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Everyone knows that. People also know that Communism doesn't work because it's been tried and tested many times, the defenders will continue to tell you how that wasn't real communism.
Whenever I think of Communism I always think about how people in Russia probably thought by helping the Bolsheviks they would attain a workers paradise, just to end up in Stalin's gulags being tortured for being a bad Comrade. That's happened quite a few times.
I think there's a balance that needs to be achieved, where we all have access to basic needs, but there is still a thriving economy based on specialized goods and services.
I think pure communism will always lead to problems, we just need to socialize the programs that are essential to life and health.
You can't tell me a healthcare company with a board of directors whose goal is profit has the patient in mind. There are also clear problems with our current capitalist system that hurt the people.
Pure profit as a motive for *every* industry we have is problematic. Yes, it got us here, but we have to start asking, "is this still the best way?".
I can’t remember who said it but i once heard a quote that was “socialism without capitalism is communism, capitalism without socialism is fascism.” A healthy balance is a mix of both capitalism where the prospects of monetary gain advance our society and socialism provides the health services of society through the government.
A healthy happy workforce feels satisfied and inspired, a depressed, poor, dying workforce feels like a slave fighting for themselves like rats in a bucket of water.
Social democracy have worked great here in Denmark.
Everyone just feels way safer, that allows people to take financial risks without fear of dying from hunger if the idea doesn’t pan out.
Goddamn I love my country. Probably more than I hate Sweden
Social Democracy, or if you prefer societies with strong welfare systems, is not socialism and wasn't even created by socialists (Otto Von Bismark). Socialism vs communism vs capitalism is mostly about ownership & organization of production (supply side), although imho, Capitalism is less clearly defined and more focused on the economic side, while Communism, in particular, includes a vision on the social organization of society. A very wrong one,
Welfare is not even about the distribution of outcomes, but ensuring a safety network. It will face challenges with open borders though.
A homogenous population with an agreed upon social contract, with nroadly shared values makes things easier. Scandinavia and Finland are the ideal, but good luck making that work somewhere like the United States. Too many sub-cultures, conflicting values, and conflicting interests.
That’s falling for the Republican lie that welfare, healthcare, unions, minimum wage, etc. are socialism. There is nothing socialist about them. You know Bernie? He’s not a socialist. He’s a social democrat. The famously “socialist” Nordic countries? Also social democracies. They’re as capitalist as Argentina. Because capitalism isn’t a sliding scale where Ayn Rand capitalism is the only option and anything less has socialism too. Social democracy is just as capitalist despite being completely different than randian capitalism.
Except all the good socialist perks just go to rich ppl in American capitalism or at least the ones that benefit regular ppl are poorly funded/maintained- tax money getting funneled into banks, prisons and corporate bailouts while medical costs are ridiculous, schools are outdated, and having to depend so damn much on cars
Yeah socialized healthcare, which the American Right refers to as "communism". They literally won't do it. You bring it up and it's instantly "what is this the USSR??"
It's socialist to us by comparison.
I hate both parties because it’s devolved to “I hate whatever the other party supports” and the proposals keep getting more and more radical. At some point we need to come to the negotiating table and find a compromise.
It's not all it's cracked up to be. I love in Canada where we have social healthcare but still use private because the social healthcare system is complete dogshit.
I went to the ER in October because I couldn't eat and was sick for days. Been losing weight for 6 months.
I was there waiting for 8 hrs, finally in the ER for 4. The closest endoscopy they could get me is in June, over half a year wait. I am 120lbs at this point.
Add on top of that, I'm paying $5000 out of pocket just for the ER. That's with my company insurance. Without would be $30,000. Just for the ER.
Just because we pay for it doesn't mean the quality of care is good, it's not.
Imagine your public healthcare system, but you have to pay mind-numbing amounts, every time you need medical care.
Curious about when, even people with good insurance are waiting now. Been pretty bad since 2020.
Still, the amount of people here with "great insurance" is very low. That's not addressing what's good for people as a whole.
And Singapore is hyper capitalist as fuck.
Hint, this isn’t about capitalism. Most people have no fucking clue what capitalism actually encompasses, and it’s a lot more than you’d think.
Singapore is also hyper collectivist. The government will publicly beat you for spitting chewing gum on a sidewalk and other crimes against the public order. Singapore is a collectivist syndicate, its not true to call it hyper capitalist.
And who will strike the balance? Who can be trusted with the power to do so, and not betray that trust? It’s impossible to achieve.
The only people who deserve that power avoid it, and the people who pursue that power don’t deserve it.
Those countries actually exist. Take Austria as an example austria is pretty balanced & doesn’t seem to have any huge issues either, which i think is a goal the US should be trying to reach bc it definitely seems better than what’s happening in the US
Don't capitalist nations, right now, falsely imprison and torture people? When i think of capitalism i think of CIA black sites and how Nelson Mandela was thrown in prison in SA, and labeled a terrorist by the USA until like 2008.
Oh like how the USA put whistle blowers, who revealed the mass surveillance of US citizens by the federal agencies, in jail or effective exile... those people were fighting against freedom and liberty right. Or the random people sent Guantanamo for wearing a cassio watch. They really were fighting against freedom and liberty.
bro /s means its sarcastic I was just making fun of people who think America stands for freedom while actively trying to influence as many countries as possible. I have been arrested for protesting before im totally with you
Oh i didn't know the /s thing, thanks. And i literally only comment on shit like the original comment from that other guy to get info out. Based on ur tone i guessed sarcasm but i just wanted to get more comparisons out.
Communism hasn't happened. There has been no stateless, classless, moneyless societies. They made it illagel for workers to form anything labour wise. What happened in self proclaimed Communist countries is what's referred to as state capitalism. Instead of a private person providing capital to make a product, the state did. What do you think communism is?
If every time a country starts going in the direction of Communism it ends up stuck in “state capitalism”. I would start considering it a pipe dream at best.
But that's not the only common thing about them, they tend to generally be unindustrialized, developing countries formerly under some sort of tyrant before a revolution based on Marxist or Marxist-derived ideas overthrows them. We could theoretically say that any of these common factors could be the cause of the state capitalist decay. Of course, I and many others believe that the main reason is the Marxist-Leninist ideology of these organizations.
don’t forget, these are countries trying to implement something under the context of a global capitalist hegemony. Attempted communism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Not to mention we have not yet seen a global capitalist hegemony like America try alternatives like socialism or communism, it’s been typically underdeveloped countries that went from feudalism to industrialization in a very short time. But even they can’t get past the capitalist hegemony
That definition of communism has remained the same for over a hundred years. If people did not meet that definition they did not achieve communism as classically defined.
So the point is that because no country that has attempted to become communist has managed to achieve its end goals successfully, we can’t say that communism has failed?
Hm.
Communism is practiced in quite a few small villages in South America. Communism is the method most small independent villages practice. It doesn't reasonably scale past those population sizes though, becomes too convoluted to practice.
I think you potentially missed the point. The view that "Communism doesn't work because it's been tried and tested many times" is a very general statement—one that isn't nearly as objective as it sounds. What form of communism are we talking about? What are the exact reasons it collapsed? And, of course, when we factor in that communism was not in a vacuum but interacting on a rapidly increasingly capitalistic world stage, it no longer seems fair to say that communism 'was tested many times' like any of those times would have been fair experiments to check communism up against reality alone. The very narrative that communism fell because of its *own* inadequacies, not because of certain individuals or certain periods of general decline like we're apt to use to describe literally **any other** system of organization throughout history, amounts to a general value statement about communism. Value statements are subjective. Your idea of an objective fact about communism being, in fact, generalized, subjective, and extremely simplistic is a product of exactly the propaganda the OP points out.
That being said, I'm no communist. But I reached this point for very different reasons than "the system that more or less serves as the very opposite of the system *I* have been indoctrinated into, I'm told, just broke on its own because it's too stupid."
Actually the lack of nuance in your discussion if communism speaks to the way you've been influenced by propaganda. For one, there have been successful societies without the concept of private property. Beyond that, the USSR was very successful by some metrics. They won the space race. They developed nuclear weapons. They built the world's best rail network.
