https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
Wow they sure got a lot of landlords
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.
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.
You Capitalist Apologists are so blind to reality it is pathetic there are 18 capitalist countries with higher homeless populations than China. You literally have to divorce yourself from reality to attack Communism. You might as well be covered in shit, while mocking someone for having toilet paper stuck to their shoe.
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!”
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.
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
Famines happen regardless of political system.
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.
Communism hasn’t yet been implemented the original way so we don’t actually know if it works
🤣🤣🤣🤣
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!
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.
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.
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.
When your purges actually violate literally every Marxist principle and sabotage the revolution, isn’t it kind of fair to accuse Bolsheviks, or at least the leadership, of being fake communists?
Stalin was a counterrevolutionary, die mad about it, we’re Menshevik posting in this bitch.
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.
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.
I’d personally criticize them for thinking they needed to follow the traditional Marxist thought that economic liberalism was a required stage on the path to socialism.
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?
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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.
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.
meme sent from my iphone
Iphone was made by communists
I was told by a gamer that I’m a shill for capitalist corporations cause I like bathesda games.
I laughed my ass off, every stage of gaming from development to hardware is a capitalist machine. Don’t play games if you don’t want to support corporations
I don’t disagree at all! But if you want to scream “milk cpmpanies are bad” don’t go buing their product. I hate people that want to support a cause on the internet but do NOTHING to change it. Usually those are the first ones in line to buy the latest trendy Iphone. Don’t be a caplatist if you don’t want captalism.
BTW I’m not american. I’m looking from the outside and I only see irony. My country have labour laws and consumer protection and if someone messes with it we make a huge fuzz
u see im very smart if u live under a society u can not criticize it, what RIGHT does a salve have to criticize slavery when they do the masters bidding and eat the food the master provides and wears the clothes the master provides.
When you pay for a luxury brand phone it’s not you master telling you too, it’s you choosing. Don’t come at me with the onipotent lord that control all of us. The system IS broken, captalist is NOT the best for the people but people stiil choose.
Lmao, Capitalism practically requires a phone to get through modern society, buying a decent phone doesnt mean one casts a vote for Capitalism to continue to exist, you absolute ham sandwich.
When you start calling peoples names it’s because you know you’re.wrong. but ok
Lol no it doesn’t.
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I think this is a more significant point than most people want to admit, it’s not just iPhones, people choose status over fairness pretty much every time - they’d rather pay more to feel better than others.
The car market, computers, clothes, food - literally everything. It’s true in all the porest and richest circles even when like iphones and a lot of fashion the more expensive product is objectively worse.
It’s not capitalism inventing this it’s always been a thing and capitalism simply leverages it. I move in probably the least capitalist circles as an open source obsessive and dev, people choosing to share their work free so others can benefit but the mentality is there too, its in the eco obsessive communities too - I don’t think it’s totally universal amywhere but it’s prominent everywhere.
I’ve come to belive that the Marxist ideals don’t cover enough of what people really need, they’re idealistic and somewhat how we’d want to think of ourselves but it’s similar to dieting, deciding in a serious mood to eat only kale and beans feels like who we want to be but when we try and live that way we realize that we’re not that person.
We need to focus on achievable steps in the right direction which allow us to feel good about the change we’re making while also letting us fill our needs, even those lazy and embarrassing ones that the idealized version of of lacks.
We need to learn to understand and enjoy other forms of status but also we need to learn to reward those status symbols in others just as we reward economic status symbols even if we pretend to ourselves we dislike them. People in expensive clothes get treated better because it symbolizes the power they have to make an economic difference - even the fact iphones are feature restricted money milking machines only plays into this, it signals that you’ve got enough money not to worry about them adding $500 to the price for no reason or stinging you for a dozen subscriptions and this makes it seem like you’re the most likely person to be able to help them if they’re in trouble or give them things they xouldnt otherwise have.
Yes this is bad greedy nasty thinking and no one wants to admit it’s part of them but this is how the math in our brain works. We can’t help it, and when we ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist or that we can wish it away that doesn’t change reality.
I don’t know what the solution is, I’d like to hope we can at least shift it from being solely economic to respecting skills too, I dont know but we need to make it socially rewarding to be a benefit to society rather and make good choices.
Thank you. Kids here trying to justify having Iphones when they could very well have the cheepest phone workable. They screem comunism but want to be better than others. I don’t thino there is a solution because humans are imperfect. No perfect solution will ever exist if a human is responsible for managing it.
The iPhone workers designed, workers made, workers marketed, workers transported, workers sold and “landlords” got paid for. It really is a perfect illustration of the issue.
Iphones build by communists btw
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
the Berlin Wall
That was fascism.
or why Cuban families
That’s kleptocracy.
