market forces and all that entails, and I think it would be the easiest change to make if we wanted to give up on capitalism.
Then there’s syndicalism, in which unions and syndicates own their sector or industry and manage them themselves. Every worker joins the union when they get hired, and they vote for stuff like leadership, rule changes, charters and the like. These syndicates then coordinate with eachother to ensure everything is working as intended and produced at the rates they are needed at.
As for the 20 hour workweek… it’s very reasonable if you look into it. Each one of us not only has to work hard enough to earn for ourselves, we also have to earn for those who are unfortunate and cannot work through taxes, which is a good thing, but we also have to work hard enough to earn for the leeches doing nothing, like the billionaires on top. Every employee has to get paid less than ehat they’re worth, since if the employer would give them every bit of money they produce, they wouldn’t be profitable. And that’s not even getting into people working jobs that don’t help society at all, such as landlords, insurance agents, marketing people, etc. If everyone worked in fields necessary for society to function, we would all work 20 hours a week.
They I have good or bad news for you, depending on your stance. We don’t. You may, depending on the company which you work for, but generally speaking most people don’t.
Yes, yes, YES. Capitalism is evil, pitchfork and torches! Reality check: Capitalism is also the very big reason why you have a computer on your desk or in your hands in the shape of a phone to write about the evils of capitalism. Capitalism is at its core about the freedoms to share and acquire resources in the most efficient way possible. Does it have big BIG problems with runaway effects where a single person can suddenly pheewwww shoot into the sky and start resource hogging? Absolutely. Should that be legally limited and curbed? Absolutely! Is that currently done well? Absofuckinglutely not!
But none of that means that “communism will save us”. Dear god, please please don’t be THAT naive, don’t believe in santa claus.
If you want to spend your free time in a commune to help hippies or whatever it is that you want to do, I applaud you. Seriously, well done. But you WILL have to work for a home. You WILL have to work for food, and that computer you have in your hand to curse the evils of capitalism. And you have to work so that when we all do that, that resources get moved over the world so that the farmer gets his equipment that he needs to farm the grains that he sends to a supermarket that gets bought by a baker which you then buy in the shape of a bread loaf… We all work together.
Again, is there a shit tonne of abuse going on? Of course. Nobody denies that. Is that abuse being curbed? Nope. Should we hang the ultra rich that have been abusing this system? Nah, lets not hang people. I’m not for violence. But should we tax them 100% of their income until their posessions are within a reasonable range? Absolutely.
But communism is not the answer, please learn some history about the “successes” (meaning ALL failures, no exceptions) of comnunism. Read about the famines, the suppression, the torture, the corruption and the crap that comes with that to make it work. I like my freedom. I don’t need piles of cash and people generally should not be allowed to have piles. You do that with laws and taxing and enforcing. Lets focus on that instead.
lmao, go back to your fucking fox news
Look, capitalism clearly does not work. Everything Marx and Lenin ever wrote about capitalism has come true. It is destroying our world more and more every day. Whatever you might say about communism, we do not know for a fact that it will ruin the lives of everybody, involved or not. No matter how bad you might claim communism is, it isn’t the thing that’s currently destroying our societies. So it is by definition better than capitalism.
do whatever they want and all required resources just magically arrive when they need.
“Whatever they want” is creating and distributing those resources, but I suppose labour is magic to you.
Yeah, and distributing resources efficiently is one of the core strengths of capitalism, its the reason why capitalism is so successful.
No, I’m not saying capitalism is perfect nor that it doesn’t cause suffering, nor that it does not need a shitload more limits than it has right now, but communism is NOT known for its efficiency, nor for letting people just do whatever the hell they want to do. Communism forces people to do what the boss says, if you don’t like it you can go to a gulag. If you’re talking about “Communism gives people the freedom to find the most efficient ways of distributing resources” then you’re kind of confusing that with Capitalism.
If capitalism is so efficient at distributing resources, why are so many people starving?
Also, yet another “communism is when capitalism”. Communism wouldn’t have an upper class of “bosses”.
Also, pointing to socialist states as proof communism has leadership is laughable. That’s not communism. It’s socialism. At least do some research.
why are so many people starving?