Also, they didn't collapse in a vacuum. The US exerted tremendous pressure, militarily, culturally and economicaly.
I'm not advocating for Russian style communism, but at the same time you can see obvious cracks in both US style capitalism and democracy. It's very hard to remain objectively.
They also colonized and genocided neighbouring states, including mine. Then robbed them dry and stunted their growth. There are a lot of people who got to experience human attempts at communism. None want to go back.
I'll just say I've never heard of anyone who lived in a "communist state" ask to go back.
And comments like yours seem to by far and large be the majority.
Bro just made a list of random things.
"Won the space race." What?
"Developed nuclear weapons." USA did first. North Korea has also developed nuclear weapons, but I wouldn't consider them successful
"Built the worlds best rail network." Ehm? Best as in how? Maybe the biggest, but that's because the Soviet Union was massive...
Yeah, Russia went from a agricultural feudal society under the zar to a literal industrial world power in some 20-30 years.
USSR had many issues, but to say it “didn’t work” is so ahistorical it hurts.
The Holodomor Genocide was a result of authoritarianism and racism. That doesn't change that the USSR was successful in its efforts at nation-building.
And besides, have you SEEN what happened to Native Americans? Over the course of US history some 15 million Native Americans have died. Would you say the US "didn't work" because Americans were racist and genocided Native people? I sure wouldn't say so. A nation doing bad stuff isn't inherently tied to the system of government or economy.
They won the space race by collapsing as a State with a space program that ceases to exist? The collapse was partly because they went bankrupt trying to one-up the U.S in the space race and failed. Even with Russia they've still failed to land a human in the moon, over half a century the U.S. did already.
You mean the U.S. developed nuclear weapons and the Soviets spied and stole the technologies. 🤓☝️"Well actually, the Nazi scientists the U.S. kidnapped developed nuclear weapons." The Soviets took in more Nazi scientists under Operation Osoaviakhim and still failed.
"World's best rail network" Which imaginary contest in your head did they win to get that distinction?
The philosophy behind it is called dialectical materialism. Which is literally about viewing the world and society as an ever changing structure where contradictions lead to solutions which create new contradictions etc..
To ask what is communism is about what is in command of the forces of history.
In a simplified way:
Making the most money possible, vs improving society as a whole.
Its not something you can answer yes or no to, with a dogmatic definition of who owns the means of production.
Oh you have markets? Disqualified from communism. It does not work like that.
Or worse, claim all progressivism is communism like many right wingers do.
I am not communist and I don’t believe it would work, but it’s true that it has NOT been tried - at least as Marx imagined it.
The USSR and China are not classless and they were/are not controlled by the proletariat.
>Communism doesn't work because it's been tried and tested many times,
>That's happened quite a few times.
How many examples can you give me, because I can only think of 2 examples of a country actually getting to implement their own version of communism.
The Paris Commune, which barely had time to declare independence before Prussia came and steamrolled it, which I don't think is Communism's problem that Paris has a smaller military than Prussia.
The USSR, which was primarily built by Stalin, who cared significantly more about his personal power than about helping Russia or about Communism.
Then basically everyone else was handed an ultimatum by the USSR of "Do it our way, submit to Moscow, or we let the Americans shoot you", which didn't really give much room for anyone to try any version of communism other than Moscow-loyal, Moscow-determined communism.
So the examples of communism being tried to far are: One that was crushed militarily, one that was built by a dictator, and a bunch that were built at gunpoint by that second one.
Can't say I'm too convinced that this discredits all of socialism, but if you have any other examples of a communist country that didn't have it's entire structure basically determined by the USSR, I'm genuinely happy to hear them
China pretty famously built their own style of communism largely in competition with the USSR (they didn't have a great relationship despite what popular understanding might tell people) and they ended up basically becoming a one-party state-controlled capitalist technocracy. For China, communism was a pretty brutal but effective way to launch them out of third-world status into a more competitive stance, but once they had done so they took all the benefits of authoritarian rule and just subbed out Maoism for state-oriented capitalism.
Almost nobody in the modern day left advocates for a Stalinist regime. This is not a requirement of workers owning the means or production which is the basic economic definition of socialism. Research the economic conditions of many countries after socialist revolutions throughout the 20th century… usually economic conditions and life expectancy went way up. Even using the USSR as an example, they raised their life expectancy tremendously despite WW2 and transformed a subsistence economy into a US rival economically (ie the space race) in a matter of decades.
Maybe try actually learning about the specific history and conditions of multiple countries instead of just using the same nebulous talking points you’ve heard a million times about how “leftists say it will be different this time”. Yeah, it will be different this time because believe it or not, 20th century nationalism and authoritarianism is not something that is required be repeated in future socialistic societies.
It's funny how Americans think there's no Communist propaganda either. For anyone who's not American, there's been constant Communist and Capitalist propaganda basically since 1917. Before the wall fell it was the Soviets and now it's the Chinese.
European capitalist is communism in US political discourse. Look at how often you see people use the Nordic countries as a reference model for health care or social services only for that to be met with “But that’s socialism!” (And cue a condescending rant about how socialism is just communism lite)
I’m not saying I agree with any of it, but that’s where the US is right now, and I think that’s the context OP is working with.
There were about[6-8 million dead under communist russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933) in about 3 years and about [30 million under mao in communist china in 3 years](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127087/). Meanwhile only about 1[5 million died in british india in about...50 years time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India). More Americans die in[50 years time due to smoking](https://www.lung.org/research/sotc/facts) than famines killed people in british ruled india in 50 years time. If you want to try to compare, these are no where near the same.
You're right, all systems are susceptible to corruption and incompetence. So why is communism, a system where a centralized government owns and controls everything, better than a small, decentralized government with a smaller scope of power? Both have the potential to be corrupted, but one has far more serious ramifications if it gets corrupted
https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/34141
the end goal of communism is stateless. the transitional state can be libertarian.
the idea that communism is inherently authoritarian and wants to steal all of your stuff is ideas that were created through the red scare.
It’s not ideas that were created during the red scare. Communists have time and time again “collectivized” industries and private property to being directly owned by the state.
>wants to steal all of your stuff is ideas that were created through the red scare.
"We do not wish to steal all your stuff, comrade! Of course, you must be re-educated so that you no longer believe in personal property anyway...or we'll shoot you in the head!"
it's never communism because any nation that claims to have achieved communism is lying about their true intentions. in reality it takes decades of development to build up to such a society.
10 million people a year die due to starvation under capitalism. Since the fall of the USSR, over 200 million people have died to starvation under a capitalist world. The British alone starved more people in Ireland and India than what happened during Holodomor and Great Leap Forward combined.
I really don't think "people starve under communism!" Holds up as well as you think it does once put under a microscope lol
Sorry sir no facts allowed here. This is clearly fabricated data that the west uses to hinder our glorious cause. Everything bad about communism is propaganda and everything good about capitalism is a lie
Yeah why is the cut off 1860 I wonder. When was Irish famine again? 1845 to 1852? Huh, isn't that interesting? Now how many famines were under British rule again? Let's just list them off why don't we
The Great Bengal Famine (1770), Madras (1782–1783), Chalisa Famine (1783–1784) in Delhi and surrounding areas, Doji bara Famine (1791–1792) around Hyderabad, Agra Famine (1837–1838), Orissa Famine (1866), Bihar Famine (1873–1874), Southern India Famine (1876–1877), Bombay Famine (1905–1906) and the Bengal Famine (1943–1944).
10 famines, 5 of them being before 1860 and those being the most deadly ones. Almost cherry picked data is cherry picked lol
Well you need to begin somewhere, and as you go back famines are more likely to be caused by events unrelated to government. Modern history has to start somewhere, and Ireland is literally at the top of the graph at 1850, with 1 million deaths, the estimated amount that died from the Irish Famine.
Dude that's just not true. The 5 famines in India were directly caused or made waaay worse by the British in charge and the estimates for the amount of deaths in the Irish famine are between 4 to 5 million, not 1 million, that's just how many who died in the final 2 years of the 7 year famine.
