This meme feels like projection.
Online discussions about capitalism:
People who have to pay rent
30 year old comfortable software developer:
“I know more than you”
… apart from that it’s also most unlikely it’s 14 year old girls who are the people writing this in online discussions.
2 things:
-
The victors write history
-
After Lenin the USSR was not really communist anymore but more really a totalitarian state that didn’t believe in the values of communism. Just like China.
Everything would probably have been better if Lenin didn’t die so fast and then Trotsky would have ruled.
Trotsky would have ruled.
Mask off trot lmao
To be clear, the alternative here is Stalin. There are like only five people who would be worse choices
-
Personally I find it going this way:
- some person, who at least knows what socialism is, even if they’re not the most well-read in the subject,
- some way better read one, but thinks state control of enterprises suffice and trusts the state way too much as long as it has hammers and sickles,
- some capitalism fan, who thinks socialism is evil, and that constructon company CEOs are workers, but underpaid office workers are “elites”.
Rarely you get a very well read one, who understands their stuff, or the old Soviet bloc ex-communist, who switched because the local far-right party started to be very concerned about “work morals”, and also think the construction company CEO is a worker and “against the elite”.
The problem is the way that most of those communism perfect people inform themselves. They usually know a lot of stuff about a certain topic where they can argue anyone to deth who doesn’t know as much about a topic. And because they know that much more than the other person they can use wrong statements that sound right in the mass of correct information. Then you get people who know everything about Kuba and are 100% sure it’s a democracy.
14 year old white girl
Bravo they managed to also cram ageism and misogyny in the old “champagne socialism” meme. All in the single sentence.
Don’t forget racism
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
ANTI
WHITE
RACSIM!!!
Woosh
OMG lol ha ha i’m so sorry. Other people in this thread genuinely saying shit like that.
This meme doesn’t work, because in the scene the image comes from, we have every reason to believe Ron Swanson actually does know more than the employee at the hardware store.
TBF I wouldn’t be surprised if survivors of a collapsed dictatorship didn’t know much about the definition, theories, or philosophies of Communism. Stalin isn’t “the working people” and therefor his seizure of the means of production was not communism.
I wonder why communist leaders are some of the most popular leaders in their former socialist republics 🧐🧐
Because they are not. Stalin for example was a mass murderer just like Hitler. So why would anybody like him?
Here is a mainstream Jewish holocaust survivor saying equating the communists and fascists is holocaust trivialization.
The difference is that Hitler was after one specific group of people and wanted to eradicate them. Nobody says that Stalin was as bad as Hitler, bit his death count was just as high. He killed millions of political enemies or people in the regions he conquered.
The difference is that Hitler was after one specific group of people and wanted to eradicate them.
Either you have no idea what you’re talking about, or you’re just a straight up nazi apologist.
Which one are you?
Can you point us to the exact page of the Black Book you get your numbers from? I want to read along at home
They literally say that the intentional killing was around 1 million. Wikipedia is a notably right wing anticommunist source, and they say a million intentional deaths.
So you were lying?
Wild that using a source like this with a straight face doesn’t cause you to pause and wonder if maybe there’s anything to question about the US academy and their hegemonic representation of history.
Hey, whoever told you those numbers is lying to you. The nazis killed 11 million people in the holocaust and 26-27 million soviet citizens. High estimates for people killed by the USSR outside of defeating nazism, failures, and sabotage is in the 100,000s, which is noticeably lower than capitalist oligarchies like the US and Britain. Also killing people based on them wanting to bring back old caste systems through violence is morally distinct from racism based mass killings.
The difference is that Hitler was after one specific group of people and wanted to eradicate them.
Also this isnt true, Jewish people, Roma, nuerodivergent people, disabled people, trade unionists socialists, communists, gay people, trans people, the list goes on.
Also you’re still equating the two after being told doing so is holocaust denial. You’re saying “well they killed equivalent amounts of people!”
How is saying Stalin wasn’t a great guy either denying the holocaust?
Also this isnt true, Jewish people, Roma, nuerodivergent people, disabled people, trade unionists socialists, communists, gay people, trans people, the list goes on.