There are loads of reasons for people starving, but in democratic capitalist countries, people typically don’t starve. Don’t agree? Name one. There is poverty in the US for sure and capitalism in the US is an absolute shitshow, nobody would deny that. But people in the US rarely starve to death.
Wanna talk starvation? Lets talk starvation! Warning: All following links are wikipedia but have stomach churning content. Here be dragons, but please do read because you need to learn. Also note: All the following is from within the last century.
1: Russian famine: about five million deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921–1922 (famine caused directly by communism)
Quote from that page: The famine resulted from the combined effects of economic disturbance from the Russian Revolution, the Russian Civil War, and the government policy of war communism (especially prodrazvyorstka). It was exacerbated by rail systems that could not distribute food efficiently.
Fun quote: canibalism
Communism is awesome!
2: North Korean famine: estimated between 600,000 and 1 million deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine (Famine caused directly by communist government policies)
Quote: Economic mismanagement and the loss of Soviet support caused food production and imports to decline rapidly. A series of floods and droughts exacerbated the crisis. The North Korean government and its centrally planned system proved too inflexible to effectively curtail the disaster.
Fun quote: uses of words such as ‘famine’ and ‘hunger’ were banned because they implied government failure
Communism is awesome!
3: Chinese famine: 15 to 55 million deaths (yay!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine (Caused directly by communist government policies)
Quote: The major contributing factors in the famine were the policies of the Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1962) and people’s communes, launched by Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong, such as inefficient distribution of food within the nation’s planned economy; requiring the use of poor agricultural techniques; the Four Pests campaign that reduced sparrow populations (which disrupted the ecosystem); over-reporting of grain production; and ordering millions of farmers to switch to iron and steel production.
Fun quote: Cannibalism, AGAIN
Communism is awesome!
Want to know more?
Communism wouldn’t have an upper class of “bosses”.
… I don’t even know where to begin with this one. What are you? 5?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekism a nice side effect of communism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chekist < I F*$#king double dare you to watch that movie about the non existing upper class of bosses
In conclusion?
Communism sucks and causes nothing but suffering. There is not even a fucking silver lining about it and people need to stop hippy-dippying communism. Its fucking evil.
Yes, capitalism as it currently runs is fucked up with problems. But at its core its the driver of success that got you your mobile phone in your hands. Use that mobile phone to fix those problems instead of dreaming of perfect mass murdering societies.
I don’t even know where to begin. That entire comment is full of lies i have debunked before. This is exhausting.
9 million per year. The number that starve due to capitalism.
I have already addressed the Soviet famine. The root cause was a crop blight and Stalin’s lax response ultimately worsened it.
As for china and north korea - any reason to believe the communism they don’t live in is the cause of that? Your own quote claims north korea mainly suffered because the USSR failed to supoort them.
Right? Somebody never read Animal Farm.
Sure, the current system is fucked, but it’s tied and proven that Marxism doesn’t work. We need a middle ground.
I’m sorry do you think that the point of animal farm is that the animals shouldn’t have revolted in the first place?
Ah yes, because everything you do is to meet societal needs and not to make more money for the 1%. That’s why 34% of wealth in Canada goes to the top 1%.
Then tax the crap out of them. Communism is NOT the answer, its the cause for an order of magnitude more suffering than capitalism will ever be able to cause. These sesame street types that really believe that communism will give them a vegetable garden to work in just should stop using the internet. You are using a frikkin mobile phone, a device that is the frikking epitome of capitalism and science to bitch about the evils of capitalism (and loads of people do the same with science too).
Turn in your mobile phone and go live on a hippie farm (or in a cave) and die of horrible preventable diseases, if that is what you wish, but you don’t get to have it both ways.