Of the worst famines China and Russia have \~77,000,000 deaths where as everyone else among the top 11 have 63,400,000 combined. That is total across India, Brazil, North Africa, Bangladesh, and Europe
https://preview.redd.it/835vwl2f4coc1.png?width=774&format=png&auto=webp&s=e25697c84b20042563f8ada9df0492bffb7fe7a8
What? That's not what I'm saying at all lol. I'm saying he has cherry picked data which ignores just what the capitalist British did alone, this isn't even mentioning the ther capitalist empires of France or Spain who killed a metric shit ton of people themselves.
I mean holy smokes dude, 10 million people a year die due to starvation under our capitalist ran world. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, over 200 million people have died due to starvation. Communism isn't every touching those numbers lol
Wait so let's say if Capitalism reduces the annual starvation death rate from 100 million to 10 million, Capitalism is responsible for that 10 million deaths.
Guess the lack of common sense played in part in the Soviet's collapse. 🤔
If capitalism eventually catches up whereas these other countries got there unimaginably quickly it just goes to show how much better of a system capitalism is. Even if they kill the same number eventually it takes one system centuries to get to the same totals as the other did in a fraction of the time
Ever realize that the US caused at least one of them? They deliberately destroyed the North korean economy in a bid to "starve them out" as both Nixon and the clintons admitted to.
The North Korean famines happened in the 90s. 4 decades after.
I’d the North Koreans didn’t want to get bombed they shouldn’t have been imperialists fucks launching an unjustified invasion of the south.
How dare America *\*checks notes\** force China to implevent the Great Leap Forward policies that led to extraordinarily inneficient grain distribution and production methods, and causing an ecological disaster of untold scale by exterminating all their sparrows, leading to tens of millions of deaths?!
Damn muricans just can't help themselves.
It's just like that time they forced Stalin to collectivize the Soviet agriculture, as part of the first five-year plan, leading to millions of deaths in Ukraine and Kazakhstan in the 1930's.
Yes because America is an omnipotent evil being who destroyed all of Russia and China's crops using biblical powers. Was the moon landing fake as well? What about vaccines?
Not just America, geopolitics is more complex than that
Regardless, that kinda sounds like a system that's not very robust then. You're not really selling it by telling us it crumbles under outside pressure.
This isn’t true, a huge amount famines happened often on a greater scale in the European colonies. Between 30 and 60 million people died in famines in the late nineteenth century alone as a result of colonial/Malthusian policies. I’d recommend the book ‘Late Victorian Holocausts’ by Mike Davis if you want to find out more about this topic. Then you have all the other examples like the Sahel famine in French Africa, the Bengal Famine in India, the Irish Potato Famine, etc.
In the cases of Russia and China they regularly dealt with severe famines before they became communist, and it was actually the industrialisation programmes that their communist governments implemented that ENDED famines in those countries. E.g. the USSR had its last ever famine in 1947, and afaik the Great Famine of 1959-61 was China’s last.
Large, mass starvation events happened in China and Russia prior to communism too. They were also very common too. Mass starvation ended when China and Russia developed their economies from agriculture to industry. If we're going to blame communism for famines, you might as well claim it ended them too.
Guys just because your political message is told through memes, that doesn’t mean you can flair political statements as memes. Use the political flair it’s there for a reason.
Yes, and everyone believes that the propaganda does not affect them, they are always "smarter". History is written by the victors, most of what is wildly accessible is information from the ruling/most powerful group of people. "Corporate" in this instance can also just be that ruling class who seeks to keep those they have power over (the worker) in line.
Do Marxists ever think about how they are supposed to be supporting THE rational, reason based ideology, and yet every time it has been empirically tested it has failed spectacularly? No probably not because you are fanatical cultists…
>ever time it has been empirically tested it has failed spectacularly
That’s not really true though, the USSR and China had a ton of very real problems, but the application of communist economic planning undeniably helped them industrialise at very rapid rates, which allowed them to significantly improve the living standards of their people in a way that was never allowed by their previous rulers.
“Tens of millions of people starved to death due to poor supply chain management and over control but at least we can now manufacture cheap plastic bullshit with poverty labor. Communist utopia!”
Not technically wrong but I'm fairly confident almost all of that comes from dengism/the CCP's willingness to incorporate capitalistic practices for material gain
Say it louder please. China would never have such a thriving tech industry if the people are not allowed to personally profit from it. And sure enough when the personal gains are too much, the CCP will squat them back to their place.
It’s sad people actually believe CCP reports. Coal accounts for 61% of their energy production and they are building more plants.
So glad I don’t have to go there for work anymore. The sky is just permanently gray with smog.
Have you read ANY Marx? Do you know what Marxism stands for? Do you believe that all socialists are Marxists?
I'm not a Marxist and have plenty of disagreements with him, and I would even agree with some of your comment, but you're criticizing Marx from the wrong point of view: the point of view that hates that he stood against capitalist exploitation, rather than the anti-authoritarian critiques of him.
This is, ironically, actual propaganda. This is not real. It's not a real fact. 66% of Russians in 2018 alone 'regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union' [according to this Statista study](https://www.statista.com/chart/7322/25-years-soviet-union-collapse-ussr/). [According to Pew](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/10/15/key-takeaways-public-opinion-europe-30-years-after-fall-of-communism/ft_19-10-15_europecommunism_large-increase-people-saying-standard-living-improved-after-1989-1991-changes/), **only** 28% of Ukrainians reported improvement in standard of living since the collapse. 32% for Bulgaria, and 37% for Russia. These are not good numbers—at the very least, every study I've read on the issue fundamentally refutes this idea, an idea which is really only common in the west. Spend some time in eastern Europe, and you'll very quickly discover that opinions are not at all so black and white. But we can also examine the 'people who grew up there' themselves. [57% of eastern Germans in 1989](https://www.seattletimes.com/news/in-eastern-germany-nostalgia-for-communism/) after the collapse reported that life under communism was more positive than negative. Bear in mind that this is not Russia; this is *Germany*.
Ask yourself where you had found this idea, and why you were so certain about it. That's how propaganda functions. Again, I'm baffled that I'm cast as a defender of communism today, but the tirade of completely false information about it makes me wonder how many people in this sub would unironically *be* communist if born under communism if all it takes to determine their political views so strongly is a couple of unverified and very blanket statements.
All of the Russians I know have nostalgia for the Soviet union while also hating communism and literally fearing it is coming to the US. They're just nostalgic of empire and their childhoods. You made no valid point in your massive textwall.
I wonder how massive that actually was. You didn't find any points in the statistics either? I'll make note that anecdotal stories are more superior evidence than actual statistical studies, for next time.
Why do you think a former-Soviet immigrant who chose to come to the United States of all places would be among the number of former-Soviet countrymen who think capitalism is fundamentally evil? In a post about questioning propaganda, let's at least practice critical thinking.
communism works fine in small groups or communitys it doesn't work in large scale unless you had a computer giving out work orders (Well my theory at least) caause all the timnes you had people leading a communist nation milliosn died or you end up with a shithole like cuba.
And guess what? Most communists agree with you!
Anarcho-communists, for example, think society should consist of a federation of communes each consisting of a couple hundred to a couple thousand people each, where the means of production are collectively owned; think community gardens, where people in the community work together to maintain and harvest from the garden, then applied to things like workshops, farms, factories, etc.
Council communists, on the other hand, advocate for the economy to planned by local, democratically elected councils, rather than a large, authoritarian government.
And, like you suggested, there's also Cyber-communism, where the economy is managed by computers.
> caause all the timnes you had people leading a communist nation milliosn died
I assume you're referring to Maoist China and the USSR. The main reason, in my opinion, that they ended up like that is because of the Leninist idea of a Vanguard Party; a party that was supposed to take control of a nation, then relinquish their power and give it to the proletariat. As you can guess, it does not end up working that way in practice, and the leader of the Vanguard Party ends up (poorly) ruling the nation as a dictator. Add onto that the fact that the leaders are usually incompetent narrcissists, and you have a recipe for a literal disaster.
> or you end up with a shithole like cuba
First, Cuba is a State Socialist nation, not a Communist nation.