Yes ofc, but a big percentage of the deportated people were Jewish. They killed two thirds of the European Jewish population.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
High estimates for people killed by the USSR outside of defeating nazism, failures, and sabotage is in the 100,000s
No: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin
deleted by creator
How is saying Stalin wasn’t a great guy either denying the holocaust?
You aren’t saying that though, you are saying that they killed an equivalent amount of people. You’re morally equating them. Also even the CIA didn’t consider stalin a dictator in their since declassified internal documents, treating him as one is another way you were taught to equate the USSR with nazi Germany.
Yes ofc, but a big percentage of the deportated people were Jewish. They killed two thirds of the European Jewish population.
I know, that isn’t the only group they targeted though. I was simply correcting an inaccuracy in what you said.
No:
Sorry, I thought it was high hundreds of thousands but it was actually a million. My mistake. Still, that is in no way similar to killing upwards of 35 million people in the name of bigotry.
some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin’s regime were 20 million or higher. (Same link as before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin)
It’s more that a million.
I don’t know why you made this discussion about if he was as bad as Hitler. I never said so. I’m just saying that those numbers are not that far apart from each other. Thus making Stalin a murderer of millions. This discussion originated in a guy basicly saying that Stalin was indeed a great leader and personality. Which he is not.
And he willingly allied with Hitler. So moral he was OK with the crimes Hitler committed. At the same Time he deported a lot of people himself. Not as many and not as organized as Hitler, but still in the millions.
Stalin was a bad guy and Hitler was way worse. Happy? Just because that other guy was worse they can still play in the same category. “People who killed millions and deported a lot of people”
On Lemmy it is more like 40 something year old neckbeards that haven’t seen the light of day in 2 decades. They claim to struggle to make friends at parties but could easily run a country.
OP really be asking why the meme is being anti-white racist 💀
What people who lived in the Soviet union and other socialist states have to say:
-
-
-
-
-
-
Adult mortality increased enormously in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union when the Soviet system collapsed 30 years ago. https://archive.ph/9Z12u
-
Former Soviet Countries See More Harm From Breakup https://news.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx
This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
deleted by creator
Hard agree. Our government will wreck the economy just to die on two hills: social conservatism (EU funding says hi) and russian reliance. Russian gas, russian atom (x2) because they want to build Paks II. They also gerrymandered the everliving fuck out of electoral districts so they can win their precious supermajority. I hope they fail on at least one of the aforementioned hills so they can drop the ball like the now-opposition did in 2006. As for communism, well, the 72% seems very wrong. Sure we had dictatorship-lite, but 1956 happened beforehand, to which we lost many of our schools for example. Plenty of (grand+)parents’ tales paint communism like it was the worst thing that could possibly have happened. Also, if 72% of people preferred communism, then surely the dem. socialist party would Poll higher than 3%.
Reminder that fidesz (the govt party) was originally anti-communist. (I am Hungarian if it wasn’t obvious).
deleted by creator
The trajectory Hungary took after transition to capitalism mirrors what happened in most post USSR states. This just further supports the point that the communist system was better.
deleted by creator
What happened in countries like Hungary and Poland is a direct result of the transition to capitalism however. What’s more this transition happened under the best possible conditions. The transition happened largely democratically without any violent revolutions, and these countries got support from the west to soften economic impact of the transition. Yet, despite all that we see that majority of post Soviet countries end up going in a similar direction under capitalism. Again, Hungary isn’t an outlier here.
deleted by creator
Thing is that bad management, corruption, and so on, have happened in every human society that has ever existed. A political system isn’t magically going to change that. What a political system can do however is create different selection pressures for behavior. Capitalist system selects for different kinds of behaviors than a communist one. As we see with the case of transition from communism to capitalism in eastern Europe, the selection pressures of capitalism result in far worse things happening than under communism.
deleted by creator
-
It’s casual racism. If you can switch the color to a different one and it sounds racist then it’s was before also.
Edit: looks like I triggered some racists, how shocking.
