this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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The communist version of this meme has someone with a whip and sword standing behind them and telling them to work for the benefit of the people or die
You know I'm a communist, and I'd actually wager we would agree on your stance here if you chose better words. What you're actually advocating against is state capitalism, and we both agree it's a horrific and unjust system.
Something I've noticed about "anti-communists" is they absolutely love taking the USSR, CCP, and DPRK at their word for what they are. When they describe themselves as communist/socialist, you take it as an undeniable fact.
Do you think the DPRK is a democratic republic? It's in the name. Of course you don't, because it'd be ridiculous to let an authoritarian regime change the definitions of words to mean whatever they want it to mean :)
There's two paths to talking with a communist. Either they're a tankie and start singing the praises of the USSR and PRC and all sorts of totalitarian hellholes, or they start talking about hypothetical economic systems and states which haven't been shown to be practically achievable. I don't say this to be a dick, man. I much prefer the utopian idealist communists over those who cheer when political dissidents are machine gunned for wanting democracy. But it still doesn't make libertarian communism a workable system, whether it's anarchic communism or democratic socialism or some other form of stateless society.
So, I am happy to be civil with you, I just fundamentally disagree about whether attempting to achieve those ideals would end well. In my opinion, it would have one of three results - anarchy and a breakdown of the economy, imposition of totalitarian rule in reaction to groups of people who don't want to give up their private property rights, or reversion to another form of economic structure, like capitalism.
No economic or political system can be shown to be practically achievable before it's been achieved. If you don't think the following examples are examples of genuine socialism/communism, then that's not an argument against the ideology.
We've had communists fight alongside other leftists. So revolutionary Catalonia was a functioning leftist space, meeting all the criteria to be called communist (classless/moneyless/stateless). It functioned incredibly well for a year before it was invaded.
If you want a longer, but smaller example, Red Vienna existed for about 2 decades and was a fully functional socialist space that improved worker's lives before being outlawed by a regime change.
If your position is that imperialist capitalist nations will always invade/outlaw well-functioning socialist/communist systems, you can't know that for sure, but it's definitely a possibility. That doesn't mean the entire idea is worth throwing away.
What imperialist capitalist nations
It won't always be the same ones so I'm unsure of what you're asking. Which ones invaded the spaces I listed before?
For Revolutionary Catalonia it was the Nationalist Faction who overthrew them. They advocated for, and implemented, a form of national syndicalism that was "fully compatible with capitalism".
For Red Vienna is was the fascists who overturned the socialist policies and returned the city to a state of capitalism, allowing land-leeches and other bourgeoise to return to continue exploiting the working class.
Well allow me to present the third option: communism has been tried in Australia and North America, and it worked. Marx's ideas of what a communist society would look like were informed by descriptions he read of how the Haudenosaunee people actually organised their society. They did communism for thousands of years and it worked.
Marx covers tribal societies in his books and he doesn't consider them to be practicing the socialist mode of production. In fact, he describes the tribal mode of production. You should read some theory.