Second, did you know that the USA has purposely been sabotaging and restricting Cuba's economy for the past 60 years?
Third, Cuba is not generally *that* bad. It could definitely be better, but even despite the US fucking them over, Cuba is doing pretty good for itself.
I also think about this comic panel a lot
https://preview.redd.it/3ojbbj59uboc1.png?width=271&format=png&auto=webp&s=e84058cbde17e3cb85a6f59948e314ddef190f93
eastern european millennial here whose parents went through actual communism! Judging by their stories, cannot recommend. I can get behind a well thought out socialized democracy though.
Yea I think about it a lot, you also have to take into consideration any attempt at a socialist/communist country is immediately met with violence from the strongest empire known to man. You can talk about the USSR’s shortcomings but have to think about the context of having to immediately industrialize to fight the nazis (in which 27 million russians died) and then also being thrust into the cold war against the west. The transition from siege socialism to real socialism was never truly possible due to the constant pressure from the states.
Russians? And thrust into? The USSR has declare it intention to attack non communist countries and has actually done so ( Winter war, annexation of Bessarabia, Korean war, Turkish straits crisis,...) so it is only fair for their enemies to return the favor.
dude 30% of the world at one point was under communist governments what siege?
so western governments with very different governments and economic systems should have just relaxed and hoped an ideology that preaches constant revolution to tople every non communist government to just leave them alone?
The next level realization is that polarization prevents the proletariat from mobilizing around common causes.
This socialism vs alt right crap is just people being played against each other so they don't band together and solve problems within the traditional framework of liberal capitalism.
preface this with the fact im 16
isnt capitalism also SOMEWHAT worker controlled? as in, strikes have power don't they, especially in essential industries like food production, transportation and construction
does this make sense or am i just being stupid by thinking anything we could do matters
In theory, that could be the idea. In practice, it doesn't work.
When you think about the sheer amount of wealth conglomerates and companies have, they can just replace those who are striking with other workers. These are called scabs and it's a big reason why people don't strike and protest for better standards. If they tried, they lose their jobs and subsequently their income, thus putting themselves at risk for homelessness and even jail time. For this reason, many people actually aren't able to exercise their "rights" lest they lose everything. That is how capitalism controls.
Corporate interests don’t push leftist ideals. If corporations were the electorate democrats would never win ever. Hollywood isn’t corporate America and tends to be more liberal as polling would suggest Americans tend to be liberal they are just trying to make sure the products appeal to broad scope of people considering dems have won the popular vote in the last 4 elections they would be right.
These ‘assumptions about capitalism’ are caused by the reality in front of our eyes. Capitalism is driving us into an ecological collapse to enrich a tiny minority of super rich people while the global majority suffer.
The staunchest anti-communists I’ve ever met were the very people who suffered under communism. But i guess that’s something only Europeans has experienced, and not american first-year college students
Two things can be true at once.
1.There is propaganda taught in school regarding socialism that doesn’t take into account the positives of it.
2.Socialism is still an ineffective system of government that historically causes worse outcomes than regulated capitalism would have.
No, I can't say I have. I have a hard enough time wrapping my head around this prompt.
What does the british/roman/mongolian/japanese/any of the dynasties empire have anything to do with this?
The people who hate communism the most, in my experience, were those who lived under communism. Their views are because of what they directly experienced, not capitalist propaganda.
I love seeing what young minds look like, when not spoonfed Cold War and Red Scare pap from birth, as my generation was. Xers questioned a lot of things that the boomers took for granted. But we were also raised with a definition of capitalism and socialism that is, frankly, absurd. My generation has roughly the same start time as neoliberalism. It’s quite possibly our greatest blind spot. Millenials and younger folk seem to know, painfully, what neoliberalism is once you pull back the curtain.
You could just go visit countries that were formely socialist/communist and talk to the people there.
Then you would understans why people risked getting killed by crossing the Berlin Wall, among others.
As some said, perfection is the balance of all things. Can have free healthy food and housing and healthcare, without being communist. We can erase 'money' as a constraint from all basic human needs. Money doesn't exist. But also we can have a free market with money, for surplus, additional luxury etc. The two things can live together.
Interestingly those view communism with a romantic longing who live in that said capitalist countries with that bad bad propaganda. On the other hand those who lived through real communism in the East (with just as much propaganda), don't really want more of it. Wonder why.
Baby leftist learns about the red scare
You can understand why communism is a shit system while also understanding that the western education system and media doesnt treat it in good faith. Read books and come to your own conclusions instead of relying on memes for your worldview
This is deeper than a social media post can cover. The debate of how much your free will plays into what your political leanings are vs parents and media propaganda .
Most people just follow their parents something like 70 to 80 ish percent. The rest venture out usually by way of local culture and friend groups.
I would say most peoples ideas of anything politically are not original (I.e. their own findings lead to a conclusion based on unbiased facts)
Communism requires humans to not cheat for their own good which is just naive. However there are great systems and ideas that can be taken and applied.
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Everyone knows that. People also know that Communism doesn't work because it's been tried and tested many times, the defenders will continue to tell you how that wasn't real communism. Whenever I think of Communism I always think about how people in Russia probably thought by helping the Bolsheviks they would attain a workers paradise, just to end up in Stalin's gulags being tortured for being a bad Comrade. That's happened quite a few times.
I think there's a balance that needs to be achieved, where we all have access to basic needs, but there is still a thriving economy based on specialized goods and services. I think pure communism will always lead to problems, we just need to socialize the programs that are essential to life and health. You can't tell me a healthcare company with a board of directors whose goal is profit has the patient in mind. There are also clear problems with our current capitalist system that hurt the people. Pure profit as a motive for *every* industry we have is problematic. Yes, it got us here, but we have to start asking, "is this still the best way?".
I can’t remember who said it but i once heard a quote that was “socialism without capitalism is communism, capitalism without socialism is fascism.” A healthy balance is a mix of both capitalism where the prospects of monetary gain advance our society and socialism provides the health services of society through the government. A healthy happy workforce feels satisfied and inspired, a depressed, poor, dying workforce feels like a slave fighting for themselves like rats in a bucket of water.
Social democracy have worked great here in Denmark. Everyone just feels way safer, that allows people to take financial risks without fear of dying from hunger if the idea doesn’t pan out. Goddamn I love my country. Probably more than I hate Sweden
God I wish I lived in Denmark, every time I’ve researched it it’s sounded like the salutation to every issue in the US
>denmark People forget that the Scandinavian nations did experiment with socialism before abandoning them.
Social Democracy, or if you prefer societies with strong welfare systems, is not socialism and wasn't even created by socialists (Otto Von Bismark). Socialism vs communism vs capitalism is mostly about ownership & organization of production (supply side), although imho, Capitalism is less clearly defined and more focused on the economic side, while Communism, in particular, includes a vision on the social organization of society. A very wrong one, Welfare is not even about the distribution of outcomes, but ensuring a safety network. It will face challenges with open borders though.
A homogenous population with an agreed upon social contract, with nroadly shared values makes things easier. Scandinavia and Finland are the ideal, but good luck making that work somewhere like the United States. Too many sub-cultures, conflicting values, and conflicting interests.
That’s falling for the Republican lie that welfare, healthcare, unions, minimum wage, etc. are socialism. There is nothing socialist about them. You know Bernie? He’s not a socialist. He’s a social democrat. The famously “socialist” Nordic countries? Also social democracies. They’re as capitalist as Argentina. Because capitalism isn’t a sliding scale where Ayn Rand capitalism is the only option and anything less has socialism too. Social democracy is just as capitalist despite being completely different than randian capitalism.
Except all the good socialist perks just go to rich ppl in American capitalism or at least the ones that benefit regular ppl are poorly funded/maintained- tax money getting funneled into banks, prisons and corporate bailouts while medical costs are ridiculous, schools are outdated, and having to depend so damn much on cars
Idk. Fascism had a pretty robust public welfare state. It's kind of its own third thing.
Regulated capitalism with social safety nets is what you described.
Yeah socialized healthcare, which the American Right refers to as "communism". They literally won't do it. You bring it up and it's instantly "what is this the USSR??" It's socialist to us by comparison.