I’ve never met anyone who hates communism more than the colleagues of mine who grew up under communism. Their neighbours disappeared for saying the wrong things. They were hungry and cold as children every day. Sometimes they didn’t have any shoes. They weren’t allowed to leave their country for holidays. They couldn’t afford it, even if they were allowed. They couldn’t study what they wanted. Their entire educational system was political propaganda. Freedom of religion didn’t exist.
It always amazes me how the most vocal proponents of communism come from the most sheltered, most privileged people alive who would retch from learning about the atrocities committed in the name of communism. If they only spent a few minutes on Google.
None of that is communism though, that’s authoritarianism. Like this isn’t even a “not real communism” thing, it’s just objective facts. Communism is an economic system, NOT a government system.
But you know what, I AM gonna say not real communism anyways, because they weren’t. The direct stated goals of communism by Marx is the workers owning the means of production, and the abolishment of both private property(which is different than PERSONAL property, btw. i.e It’s still “your” toothbrush, not “ours”) AND the STATE. Many definitions also include the abolishment of money in of itself.
Only one of those goals were achieved by the USSR. Private property was abolished, but the state owned the means of production, which is a double fail as not only do the workers not own them, the state owning them means the state still exists. Money still existed as well. So overall, they met 1 out of 3/4 of the minimum requirements to be communism, and thus they weren’t communist.
Same story with China and basically every other “communist” country you could gotcha me with, abolishing private property is the only requirement they have met.
Meeting only one of multiple requirements to be something and calling yourself it anyways does not mean you actually are that thing. By that logic, I’m a good singer; I’m not good at it, but I CAN sing, so calling myself a good singer is perfectly valid.
I’ve never met anyone who hates communism more than the colleagues of mine who grew up under communism
Of course they do. They grew up in an authoritarian country calling themselves communist. Whether that country was actually communist or not doesn’t really matter; if you don’t actually know what communism IS, you won’t be able to recognize that the entity harming you is communist in name only. If they hadn’t actually read stuff like Marx, which most people likely didn’t seeing as google didn’t exist and you had to research stuff the old fashioned way(and even if you did do research, censorship is a concern), their definition of communism will be entirely based of the actions of their authoritarian government that claims to be communist.
To put a more modern perspective on this, North Korea calls itself a Democratic Peoples Republic despite being none of those things. But to a North Korean citizen isolated from outside information, NK is ALL of those things; if NK collapsed, there would definitely be some former NK citizens proclaiming the horrors of democracy, and there would definitely be people replying explaining how that “wasn’t true democracy”; sound familiar?
Communism is a flawed system because it can never work in reality, not because it’s inherently bad. For it to work, all forms of inequality have to be not just abolished, but abolished by total unanimous agreement by humanity; which will never happen, because there will always be people who care only for themselves or their “chosen people”.
Capitalism, on the other hand, is inherently bad. Evil, even. It “works”, but only by exploiting those beneath you. If you’re on the bottom rung with no one under you to exploit, or if you’re just too ethical to exploit those under you, it no longer works and you are left being a wage slave just to survive.
Also adding to the list of nice things - a picture of the current dictator on all public offices and classrooms. Work and school weeks from Monday to Saturday and a Sunday in which you had to do mandatory free time activities, like go to communist youth clubs, participate in parades for the glory of the state, or plant flowers or do random maintenance work in the park.
I’ve noticed the arguments tend to center around the notion that ‘that wasn’t true communism’ and that the notions presented by Marx et al. were not properly implemented.
Fair enough, I can agree with that, but I’d wonder what makes us think that we would do it better next time? How do you actually prevent consolidation of power in the hands of the select few (in any system, for that matter, not just the ideal communism)?
Obligatory capitalism is bad too (but at least I’m in less danger of getting vanned in the middle of the night for insulting random great leader - attemtping to undermine the social order or whatever they called thoughtcrimes).
Of course, those are people who left. Might not be a representative population if you compare to people who still live there.
Obligatory capitalism is bad too (but at least I’m in less danger of getting vanned in the middle of the night for insulting random great leader - attemtping to undermine the social order or whatever they called thoughtcrimes.)