Yes, capitalism has a shit tonne of problems that MUST be solved, totally agree. The wealthy should be taxed up to a 100% of income once their income and net worth surpasses a certain level. Just cap it. We should have free education, free healthcare, basic rights on homes and food… A socialist system BUILT ON A CAPITALIST SYSTEM. That is because capitalism, at its core, is allowing people the freedom to trade in the most efficient way possible by themselves. THAT IS STRENGTH and that is the very reason why the west currently rules just about everything. Yes, having it run loose with no restrictions (as we currently try to do for some fucked up reason) is bad, VERY bad. Still not communism bad, though. I 100x rather have our current fucked up capitalist system over living in the fun communistic countries of the USSR (hello famines!), China (heeelllooooo famines with millions of victims!) or Korea (helloo!!!) or… Well, you get the gist. I’m not even talking about the government policing that comes with it.
Captialism has problems, absolute. FIX THEM. Don’t go jackoff over systems that are known for misery, famines, death camps, and just general failure.
Tax them how? With the government they own?
I mean technically, you could have a farm if you worked the entire farm by yourself (personal vs private property).
And technically that means you’re producing on that farm which makes it private property.
You’re getting a lot of flak (rightly), but I figured I’d actually give you a right definition so this can be a growing opportunity: If you own a resource and you use that resource to produce profit, that resource is private property. If you’re not making profit, it’s only personal property. Farm for your family? Personal property. Farm where you give the output to your community? Personal property. Farm where you sell the yields? Private property.
Ok, so exploitable land (a means of production) can be owned for the exclusive enjoyment of an individual in a socialist economy. Got it, thanks.
Yes, exploitable land can be owned by an individual in a socialist economy. If you’re growing food for your family, then that’s just one family the state doesn’t have to feed. If you’re growing food for your community, then that’s several mouths the state doesn’t have to feed. If you’re hoarding or selling food (or in one very famous historical case, burning it out of spite), then you are monopolizing a resource that could be feeding people, and the state will intervene, whether by buying your land back from you, taking it from you, liquidating you as a class, or some other solution to be determined by the state in question - there is no one size fits all blueprint to socialism.
“Or some other other solution to be determined by the state in question”
Gulags, generally speaking
Yes, people who burn food during a famine should be rehabilitated, and prisons were the method (that doesn’t work) that people thought was effective to that end at the time.
Yes, people who burn food during a famine should be rehabilitated
And what of people who steal food during a famine, like the bolsheviks?
Want to add on that there is another distinction which I think is slightly more accurate. Personal property only denies use to others through the details of use by the owner, private property prevents others from using resources that the person using the property isn’t directly using through threats of violence.
Socialism vs communism be like
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Guys, it’s a joke.
No shit.
For those interested, Dessalines’ “what would be X like under communism” is a helpful aggregated of discussions regarding this: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#what-would-x-be-like-under-communism
Hey! Literal communist propaganda. Honestly, the better thing to do instead of this is just ask someone over 50 who lives or lived in Eastern Europe.
“Did people in the USSR hate their governments?” - https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#did-the-citizens-of-the-soviet-union-dislike-their-government
“Did the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries have functioning democracies?” - https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#did-the-soviet-union-and-the-warsaw-pact-nations-have-functioning-democracies
It’s also interesting how people who’s 50, who would have been around 18 when the USSR collapsed or their country seceeded and would have spent their entire adulthood and potentially a part of their teenhood bearing the shockwaves rocking every part of their country under the newly established capitalism (their supposed liberation and salvation and who their new governments claimed would fix literally everything and make them not miserable anymore) that nearly destroyed plenty of Eastern European countries, are overwhelmingly against the USSR, but the trend goes to far more favorable of the USSR the older you get. I’m sure it’s just nostalgia though, the oldest people are just behind on the times and their opinions don’t count.
Edit: I fixed a miscalculation I made regarding how old people were when the USSR collapsed. My bad.
If capitalism destroyed Eastern Europe, it’s news to Eastern Europe
Do you think your silly comments serve a purpose besides to make you appear foolish?
Cope and seethe, tankie fascist
Tankie fascist? Are we just fully using words we don’t what they mean now?
I just like short circuiting auth scumbags who worship dictators. Tankies and fascists are two sides of the same coin, after all.
0 days since I’ve had to trot out this article from a mainstream Jewish holocaust scholar on why equating communists and fascists is holocaust trivialization.