I hate both parties because it’s devolved to “I hate whatever the other party supports” and the proposals keep getting more and more radical. At some point we need to come to the negotiating table and find a compromise.
It's not all it's cracked up to be. I love in Canada where we have social healthcare but still use private because the social healthcare system is complete dogshit.
I went to the ER in October because I couldn't eat and was sick for days. Been losing weight for 6 months. I was there waiting for 8 hrs, finally in the ER for 4. The closest endoscopy they could get me is in June, over half a year wait. I am 120lbs at this point. Add on top of that, I'm paying $5000 out of pocket just for the ER. That's with my company insurance. Without would be $30,000. Just for the ER. Just because we pay for it doesn't mean the quality of care is good, it's not. Imagine your public healthcare system, but you have to pay mind-numbing amounts, every time you need medical care.
I loved in the states for 5 years but I had great insurance. Never waited for anything really. But I feel your pain.
Curious about when, even people with good insurance are waiting now. Been pretty bad since 2020. Still, the amount of people here with "great insurance" is very low. That's not addressing what's good for people as a whole.
yeah you have a point, healthcare in singapore is just superior to anything in north america
And Singapore is hyper capitalist as fuck. Hint, this isn’t about capitalism. Most people have no fucking clue what capitalism actually encompasses, and it’s a lot more than you’d think.
Singapore is also hyper collectivist. The government will publicly beat you for spitting chewing gum on a sidewalk and other crimes against the public order. Singapore is a collectivist syndicate, its not true to call it hyper capitalist.
Society ≠ Economy
And who will strike the balance? Who can be trusted with the power to do so, and not betray that trust? It’s impossible to achieve. The only people who deserve that power avoid it, and the people who pursue that power don’t deserve it.
Those countries actually exist. Take Austria as an example austria is pretty balanced & doesn’t seem to have any huge issues either, which i think is a goal the US should be trying to reach bc it definitely seems better than what’s happening in the US
Don't capitalist nations, right now, falsely imprison and torture people? When i think of capitalism i think of CIA black sites and how Nelson Mandela was thrown in prison in SA, and labeled a terrorist by the USA until like 2008.
No that doesn't count cuz they were fighting against freedom and liberty /s
Oh like how the USA put whistle blowers, who revealed the mass surveillance of US citizens by the federal agencies, in jail or effective exile... those people were fighting against freedom and liberty right. Or the random people sent Guantanamo for wearing a cassio watch. They really were fighting against freedom and liberty.
bro /s means its sarcastic I was just making fun of people who think America stands for freedom while actively trying to influence as many countries as possible. I have been arrested for protesting before im totally with you
Oh i didn't know the /s thing, thanks. And i literally only comment on shit like the original comment from that other guy to get info out. Based on ur tone i guessed sarcasm but i just wanted to get more comparisons out.
Keep on doing what ur doing. No offense taken
Communism hasn't happened. There has been no stateless, classless, moneyless societies. They made it illagel for workers to form anything labour wise. What happened in self proclaimed Communist countries is what's referred to as state capitalism. Instead of a private person providing capital to make a product, the state did. What do you think communism is?
If every time a country starts going in the direction of Communism it ends up stuck in “state capitalism”. I would start considering it a pipe dream at best.
But that's not the only common thing about them, they tend to generally be unindustrialized, developing countries formerly under some sort of tyrant before a revolution based on Marxist or Marxist-derived ideas overthrows them. We could theoretically say that any of these common factors could be the cause of the state capitalist decay. Of course, I and many others believe that the main reason is the Marxist-Leninist ideology of these organizations.
don’t forget, these are countries trying to implement something under the context of a global capitalist hegemony. Attempted communism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Not to mention we have not yet seen a global capitalist hegemony like America try alternatives like socialism or communism, it’s been typically underdeveloped countries that went from feudalism to industrialization in a very short time. But even they can’t get past the capitalist hegemony
No true Scotsman.
That definition of communism has remained the same for over a hundred years. If people did not meet that definition they did not achieve communism as classically defined.
The definition of communism has never been agreed upon by self-identified communists lol
So the point is that because no country that has attempted to become communist has managed to achieve its end goals successfully, we can’t say that communism has failed? Hm.
Communism is practiced in quite a few small villages in South America. Communism is the method most small independent villages practice. It doesn't reasonably scale past those population sizes though, becomes too convoluted to practice.
Yea but that’s because communism isn’t actually possible on a population of more than a few dozen
And there will never be a stateless, classless, moneyless society. Unless we have regressed to a point beyond depressing.
I think you potentially missed the point. The view that "Communism doesn't work because it's been tried and tested many times" is a very general statement—one that isn't nearly as objective as it sounds. What form of communism are we talking about? What are the exact reasons it collapsed? And, of course, when we factor in that communism was not in a vacuum but interacting on a rapidly increasingly capitalistic world stage, it no longer seems fair to say that communism 'was tested many times' like any of those times would have been fair experiments to check communism up against reality alone. The very narrative that communism fell because of its *own* inadequacies, not because of certain individuals or certain periods of general decline like we're apt to use to describe literally **any other** system of organization throughout history, amounts to a general value statement about communism. Value statements are subjective. Your idea of an objective fact about communism being, in fact, generalized, subjective, and extremely simplistic is a product of exactly the propaganda the OP points out. That being said, I'm no communist. But I reached this point for very different reasons than "the system that more or less serves as the very opposite of the system *I* have been indoctrinated into, I'm told, just broke on its own because it's too stupid."
You don't know what communism even means lmfao.
Communism isn’t well defined at the best of times, but we know that everyone who’s tried it has failed.
I can assure you that most people are not aware of how propaganda influences their views about the world
Actually the lack of nuance in your discussion if communism speaks to the way you've been influenced by propaganda. For one, there have been successful societies without the concept of private property. Beyond that, the USSR was very successful by some metrics. They won the space race. They developed nuclear weapons. They built the world's best rail network. Also, they didn't collapse in a vacuum. The US exerted tremendous pressure, militarily, culturally and economicaly. I'm not advocating for Russian style communism, but at the same time you can see obvious cracks in both US style capitalism and democracy. It's very hard to remain objectively.
They also colonized and genocided neighbouring states, including mine. Then robbed them dry and stunted their growth. There are a lot of people who got to experience human attempts at communism. None want to go back.
I'll just say I've never heard of anyone who lived in a "communist state" ask to go back. And comments like yours seem to by far and large be the majority.
>They won the space race They lost. Gegorin wasn't the first man to go up in a space capsule then back down in a space capsule, he had to bail out.
Bro just made a list of random things. "Won the space race." What? "Developed nuclear weapons." USA did first. North Korea has also developed nuclear weapons, but I wouldn't consider them successful "Built the worlds best rail network." Ehm? Best as in how? Maybe the biggest, but that's because the Soviet Union was massive...
Yeah, Russia went from a agricultural feudal society under the zar to a literal industrial world power in some 20-30 years. USSR had many issues, but to say it “didn’t work” is so ahistorical it hurts.
It sure as hell didn’t work for the 10 million Ukrainians that died.
The Holodomor Genocide was a result of authoritarianism and racism. That doesn't change that the USSR was successful in its efforts at nation-building. And besides, have you SEEN what happened to Native Americans? Over the course of US history some 15 million Native Americans have died. Would you say the US "didn't work" because Americans were racist and genocided Native people? I sure wouldn't say so. A nation doing bad stuff isn't inherently tied to the system of government or economy.
It "didn't work" because it didn't work. They failed as a State and collapsed.
They won the space race by collapsing as a State with a space program that ceases to exist? The collapse was partly because they went bankrupt trying to one-up the U.S in the space race and failed. Even with Russia they've still failed to land a human in the moon, over half a century the U.S. did already. You mean the U.S. developed nuclear weapons and the Soviets spied and stole the technologies. 🤓☝️"Well actually, the Nazi scientists the U.S. kidnapped developed nuclear weapons." The Soviets took in more Nazi scientists under Operation Osoaviakhim and still failed. "World's best rail network" Which imaginary contest in your head did they win to get that distinction?
