this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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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
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.
I really can’t tell if this is /s. Could you please clarify
“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.
Millions less than the previous government forms, like Feudalism. Famines disappeared quickly and industrialization allowed for life expectancy to double in the USSR and Maoist China, despite issues like Civil War, World Wars, and so forth.
Did a lot go wrong? Absolutely. Were they massive improvements? Also yes.
@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
Pure Communism, ie the formation of society after the contradictions within Socialism have been resolved, is not called a Utopia except by anti-communists.
@Cowbee
Resolved how? Did I somehow miss a memo?
There's a reason that all past attempts at the establishment of communist states have failed. Lenin, Mao, et al, had grand ideas steeped in Marxist teachings. All of them ended up in an authoritarian state. Cuba, North Korea, China, USSR. All failed because of the human factor.
Contradiction refers to the remaining vestiges from Capitalism, ie a State, Class, and Money. I suggest reading up on Historical Materialism and Dialectics.
Secondly, failing because of "the human factor" is a purely idealistic outlook and not a materialist analysis, you're arguing off of vibes.
@Cowbee that's funny, you calling me idealist, and you proposing classless, stateless society.
Hilarious.
Yes, you are quite literally an idealist by citing "the Human Factor" as a necessary reason for issues faced by AES countries.
Idealism proposes the idea of unchanging Human characteristics, Materialism proposes the idea that environments shape ideas. The former is undoubdtedly unscientific, while the latter is scientific.
Fighting for a goal is not what I am referring to as Idealism.
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.
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.
It's not propaganda to acknowledge they exist.
It's propaganda to normalize sociopathic behavior as the appropriate response to sociopathy.
That's an astonishingly immaterial, idealistic analysis.
Communism assumes people work in their best interests, and because ideas come from material environments and not from some idea of "spirit," Humans are more cooperative in cooperative systems and competitive in competitive systems.
A Communist leader is one that is democratically accountable and production is owned by the state, therefore all "profits" are reinvested into the economy for the benefit of all, rather than an elite few. Corruption is possible, yes, but so too is legislating protections against Corruption. In Capitalism, this corruption is required to function.
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