“Everything I don’t like is holocaust denial: a dishonest child’s guide to political slander”
Stalin also committed genocide, and he killed even more of his own people than Hitler did. He was also Hitler’s ally until he was betrayed by that ally. Tankies and fascists are two rotten peas in the same pod.
It’s unsurprising that many Russians look back fondly to the time when they had imperial domination over more than a dozen foreign countries, looting them for resources and using them as military puppets.
You said:
ask someone over 50 who lives or lived in Eastern Europe.
Are you backing down on that statement now or are you saying that Russia isn’t in Eastern Europe?
Russia is sometimes included in that, I wasn’t. My apologies for being unclear. Russia is the former imperial center of the Soviet Empire, so they benefited dramatically from the labor and resources of their colonies. They also never adopted the kind of modern democratic capitalism which was a competing ideology to communism during the Cold War, instead adopting a form of fascism, so I thought it was obvious to anyone that when making the comparison between capitalism and communism in Eastern Europe, a good faith participant in a discussion would look at Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, etc.
Silly of me the think that someone who lived in Russia during the USSR would know what it’s like to live under communism
When you’re contrasting communism and capitalism, it’s strange to do it by asking someone in a fascist kleptocracy whether they miss being at the heart of a massive empire
Russia is about the only former communist nation which is worse off now, excepting perhaps Ukraine - blame Russia for that, too - and it’s because they’re Russia, not because they’re ex communists.
End goal; you will own nothing, and you’ll be happy. Also work harder and don’t advance.
Please Google the difference between private, public and (crucially) personal property.
Isn’t that kind of where the current system is inching towards anyways? Rent, subscriptions, bullshit jobs and all that.
Communism is when you own nothing lol
No it isn’t. Communism eliminates private property. E.G. Land ownership. (You lease land from the state)
It does not get rid of personal property. You’re still allowed to own things. A phone, a car, books, anything that is movable; pretty much anything except land and maybe buildings.
I’m not even a fan of communism but this is just an ignorant misconception.
Whoosh
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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.
Communism focusses too much power in too few positions,
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
Communism focusses too much power in too few positions
Literally the opposite of communism
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.
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”.
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
I’ve never understood how this is supposed to be some big own to communism. You’d still refer to it as “my farm,” even as I refer to the community where I live as “my city” and the jobs I’ve worked to benefit some capitalist bozo as “my job.” This is even worse than Ben Shapiro popping out of a well. In many ways, I think I’d feel more ownership as part of a community vs. the facade of “private property.”
This particular thing was actually tried by the Soviets. Farms were considered excesses of kulaks. Kolhos (collective “farm”) was the replacement.
And yes, it was possible to say “my kolhoz” like people say “my city”, good point. Even if “our kolhoz” was a lot more accepted, since it emphasizes how collective it is.
It is also possible to feel personal affinity to collectively owned space.The difference between usually implied individual “my farm” and collective “my farm” is of course in the governance.
Collective ownership may end up being governed by ineffective unaccountable and irresponsible “people representatives”. E.g. deciding that genetics is a capitalist plot, and planting corn everywhere is the solution to all problems (both cases actually happened on a massive scale).
The result is not very different from what ineffective unaccountable and irresponsible large capitalist landowners do.
Both systems disenfranchise the disadvantaged ones, since decisions can practically never be completely unanimous.
So it’s good if you agree with the party line, but if not - violent suppression comes, no teaching on the farm.
That’s where the feeling of “my farm” breaks down. On a private farm you have a lot more options before you are lost.I get the challenges with governance in capitalism-turining-feodalism which we have now in many cases.
But I do not get it why people imagine that full collective ownership is a good and sustainable alternative.None of this is a critique of ideologies like syndicalism and anarcho-communism, so it’s still a pretty ignorant meme that conflates Soviet communism with all forms of communism.
None of this disproves what people like Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman were writing about, whose worldviews do not disenfranchise such groups.
I also heartily disagree with your take about private farms. The options you think you have with “private property” are a scam.
am i going mad, or are the letters slightly wobbly in this screenshot?