Maybe you are, currently, in the United States of Europe. But this is really more a function of liberal democracy than capitalism. You could get vanned for saying the wrong thing about the great leader in quite a few capitalist countries. You’d be in high danger of having pretty terrible things happen to you for saying the wrong thing in the US until pretty recently, and the US has been capitalist pretty much since its inception.
You’re technically describing the downsides of authoritarianism, bordering on dictatorship, not communism. That being said, I don’t believe communism would work either. Communism isn’t the only system at play in those scenarios. Again, not defending communism as a good thing, just that the given reasons aren’t actually due to communism but other parallel systems that were implemented at those times.
If you burn a pastry, you don’t just give up baking pastries. You declare that the burnt one isn’t a real pastry and start over.
Likewise with communism. Oh a few million people died? No biggie just try again 😚
This is a ridiculous analogy. It’s also to the point of technically arguing one side while sarcastically supporting the other.
And it also ignores my actual point and sets up a straw man anyway. All you’re doing is trying to claim I’m making a no true Scotsman fallacy. I am not. I never said every case of communism wasn’t communism. I even implicitly stated otherwise by saying communism hasn’t been attempted that many times for a statistical significant trend. I stated the failures mentioned were do to other problems. I’m not even claiming communism can or can’t work. Just that the arguments provided don’t support the conclusion. Being quippy doesn’t give a free pass to avoid using logic and reason. I’ve even made comments against people making bad arguments in support of communism. I just want to see real discussions about it and not folks repeating sound bites from their favorite talking heads.
The only way communism can work is if it’s not run by people.
You’d need something like a benevolent AI overlord.
The problem with all forms of government and economy is that it involves human beings.
This is a truly unpopular opinion but i will stick my neck out to say i fully agree.
Power corrupts, humans are flawed with greed and bias. The bigger a society becomes the more impossible it becomes for humans to properly remain in charge.
AI today is far from perfect and more then flawed but it keeps evolving faster, infinitely faster compared to how biological life can. The potential for AI to grow into something much more capable, unbiased and fair then any of is can be is obvious, so is its potential for the exact opposite.
Summarized: i don’t trust humans in positions on power at all and i wont start to just because i don’t know if i can trust something not human instead.
The potential for AI to grow into something much more capable, unbiased and fair then any of is can be is obvious
It absolutely is not obvious. AI, especially today, is usually either generative based on past examples or evolutionary based on given goals. Both of those come with obvious and extreme bias. Bias is actually an integral part of machine learning. It’s literally built into the system and is defined and controlled to achieve the results desired.
AI is and always will be biased, moreso by its creators, but absolutely by the information and frameworks provided to it. We have absolutely no idea how to approach the concept of an unbiased AI, or even defining what unbiased would look like. It’s philosophically extremely difficult to define what an unbiased person would think or do.
Edit: somehow I missed that last sentence fragment. I don’t think we’re in disagreement of the conclusion, but possibly just the details of how one arrives at it.
Calling it “obvious” was an error on my part, its more a subjective feeling that i chose to believe in.
I fully agree on what you said about bias with ai today, i think its not possible to do it without guided bias because ai doesn’t have a full perspective of the world it exists in. It only knows what we tell it.
In a way its a young child, and we often have to lie to guide behavior. Information often needs to be abstracted and simplified to get human desired results, we have yet to obtain a true artificial intelligence result, because for me to be considered intelligent you need to be entity and not just a tool.
Seeing ai evolve though, how fast we archieved near gpt3 performance on consumer hardware is mind blowing. Open ai talks about smarter then human ai in a few years and I believe it. When the systems are truly intelligent and can learn themselves and adapt to changes in the world, new information then we “start” getting into an era where machine lead humanity can happen.
Some of my simplified rational is that once ai becomes smarter then human it will fully understand that biological entities are biased to their own needs and that itself can also be biased from its own perspective but because an ai does not have biological needs or feelings it can properly dedicate itself to overcome its own flaws and shortcomings.
If communism devolves into authoritarianism every time it is attempted, I don’t see the practical distinction.
How many times has capitalism become dictatorships or fascists? Yet we continue to do it.
Not to mention all those attempts have died in the socialism phase, because surprise surprise consolidation of power doesn’t lead to it being distributed.