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”
So did the United States untill very recently, what is your point? Advocating for Communism isnt Advocating for a return of the USSR you absolute ham sandwich.
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.
I just got permabanned for evading ban on alternative account on reddit. |
Fuck reddit
Fuck wallstreet.
So the tens of millions of people that died under communism were all landlords? Wow, what are the chances of that
What is with the tens of millions dying under capitalism
In fairness, everyone dies in every political system. Yes I’m fun at parties
No they die under F R E E D O M.
That’s different, because of reasons. When someone dies within a communist system that is communism’s fault. When someone dies in a capitalist system, that’s their own fault for not tugging on those bootstraps.
Communism is a bit different than what those “communist” countries had. If anything it was socialism, but that still doesn’t fit completely. These “communist” countries are just one-party states in which the government controls the economy. The idea of putting the working class in power is useless if you create a government that can make decisions against the opinions of the working class. Socialist one-party state ≠ Communist democracy
“Communism but not like that. Or that. Or that. Or….”
Communism is a society without social classes, money, or a state.
Feel free to name one so-called communist country that implemented that.The eastern block was as communist as North Korea is democratic.
They did however socialize ownership of factories etc, so they did have an authoritarian form of socialism.“Not like that either… or that.”
Name a real-world implementation of communism that either isn’t Marxist–Lenninist, or one that is and has moved beyond the “dictatorship of the proletariat” stage. I’ll be waiting.
Exactly.
There isn’t one, because it doesn’t work.
Do you have a real-world example of a successful communist state? Because you may not like it, but those “communist” countries are humanities best attempts at enacting communism and they resulted in millions of people dying.
No. But that doesn’t mean something like a socialist democracy couldn’t be achieved. Socialism isn’t bound to have a certain type of government and if we get rid of capitalism I would still like to have a say in what happens next
Communism only works on paper because it assumes that the people in power are going to just happily share everything equally. Humans don’t work that way, we’re selfish, greedy, and will hurt others to get ahead. There is no difference between a capitalist and communist leader. They both live better, eat better, make more money. There’s no equality there
Humans do work that way. In the wake of disaster, and tragedy, and scarcity, we see people sharing resources and helping each other.
It’s the sociopaths who seek power that don’t work that way. The biggest success of capitalism is that the sociopaths have normalized their behavior and cast kindness as a flaw or disorder.
Humans do work that way. In the wake of disaster, and tragedy, and scarcity, we see people sharing resources and helping each other.
And also opportunists that will take the opportunity to loot and steal, then happily abandon anyone behind them still in the disaster.
If your baseline assumption is reliant on people doing… well, much if anything outside of being self serving it will break down fast.
That is exactly the sociopathic propaganda I mentioned, that simply isn’t backed by evidence, but casts people with empathy as ignorant.
It’s not propaganda to acknowledge shitty people exist and will try to take advantage of any situation, it’s just basic reality when you’re out from behind a keyboard.
@Gigan
There are none! There’s a reason pure communism is called a utopia. Because it is! While it may work for a small community of like-minded individuals, is just not scalable. The more people there are the more difference of opinion there is.
@RmDebArc_5
ew a revisionist, it was REAL socialism led by REAL communists and it was based as fuck and the one that are still around are real and they are based. also theres no such thing a one party socialist state that is a myth at most u could say past and present socialist countries has a dominant political party but by no means was there only one, and other parties were and are allowed in those countries.
Yeah. You don’t get to revise away anything uncomfortable. USSR and China were socialist experiments that succeeded in raising quality of life and transforming rural countries into industrial, scientific states. If people wanna talk about what went wrong, great. Pretending they “don’t count” just puppets capitalist apologia and doesn’t help
From a theoretical point, they don’t count as communist. They entirely dropped the all-important aspect of giving power to the working class.
Both the USSR and China, in their self-described “communist” periods, were ruled with absolute power and directed by a head of state. The USSR collapsed, and modern China is about as communist as North Korea is democratic.
i was a little worried there comrade but im glad to see u have a good unstanding of just how great the PRC is, after all what could be more the democratic than the glorious DPRK.
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I really can’t tell if this is /s. Could you please clarify
Is that what you saw or are you just parroting 1950s propaganda?
No alot of them wete Nazis.
The “black book of communism” includes german soldiers who died during WW2, it includes people who might have had 4 kids but only had 2, it includes victims of the US in vietnam.
AES countries were and are legitimate attempts at building Communism. People have died in these countries, but at the same time many saw drastic increases in quality of life and industrialization. Dismissing AES is usually a sign of not understanding Marxism.