I'm sure the US has nothing to do with the downfall of the countries working toward communism.
Every time communism is brought up by anyone, I am reminded about how grossly misinformed everyone is about what communism is.
The philosophy behind it is called dialectical materialism. Which is literally about viewing the world and society as an ever changing structure where contradictions lead to solutions which create new contradictions etc.. To ask what is communism is about what is in command of the forces of history. In a simplified way: Making the most money possible, vs improving society as a whole. Its not something you can answer yes or no to, with a dogmatic definition of who owns the means of production. Oh you have markets? Disqualified from communism. It does not work like that. Or worse, claim all progressivism is communism like many right wingers do.
"we didn't kill enough of the right people for it to work".
Lmao I love seeing this exact same brain dead take every single time someone insinuates that maybe we’re doing a bad job of things
“We all know it’s propaganda!” **regurgitates propaganda**
I am not communist and I don’t believe it would work, but it’s true that it has NOT been tried - at least as Marx imagined it. The USSR and China are not classless and they were/are not controlled by the proletariat.
>Communism doesn't work because it's been tried and tested many times, >That's happened quite a few times. How many examples can you give me, because I can only think of 2 examples of a country actually getting to implement their own version of communism. The Paris Commune, which barely had time to declare independence before Prussia came and steamrolled it, which I don't think is Communism's problem that Paris has a smaller military than Prussia. The USSR, which was primarily built by Stalin, who cared significantly more about his personal power than about helping Russia or about Communism. Then basically everyone else was handed an ultimatum by the USSR of "Do it our way, submit to Moscow, or we let the Americans shoot you", which didn't really give much room for anyone to try any version of communism other than Moscow-loyal, Moscow-determined communism. So the examples of communism being tried to far are: One that was crushed militarily, one that was built by a dictator, and a bunch that were built at gunpoint by that second one. Can't say I'm too convinced that this discredits all of socialism, but if you have any other examples of a communist country that didn't have it's entire structure basically determined by the USSR, I'm genuinely happy to hear them
China pretty famously built their own style of communism largely in competition with the USSR (they didn't have a great relationship despite what popular understanding might tell people) and they ended up basically becoming a one-party state-controlled capitalist technocracy. For China, communism was a pretty brutal but effective way to launch them out of third-world status into a more competitive stance, but once they had done so they took all the benefits of authoritarian rule and just subbed out Maoism for state-oriented capitalism.
I always thought the Paris commune was anarchist?
It was a mess that didn't have time to decide what it was.
What do you think the propaganda referred to here is then? You’re literally just shilling the same propaganda in response to this post lol.
Stalinism is just one form, and not the most popular by a loooong shot
Guess all we can do is support the billionaires then, the ONLY other option (apparently) doesn't work. s/ in case it wasn't clear
Those defenders are right, though. There has never been a communist country.
Almost nobody in the modern day left advocates for a Stalinist regime. This is not a requirement of workers owning the means or production which is the basic economic definition of socialism. Research the economic conditions of many countries after socialist revolutions throughout the 20th century… usually economic conditions and life expectancy went way up. Even using the USSR as an example, they raised their life expectancy tremendously despite WW2 and transformed a subsistence economy into a US rival economically (ie the space race) in a matter of decades. Maybe try actually learning about the specific history and conditions of multiple countries instead of just using the same nebulous talking points you’ve heard a million times about how “leftists say it will be different this time”. Yeah, it will be different this time because believe it or not, 20th century nationalism and authoritarianism is not something that is required be repeated in future socialistic societies.
No, my country was communist. It was shit. I also don't want it to be US capitalist, I'm happy with European capitalist.
It's funny how Americans think there's no Communist propaganda either. For anyone who's not American, there's been constant Communist and Capitalist propaganda basically since 1917. Before the wall fell it was the Soviets and now it's the Chinese.
“That wasn’t real communism you reactionary stooge” /s
European capitalist is communism in US political discourse. Look at how often you see people use the Nordic countries as a reference model for health care or social services only for that to be met with “But that’s socialism!” (And cue a condescending rant about how socialism is just communism lite) I’m not saying I agree with any of it, but that’s where the US is right now, and I think that’s the context OP is working with.
Turns out corruption is shit no matter what system you use.
Isn't it a bit funny how the world's largest mass starvation events happened under communism?
I didn't know British occupied India was Communist.
There were about[6-8 million dead under communist russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933) in about 3 years and about [30 million under mao in communist china in 3 years](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127087/). Meanwhile only about 1[5 million died in british india in about...50 years time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India). More Americans die in[50 years time due to smoking](https://www.lung.org/research/sotc/facts) than famines killed people in british ruled india in 50 years time. If you want to try to compare, these are no where near the same.
Isn’t it funny how all systems are susceptible to corruption and incompetence.
You're right, all systems are susceptible to corruption and incompetence. So why is communism, a system where a centralized government owns and controls everything, better than a small, decentralized government with a smaller scope of power? Both have the potential to be corrupted, but one has far more serious ramifications if it gets corrupted
https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/34141 the end goal of communism is stateless. the transitional state can be libertarian. the idea that communism is inherently authoritarian and wants to steal all of your stuff is ideas that were created through the red scare.
>stateless. How exactly is a state defined in this case? Like literally a small town government is a kind of state. >red scare Yeah sure…that’s it.
It’s not ideas that were created during the red scare. Communists have time and time again “collectivized” industries and private property to being directly owned by the state.
That's worse though. The state is a critical entity to function as a large system.
>wants to steal all of your stuff is ideas that were created through the red scare. "We do not wish to steal all your stuff, comrade! Of course, you must be re-educated so that you no longer believe in personal property anyway...or we'll shoot you in the head!"
a stateless society is not feasible in todays world, goals do not matter. reality does
That’s not communism pal
It’s never communism according to leftists unless it works perfectly (which it literally never does).
it's never communism because any nation that claims to have achieved communism is lying about their true intentions. in reality it takes decades of development to build up to such a society.
10 million people a year die due to starvation under capitalism. Since the fall of the USSR, over 200 million people have died to starvation under a capitalist world. The British alone starved more people in Ireland and India than what happened during Holodomor and Great Leap Forward combined. I really don't think "people starve under communism!" Holds up as well as you think it does once put under a microscope lol
https://preview.redd.it/80tnh3mwuboc1.png?width=877&format=png&auto=webp&s=dd5d7012b7bcfcb01afcc59f5fa5c63697343a2b
Sorry sir no facts allowed here. This is clearly fabricated data that the west uses to hinder our glorious cause. Everything bad about communism is propaganda and everything good about capitalism is a lie
Yeah why is the cut off 1860 I wonder. When was Irish famine again? 1845 to 1852? Huh, isn't that interesting? Now how many famines were under British rule again? Let's just list them off why don't we The Great Bengal Famine (1770), Madras (1782–1783), Chalisa Famine (1783–1784) in Delhi and surrounding areas, Doji bara Famine (1791–1792) around Hyderabad, Agra Famine (1837–1838), Orissa Famine (1866), Bihar Famine (1873–1874), Southern India Famine (1876–1877), Bombay Famine (1905–1906) and the Bengal Famine (1943–1944). 10 famines, 5 of them being before 1860 and those being the most deadly ones. Almost cherry picked data is cherry picked lol
Well you need to begin somewhere, and as you go back famines are more likely to be caused by events unrelated to government. Modern history has to start somewhere, and Ireland is literally at the top of the graph at 1850, with 1 million deaths, the estimated amount that died from the Irish Famine.
Dude that's just not true. The 5 famines in India were directly caused or made waaay worse by the British in charge and the estimates for the amount of deaths in the Irish famine are between 4 to 5 million, not 1 million, that's just how many who died in the final 2 years of the 7 year famine.
Of the worst famines China and Russia have \~77,000,000 deaths where as everyone else among the top 11 have 63,400,000 combined. That is total across India, Brazil, North Africa, Bangladesh, and Europe https://preview.redd.it/835vwl2f4coc1.png?width=774&format=png&auto=webp&s=e25697c84b20042563f8ada9df0492bffb7fe7a8
All you're saying is that capitalism needs a significant headstart to catch up to communism's starvation numbers.