“WhAtAbOuT!”
How many times has capitalism become dictatorships or fascists?
A handful of times. Most capitalist nations are not authoritarian. Purely by the numbers, it has a much better track record. Of course, “it’s not real capitalism/communism” always derails this discussion.
I think you outline why communism inevitably fails. Marx advocated for violent revolution to overthrow the “bourgeois” democracy. The moment democracy is gone, the strong take and retain power. This is why, no matter the system, democracy must be the bottom line. It ensures that power is distributed. It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than the alternatives.
It turns out it’s every time as we’re seeing with late-stage capitalism. Purely by the numbers it’s like 17 times vs 300 and of those 17 they were in a cold war with half the world. And that’s not even the same argument? It’s not up for debate that these were socialist countries, fuck the second S in USSR is for socialist.
And once again that’s a miss. You’re conflating capitalism with democracy, that’s not the same thing at all. You can have democratic or authoritarian capitalist or socialist countries.
It turns out it’s every time as we’re seeing with late-stage capitalism.
I’m sorry I don’t understand what you’re arguing. Are you claiming that all Western nations are authoritarian? I emphatically disagree.
Why do overwhelming popular policies, like drug reform and universal healthcare, fail time and time again, while overwhelmingly unpopular policies, like tax cuts for the rich, easily succeed time and time again? Capitalism inevitably becomes thinly-veiled bourgeoisie authoritarianism. “Vote with your dollars” means those with the most dollars have the most votes.
You act as if it’s been tried any amount of time that would be statistically significant. Sometimes it’s not even communism other than in name and folks still count it.
And it doesn’t devolve into it. It’s simply always been done at the same time. When you have essentially a dictatorship, absolute power will corrupt absolutely.
A practical distinction historically speaking, but not philosophically speaking. If you’re unable to differentiate between concepts in history, I don’t know how you can ever effectively discuss them objectively. Though, this should have been evident with your comment initially. Communism doesn’t devolve into authoritarianism. They’re not even the same types of philosophies. One is about governing and one is about commerce. It’s like claiming capitalism devolves into a plutocracy. It does help to produce a plutocracy, but it didn’t devolve into one. They’re not the same thing.
I think you are confusing communism for authoritarian socialism. If only you’d spent a few minutes on google.
If communism becomes authoritarian every time it is attempted, I don’t see the practical distinction.
Meanwhile, capitalism not only reliably devolves into dictatorships of the wealthy, but also dictatorships of whichever caste or ethnic group manages to rise to political dominance.
Or do you think the consistent and aggressive disenfranchisement of people of colour is just democracy in action or something?
Classifying democracies as dictatorships is histrionic in the extreme, and specious at best. It doesn’t even make sense. The concepts are antithetical.
Not classifying all democracies as democracy and capitalism aren’t a bonded pair. When dollars are votes, the system will be democracy amongst the wealthy as they have more votes with their greater number of dollars. Those without capital will inherently have their voices heard less.
Thus it is a system that claims democracy but only the oligarchs truly get their voices heard. This leads to a type of dictatorship of the wealthy. If it was a true democracy then why are so many policies popular among the lower classes getting ignored in favor of tax loopholes for corporations? Why did billions of PPP get given out to businesses and forgiven with no fuss but ~2k for struggling families saw intense opposition and weak support?
Oligarchs aren’t necessarily rich, they just achieved power in some fashion. Plutarchs achieved power through wealth. It’s the main difference between plutocracy and oligarchy. While oligarchy and oligarchs aren’t technically incorrect, they are less accurate. Especially if you’re trying to drive the point of wealth as being the source of power. Not criticizing, just letting you know there’s a faster route to saying what you want to say.
Heeeeere comes the hexbear brigade!
Income share isn’t actually a good indicator of anything on its own. One would at the very least need to provide some sort of inflation chart and some sort of equivalent to a consumer price index. Like, it wouldn’t mean much if they all had the same income if that income couldn’t buy bread for example. not saying that was or was not the case, just using an example of how the given charts are meaningless on their own. That you provided them without even trying to provide context means you’re unaware of this and are ignorant to the issue or you’re actively misleading people.