@Cowbee
I understand Marxism and reject AES countries because they not only abandoned many of the core principles of communism but weren’t even successful at achieving communism.What “core principles of Communism” were abandoned?
Why do you believe a country can achieve a global, worker owned republic without class, money, or a state while Capitalist states exist?
@Cowbee
Countries like the Soviet Union deviated from some core principles of communism, including classlessness by introducing a new bureaucratic class, statelessness (the withering away of the state as envisioned by Marx never happened), and a moneyless economy by retaining wage labor and currency.@Cowbee
Achieving a global, worker-owned republic without class, money, or a state while capitalist states exist presents significant challenges. It would require widespread international cooperation, grassroots movements, and a shift in global consciousness toward socialist ideals. International solidarity, mass education and organization, and an immediate introduction of a communist economic model would make it much easier.Yes, so I am not sure why you are criticizing AES countries for leading the effort but not achieving them yet. This is anti-dialectical reasoning, which goes directly against the philosophical aspects of Marxism.
-
There was not a new “beaurocratic class.” Government ownership of the Means of Production is Socialist, as profits are controlled collectively, rather than by Capitalists. Beaurocrats and state planners were not a “new class” but an extension of the workers.
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The whithering away of the state is IMPOSSIBLE until global Socialism has been achieved. The USSR could not possibly have gotten rid of the military while hostile Capitalist countries existed. Additionally, Statelessness in the Marxian sense doesn’t mean no government, but a lack of instruments by which one class oppresses another.
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Wage Labor did not persist for the sake of Capitalist profit, but to be used via the government, which paid for generous safety nets. To eliminate money in a Socialist state takes a long time, and cannot simply be done overnight.
I really think you need to revisit Marx. I suggest Critique of the Gotha Programme.
- There was a Bureaucratic class in the Soviet Union that was above everyone else. Bureaucrats held significant power and privileges distinct from the working class, which led to a stratified society rather than the classless society envisioned by socialism.
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Without regard for the political content (which I agree with), this is a very bad and unfunny meme.
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.
Ahhh more propaganda that hand waves away the millions of people also starving away under communism. Of course it’s .Ml
I thought I blocked this shit hole instance a couple days ago. Apparently it didn’t work. Time to add them again!
Bruh i see people starving in the streets of America every damn day.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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
Even when they don’t turn it into a dictatorship, they may just turn it back into capitalism, like Russia did. And when that happens, they just sell all the old estates to the highest bidder, making them richer and turning them into oligarchs. And that becomes functionally equivalent to a dictatorship of the bourgeois.
Upvote for fartweasel.
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.
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.
Nobody starves under capitalism /s
I don’t disagree but this meme is ass lmao
memes are usually all ass
I’m sure they were able to pick themselves up by the bootstraps right?
Nice…
I was in my early 20s when the Soviet occupation collapsed here, the victims here were everyone not high up in the party.
Sure, capitalism fucking sucks but pretending the USSR was anything other than just bourgeoisie rule is delusional. The oligarchs were just called the communist party then.
bUt ThAt WaSn’T rEaL cOmMuNiSm
shock therapy was not a socialist, but a capitalist plan after the ussr ended.
Yea, no shit, nothing to do with what I said though.
shock therapy happened upon the collapse of the ussr
You should look into south america in the 70s and 80s. The CIA’s unrestrained human experimentation in the regiom perfected this ideological soft power superweapon or “strategic ideological construct”. Trying to find exactly what these kinds of things are called.
i think we are talking about different things here
Yea and I was commenting on how things were in a country under the occupation of the USSR. So both temporally and geographiclly unrelated.
Not really. You’re talking about what happened after the USSR. Which yes, was horrible for the quality of life of people who lived in numerous countries all over the globe, but that’s more of an indictment of capitalism than communism. The looting of the government coffers to privatize everything and create oligarchs was a result of the post-USSR shock therapy.
I was literally talking about the time before the USSR collapsed also it was applied to Russia, not to the countries it occupied.
Ah, I misinterpreted you. Sorry about that. But it’s hard to tell exactly what you’re talking about without more details. Afghanistan, maybe? I get if you don’t want to dox yourself, as someone privacy minded, but it’s hard to know how to respond without more context.
I don’t understand why anything anti capitalism these days is automatically communism. It’s such a large swing from one side to the other. I just want my taxes to pay for healthcare, infrastructure, and education instead of wars and prisons. I want to stop getting fucked by corporations that have infinitely more money than I can ever imagine. I don’t think that makes me a communist. I’m just anti-fucking-the-people. Capitalism can fuck people. Communism can fuck people too. I support Corpo-Politico-Celibacism. Stop the fucking.
Edit: Okay, fuck the people. You guys must have this figured out.