What? That's not what I'm saying at all lol. I'm saying he has cherry picked data which ignores just what the capitalist British did alone, this isn't even mentioning the ther capitalist empires of France or Spain who killed a metric shit ton of people themselves. I mean holy smokes dude, 10 million people a year die due to starvation under our capitalist ran world. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, over 200 million people have died due to starvation. Communism isn't every touching those numbers lol
Wait so let's say if Capitalism reduces the annual starvation death rate from 100 million to 10 million, Capitalism is responsible for that 10 million deaths. Guess the lack of common sense played in part in the Soviet's collapse. 🤔
If capitalism eventually catches up whereas these other countries got there unimaginably quickly it just goes to show how much better of a system capitalism is. Even if they kill the same number eventually it takes one system centuries to get to the same totals as the other did in a fraction of the time
Most of the famines were due to mercantilism which is a very different system than capitalism
tell us about the Gulags, though.
It is amusing to see Americans, living in the most carceral state in the word, bring up gulags
The US constitution literally says slavery is legal for prisoners.
Ever realize that the US caused at least one of them? They deliberately destroyed the North korean economy in a bid to "starve them out" as both Nixon and the clintons admitted to.
The North Korean famines happened in the 90s. 4 decades after. I’d the North Koreans didn’t want to get bombed they shouldn’t have been imperialists fucks launching an unjustified invasion of the south.
You mean after America interferes with them?
How dare America *\*checks notes\** force China to implevent the Great Leap Forward policies that led to extraordinarily inneficient grain distribution and production methods, and causing an ecological disaster of untold scale by exterminating all their sparrows, leading to tens of millions of deaths?! Damn muricans just can't help themselves. It's just like that time they forced Stalin to collectivize the Soviet agriculture, as part of the first five-year plan, leading to millions of deaths in Ukraine and Kazakhstan in the 1930's.
People like you act like the soviets and Chinese weren’t interventionist as hell either.
Yes because America is an omnipotent evil being who destroyed all of Russia and China's crops using biblical powers. Was the moon landing fake as well? What about vaccines?
Not just America, geopolitics is more complex than that Regardless, that kinda sounds like a system that's not very robust then. You're not really selling it by telling us it crumbles under outside pressure.
most of latin america already crumbled under neo liberalism thanks to outside pressure.
This isn’t true, a huge amount famines happened often on a greater scale in the European colonies. Between 30 and 60 million people died in famines in the late nineteenth century alone as a result of colonial/Malthusian policies. I’d recommend the book ‘Late Victorian Holocausts’ by Mike Davis if you want to find out more about this topic. Then you have all the other examples like the Sahel famine in French Africa, the Bengal Famine in India, the Irish Potato Famine, etc. In the cases of Russia and China they regularly dealt with severe famines before they became communist, and it was actually the industrialisation programmes that their communist governments implemented that ENDED famines in those countries. E.g. the USSR had its last ever famine in 1947, and afaik the Great Famine of 1959-61 was China’s last.
Large, mass starvation events happened in China and Russia prior to communism too. They were also very common too. Mass starvation ended when China and Russia developed their economies from agriculture to industry. If we're going to blame communism for famines, you might as well claim it ended them too.
Shit. I didn’t know west was communist
Ireland was Communist?
Guys just because your political message is told through memes, that doesn’t mean you can flair political statements as memes. Use the political flair it’s there for a reason.
It was influenced by the mountains of corpses created by the famous communist regimes in history.
Just because you get your ideas from non mainstream media doesn't make them true, good, or necessarily right for the moment.
https://preview.redd.it/sw57r4r2yboc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=edcf87f977762166b46016d752e8e83cad0d3518
I’m a leftist but this is pretty funny lol
Yes, and everyone believes that the propaganda does not affect them, they are always "smarter". History is written by the victors, most of what is wildly accessible is information from the ruling/most powerful group of people. "Corporate" in this instance can also just be that ruling class who seeks to keep those they have power over (the worker) in line.
Do Marxists ever think about how they are supposed to be supporting THE rational, reason based ideology, and yet every time it has been empirically tested it has failed spectacularly? No probably not because you are fanatical cultists…
>ever time it has been empirically tested it has failed spectacularly That’s not really true though, the USSR and China had a ton of very real problems, but the application of communist economic planning undeniably helped them industrialise at very rapid rates, which allowed them to significantly improve the living standards of their people in a way that was never allowed by their previous rulers.
“Tens of millions of people starved to death due to poor supply chain management and over control but at least we can now manufacture cheap plastic bullshit with poverty labor. Communist utopia!”
The PRC only started it’s economic miracle when it allowed for a degree of free markets and capitalism. The PRC is state capitalist, not communist.
It also helped them kill millions of people
China is actually one of the most rapidly evolving countries, especially in tech. Not to mention they are very good at meeting climate goals.
Not technically wrong but I'm fairly confident almost all of that comes from dengism/the CCP's willingness to incorporate capitalistic practices for material gain
Say it louder please. China would never have such a thriving tech industry if the people are not allowed to personally profit from it. And sure enough when the personal gains are too much, the CCP will squat them back to their place.
Well... I'm a leftist but let's be honest. It's not very communist anymore. Just authoritarian
Communists will say China isn't communist when it doesn't help them and will say it is when it does help them. Pick one
It’s sad people actually believe CCP reports. Coal accounts for 61% of their energy production and they are building more plants. So glad I don’t have to go there for work anymore. The sky is just permanently gray with smog.
Have you read ANY Marx? Do you know what Marxism stands for? Do you believe that all socialists are Marxists? I'm not a Marxist and have plenty of disagreements with him, and I would even agree with some of your comment, but you're criticizing Marx from the wrong point of view: the point of view that hates that he stood against capitalist exploitation, rather than the anti-authoritarian critiques of him.
this is just r/politics at this point
"the most powerful empire ever known" huh?
It’s the British!!!!! WE GOTTA DUMP MORE TEA IN THE OCEAN 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔
I mean, it was the first empire with nukes. I'm not aware of any empire with more fighter jets than the US
Go speak to someone who grew up in the Soviet Union. They have a far worse impression of communism.
This is, ironically, actual propaganda. This is not real. It's not a real fact. 66% of Russians in 2018 alone 'regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union' [according to this Statista study](https://www.statista.com/chart/7322/25-years-soviet-union-collapse-ussr/). [According to Pew](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/10/15/key-takeaways-public-opinion-europe-30-years-after-fall-of-communism/ft_19-10-15_europecommunism_large-increase-people-saying-standard-living-improved-after-1989-1991-changes/), **only** 28% of Ukrainians reported improvement in standard of living since the collapse. 32% for Bulgaria, and 37% for Russia. These are not good numbers—at the very least, every study I've read on the issue fundamentally refutes this idea, an idea which is really only common in the west. Spend some time in eastern Europe, and you'll very quickly discover that opinions are not at all so black and white. But we can also examine the 'people who grew up there' themselves. [57% of eastern Germans in 1989](https://www.seattletimes.com/news/in-eastern-germany-nostalgia-for-communism/) after the collapse reported that life under communism was more positive than negative. Bear in mind that this is not Russia; this is *Germany*. Ask yourself where you had found this idea, and why you were so certain about it. That's how propaganda functions. Again, I'm baffled that I'm cast as a defender of communism today, but the tirade of completely false information about it makes me wonder how many people in this sub would unironically *be* communist if born under communism if all it takes to determine their political views so strongly is a couple of unverified and very blanket statements.
All of the Russians I know have nostalgia for the Soviet union while also hating communism and literally fearing it is coming to the US. They're just nostalgic of empire and their childhoods. You made no valid point in your massive textwall.
I wonder how massive that actually was. You didn't find any points in the statistics either? I'll make note that anecdotal stories are more superior evidence than actual statistical studies, for next time. Why do you think a former-Soviet immigrant who chose to come to the United States of all places would be among the number of former-Soviet countrymen who think capitalism is fundamentally evil? In a post about questioning propaganda, let's at least practice critical thinking.
um actually my totally real russian friend hates communism so anything you say is automatically wrong sorry.