It may be one of those fonts that’s supposed to help with dyslexia or whatever. Because unless it’s serving some functional purpose I can’t imagine why you’d want your phone looking like you’re halfway through your sixth drink of the night.
They are, easily visible in the first of the 3 posts.
How dare you curse me with this knowledge.
It’s a weird font. Anything with a curved bottom dips below the level of flat bottoms.
When you own the means of production it’s literally yours. I don’t understand the issue.
But you can’t own anything in socialism and communism. YOU are owned instead.
Under communism, the state owns the resources. People are not the state.
You’re mistaken, the state is a collection of proletariat meaning you are a part of the state. You may not be the whole state but it is your land as it is everyone elses
Atleast as far as I understand it
If everyone owns something no one does
Thank you for the correction sharkfucker420
Always happy to help 👍
Thank you sharkfucker420
I’ve heard same said about liberal democracy too. “State is made up of us voting citizens” etc etc. Feels as hollow
The difference is that liberal democracy actually respects individuality
But where can we install another electoral college to guarantee govt control over masses wants
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Are these people even Leftist? Christ.
That’s false. There’s no state in communism. See Karl Marc or any Communist writer on this.
This is a pleasant fiction.
You’ve gotta try reading beyond 6th grade level fiction before judging books on socio-economics.
Harry Potter would be even more powerful as an insult. (I never read it for some reason, and now never will)
there is legal ownership sure but they are talking about where you talk about a thing as yours because you are part of it! My team, my city, my co-op, my dealer, my dawgs, my man!
They don’t need to legally belong to you to be ‘yours’ in this usage.
You would be sent to the Gulags in the CCCP for talking like that
my goodness!
Myour mistake
The issue is probably “HahA ComMUnIsM BaD!1!”
Big difference between communism and socialism.
That’s correct, but I’m not sure what you understand those terms to mean, because neither really supports taking all ownership away from people. I’m just gonna leave this blorb here, because I feel like this is where it fits best.
Communism in the style of Marx and Engels means that the workers own the means of production. They would have been completely in favor of a person owning their own farm (or jointly owning it if multiple people worked it). They didn’t really envision much of a state to interfere, much less own property.
That the Soviet Union (and later the PRC, fuck them btw) claimed to be building the worker’s paradise under communism was mostly propaganda after Lenin died. There hasn’t been any state that has implemented actual communism as established by theory.
Socialism (as I understand it, but I’m not well-read on it) means the state has social support networks, but largely works under capitalist rules, with bans of exploitative practices. There are some countries trying to implement a light version of this across Europe, to varying success (mostly failing where capitalism is left unchecked).
The issue is that the US started propagandizing like mad during the cold war, and “communism” was just catchier to say than “supportive of a country that is really just a state-owned monopoly”. Soon everything that was critical of capitalism also became “communism”, which eventually turned into a label for everything McCarthy labelled “un-american”. This is also the time they started equating the terms communism and socialism. A significant portion of the US population hasn’t moved past that yet, because it fits well into the propaganda of the US being the best country in the world, the American Dream, all that bs. The boogeyman of “the state will take away the stuff you own” turned out pretty effective in a very materialistic society. Although I’m very glad to see more and more USAians get properly educated on the matter and standing up for their rights rather than letting themselves be exploited.
Your definition of socialism is more akin to a definition of social democracy, which is… maybe a form of socialism, depending on who you ask – it is historically contentious and generally accepted that social democrats aren’t socialists.
Socialism can have all of the things that you described, but it is decidedly anti-capitalist. It reorients how workers relate to the means of production. Under capitalism, the means of production are owned by the bourgeois class, while under socialism, they are collectively owned by the workers.
Socialism means the state has social support networks, but largely works under capitalist rules
What you’re describing is “social democracy” — capitalism with safety nets, where production is still controlled by owners rather than workers. “Socialism” explicitly implies worker control of production. “Nordic socialism” could more accurately be called “Nordic social democracy.”
“Communism” refers to a classless, stateless society where everyone has what they need, no one is exploited or coerced, and there are no wars. It’s an aspirational vision for the future, not something you can do right after a revolution when capitalism still rules the world.