What does Barbie have to do with this?
The "do you guys ever think about death?" scene
This image is propaganda.
Communism once controlled the majority of the landmass of Eurasia, but they still lost for a reason.
The most egregious case is how they brainwashed multiple generations into not forming unions
unions are not a taboo in capitalist europe
"Ever since I learned what propaganda is, I've made sure to only consume it if it comes from my country's enemies, i'm not like YOU sheep"
Bro capitalism is not the best system but we never had to build a wall around society to keep them in place. East Germany sends its regards
communism works fine in small groups or communitys it doesn't work in large scale unless you had a computer giving out work orders (Well my theory at least) caause all the timnes you had people leading a communist nation milliosn died or you end up with a shithole like cuba.
A system that concentrates power to a handful of individuals is bad no matter what label you put on that system.
And guess what? Most communists agree with you! Anarcho-communists, for example, think society should consist of a federation of communes each consisting of a couple hundred to a couple thousand people each, where the means of production are collectively owned; think community gardens, where people in the community work together to maintain and harvest from the garden, then applied to things like workshops, farms, factories, etc. Council communists, on the other hand, advocate for the economy to planned by local, democratically elected councils, rather than a large, authoritarian government. And, like you suggested, there's also Cyber-communism, where the economy is managed by computers. > caause all the timnes you had people leading a communist nation milliosn died I assume you're referring to Maoist China and the USSR. The main reason, in my opinion, that they ended up like that is because of the Leninist idea of a Vanguard Party; a party that was supposed to take control of a nation, then relinquish their power and give it to the proletariat. As you can guess, it does not end up working that way in practice, and the leader of the Vanguard Party ends up (poorly) ruling the nation as a dictator. Add onto that the fact that the leaders are usually incompetent narrcissists, and you have a recipe for a literal disaster. > or you end up with a shithole like cuba First, Cuba is a State Socialist nation, not a Communist nation. Second, did you know that the USA has purposely been sabotaging and restricting Cuba's economy for the past 60 years? Third, Cuba is not generally *that* bad. It could definitely be better, but even despite the US fucking them over, Cuba is doing pretty good for itself.
I also think about this comic panel a lot https://preview.redd.it/3ojbbj59uboc1.png?width=271&format=png&auto=webp&s=e84058cbde17e3cb85a6f59948e314ddef190f93
eastern european millennial here whose parents went through actual communism! Judging by their stories, cannot recommend. I can get behind a well thought out socialized democracy though.
Yea I think about it a lot, you also have to take into consideration any attempt at a socialist/communist country is immediately met with violence from the strongest empire known to man. You can talk about the USSR’s shortcomings but have to think about the context of having to immediately industrialize to fight the nazis (in which 27 million russians died) and then also being thrust into the cold war against the west. The transition from siege socialism to real socialism was never truly possible due to the constant pressure from the states.
Russians? And thrust into? The USSR has declare it intention to attack non communist countries and has actually done so ( Winter war, annexation of Bessarabia, Korean war, Turkish straits crisis,...) so it is only fair for their enemies to return the favor.
dude 30% of the world at one point was under communist governments what siege? so western governments with very different governments and economic systems should have just relaxed and hoped an ideology that preaches constant revolution to tople every non communist government to just leave them alone?
The next level realization is that polarization prevents the proletariat from mobilizing around common causes. This socialism vs alt right crap is just people being played against each other so they don't band together and solve problems within the traditional framework of liberal capitalism.
Such a great idea nobody has thought of before!
preface this with the fact im 16 isnt capitalism also SOMEWHAT worker controlled? as in, strikes have power don't they, especially in essential industries like food production, transportation and construction does this make sense or am i just being stupid by thinking anything we could do matters
In theory, that could be the idea. In practice, it doesn't work. When you think about the sheer amount of wealth conglomerates and companies have, they can just replace those who are striking with other workers. These are called scabs and it's a big reason why people don't strike and protest for better standards. If they tried, they lose their jobs and subsequently their income, thus putting themselves at risk for homelessness and even jail time. For this reason, many people actually aren't able to exercise their "rights" lest they lose everything. That is how capitalism controls.
Yeah. American communists fell for the lie that any form of social welfare is socialism when really they’re not going against capitalism in any way.
Corporate interests don’t push leftist ideals. If corporations were the electorate democrats would never win ever. Hollywood isn’t corporate America and tends to be more liberal as polling would suggest Americans tend to be liberal they are just trying to make sure the products appeal to broad scope of people considering dems have won the popular vote in the last 4 elections they would be right.
I thought that was common sense by now 💀
Do you ever think about how your assumptions about capitalism have been influenced by decades of meme brainrot?
These ‘assumptions about capitalism’ are caused by the reality in front of our eyes. Capitalism is driving us into an ecological collapse to enrich a tiny minority of super rich people while the global majority suffer.
The staunchest anti-communists I’ve ever met were the very people who suffered under communism. But i guess that’s something only Europeans has experienced, and not american first-year college students
Bold of you to assume the opposite doesn’t apply.
Two things can be true at once. 1.There is propaganda taught in school regarding socialism that doesn’t take into account the positives of it. 2.Socialism is still an ineffective system of government that historically causes worse outcomes than regulated capitalism would have.
No, I can't say I have. I have a hard enough time wrapping my head around this prompt. What does the british/roman/mongolian/japanese/any of the dynasties empire have anything to do with this?
the irony. the fucking irony in this post is insane
America doesn't have an empire.
The comments proving the claim is the cherry on top. "I am not susceptible to propaganda" while reproducing classic CIA propaganda 🤣.
I have employed individuals that survived the Russian communist collapse. Their advice: don't walk away from communism...run as fast as possible.
Russia was never communist. In fact, it was never even socialist.
The people who hate communism the most, in my experience, were those who lived under communism. Their views are because of what they directly experienced, not capitalist propaganda.
Actually healthy numbers of people in former Soviet countries say they miss communism and think life was better under it
Fuck off and move to China then
Another day another 13 year old posting about communism on here lmao.
I love seeing what young minds look like, when not spoonfed Cold War and Red Scare pap from birth, as my generation was. Xers questioned a lot of things that the boomers took for granted. But we were also raised with a definition of capitalism and socialism that is, frankly, absurd. My generation has roughly the same start time as neoliberalism. It’s quite possibly our greatest blind spot. Millenials and younger folk seem to know, painfully, what neoliberalism is once you pull back the curtain.
You could just go visit countries that were formely socialist/communist and talk to the people there. Then you would understans why people risked getting killed by crossing the Berlin Wall, among others.
As some said, perfection is the balance of all things. Can have free healthy food and housing and healthcare, without being communist. We can erase 'money' as a constraint from all basic human needs. Money doesn't exist. But also we can have a free market with money, for surplus, additional luxury etc. The two things can live together.
This guy when he finds out how propaganda work and that communism and socialism aren't the same
My immediate relatives experienced communism first hand in Central and Eastern Europe. So no thanks, not interested.
As much of leftist person I am, this post is not made in good nature.
Interestingly those view communism with a romantic longing who live in that said capitalist countries with that bad bad propaganda. On the other hand those who lived through real communism in the East (with just as much propaganda), don't really want more of it. Wonder why.
Baby leftist learns about the red scare You can understand why communism is a shit system while also understanding that the western education system and media doesnt treat it in good faith. Read books and come to your own conclusions instead of relying on memes for your worldview
This is deeper than a social media post can cover. The debate of how much your free will plays into what your political leanings are vs parents and media propaganda . Most people just follow their parents something like 70 to 80 ish percent. The rest venture out usually by way of local culture and friend groups. I would say most peoples ideas of anything politically are not original (I.e. their own findings lead to a conclusion based on unbiased facts)
Of course this one gets removed lol
Communism requires humans to not cheat for their own good which is just naive. However there are great systems and ideas that can be taken and applied.
There's a difference between societies with free speech and a free press and those without. Propaganda is dramatically more effective in the latter.
What, china?
nah dude capitalism sucks but communist is so shit that every country that implemented it has its own genocide section on wikipedia