*we
*ours
Dude walked right into that one, didn’t they?
we*
Just as communism has been proven to fail in the past so is capitalism. It has been warped to something terrible for the common worker. I think this communism thing is just a way for people to vent their frustrations with the current system. Honestly as long as their is a corruptible person in charge no system will work as intended. And unfortunately everyone is corruptible.
Haha, funny way to say “working in the lead mines”, comrade.
Comrade, we all know lead poisoning and the need for safety gear are capitalist propaganda! Now, get back in the mines! Production must increase 50% this year, and your state-appointed union representative says it can!
Tinfoil is absolutely enough protection against radiation, now go out there and stabilize the reactor!
It’s not even that much radiation, you’re just malingering
The Glorious Leader has declared that we have too much lead. You’re now reassigned to be in front of the firing squad.
Capital successfully fought to put lead into American’s blood and lungs for a century after it was known to be poison. To this day they’re still fighting to keep it there.
You’re right, America did bad thing, clearly this completely overrides the wrongs of other countries
The first commenter is talking a hypothetical scenario of socialism being bad, so the second commenter (the one you responded to) responded with actual example of that same hypothetical scenario happening, but except by a capitalist power (the US). I don’t think your response makes sense at all here.
No, his response is calling out the whataboutism fallacy. The US doing something bad does not in any way, shape, or form make socialism any less shitty. It’s poking fun at the delusional people who still think it’s a good ideology despite the overwhelming evidence.
Claiming Whataboutism is a logical fallacy first used by English colonizers, dont use it
Calling something “Whataboutism” infers a belief in American exceptionalism. You should question that belief.
He was joking, save your whataboutism for “serious” arguments
They are not joking. You can see them continuing here: https://lemm.ee/comment/3563759
And this isn’t whataboutism (not that it matters). The first commenter ridiculed socialism by using a hypothetical scenario. The second commenter showed with evidence this hypothetical scenario is actually real under capitalism.
When a liberal loses an argument they yell “whataboutism” it’s their little white flag
Marxism is so easy to destroy, but the reality is that modern day Marxism literally cannot exist without fallacies and propaganda. The ideology is so shallow that it can’t stand on its own merits.
Are you rich? Because if not, you are not only awful but an idiot as well.
You know, it took until 2003 for Russia to remove leaded gasoline from stations. The Soviets never did it LMFAO
but nice try
And it took the US until 1996 (after fall of USSR)? Not to mention that it was capitalism (General Motors) that spread the hoax about leaded gasoline being safe, under the guise of scientific research in 1921.
This is not the gotcha you think it is,
If it was all an evil capitalist conspiracy, why did the communists go along with it? Hmm?
The gold standard are urainum mines. Lead are for those with good behavior.
Tbh I’d rather work in a uranium mine, it’s less toxic than lead in the quantities you’d be exposed to
If you are not dead by end of month from radiation, you will be executed for failing to mine the required quantity of uranium.
Remind me, what did they do to indigenous people when they were trying to get uranium for the Manhattan project?
This nonsense is just western projection.
No. You’ll probably be assigned a job that’s required to be done for the good of society.
It blows my mind the people who think, “after the revolution I’m going to be a dog walker and bake dog treats!” When in reality they will probably die in a labor camp.
Reminds me of that one twitter thread “what will your job be in the commune” and everyone said the most useless shit like “I have bad anxiety and can’t work but I can bake everyone cookies 😊” and the one guy who chimed in “I have a background as a Carpenter so probably just keep my construction job” got roasted for being a conservative and capitalist in the replies. I’ll try to find it.
Edit: sorry for the redtit link but here’s a good screencap
https://www.reddit.com/r/twittermoment/comments/pi8asy/the_legendary_whats_your_job_on_the_leftist/
Oh, that’s brilliant.
Jesus that was a tough read. Absolutely no real work going to be done in these communes lmao
“Making clothes from scraps” 💀💀 even these people know they’re fucked
This made lol
Behind every modern day Marxist is a childish adult with mentally deficiencies
It’s always cartoon pfp users the most delusional.
