Why did communism always turn into a kind of dictatorship?
Afaik this happened with every single instance of a communist country. Communism seems like a pretty good idea on the surface, but then why does it always become autocratic?
263
Comments307View original on gregtech.eu
Attempts to implement communism at the scale of a nation state have always involved significant concentration of power. It may be impossible to do otherwise.
Power corrupts, and concentrations of power attract the corrupt.
So you're saying with enough checks and balances that distribute power widely enough through legal offices and separations of power, some sort of democratic socialism would in theory be possible (assuming a peaceful transition via pre-deternend legislative changes were in place and ready to be followed)?
For a real Marxist revolution to take place, the entire populace has to stand up at once and decide to make this change. This requires humanity to do some pretty broad and general evolution before we, as a race, are nearly ready. Checks and balances won't fix the fundamental problem that humans are selfish and want more for themselves at the expense of others.
It's odd that humans being selfish and wanting more for themselves is an argument for a system where stamping on people to make your share bigger and keeping others down is encouraged rather than trying to dampen those impulses.
Or on the flip side, maybe they seem so much of that philosophical/ethical black hole "Human Nature" in a system where they're encouraged because our current economic mode strongly encourages them, rather than them being immutable fact?
People forget that humans are evolutionarily based on familial groups above all else. People like to act like humans in the past were all sharing and helping each other for funsies when in reality you'd be slaughtering your neighbors children for their food if it meant your children got to eat.
Humans are 9 meals away from anarchy at all times. The minute things go south it's every family for themselves. This is a fact for the majority of the human population. That fact extends to periods of prosperity as well because why would I share with a stranger when I could stockpile for my family?
I wouldn't say it's human nature, more like nature nature, as everything here seems to revolve around getting something at the expense of others. We're just doing that at a larger/deeper/ a tad mo intelligent scale.
I wouldn't say it's human nature, more like nature nature, as everything here seems to revolve around getting something at the expense of others. We're just doing that at a larger/deeper/ a tad mo intelligent scale.
If you do the thing and you do it right and you don't fuck it up. Then it might work.
Marx opined that certain material conditions had to be achieved before a socialist state could be successfully made. These material conditions include bourgeois capitalist democracy. Marx explicitly said that capitalism forges the tools with which it will be destroyed.
A certain subset of communists known as Marxist-Leninists decided that bourgeois capitalist democracy wasn't necessary if you just oppressed people REALLY hard, you could skip straight to a socialist state. And because they 'succeeded' in overthrowing traditional Marxists in 1917 Russia and getting the full power of a massive country to spread their ideology, they've had bootlickers calling their particular brand of insanity the only 'real' form of communism ever since.
When we think of 'communist' countries, we think of Marxist-Leninist countries which tried to jump from feudal societies to socialist societies, which, quite obviously from the results, doesn't work. Doesn't stop the cultists from licking boots, of course.
There's also a story in the hammer and sickle itself. It was spun as a symbol of 'all workers' but its original purpose was to depict an alliance between farmers (who owned the land they worked) and the tiny population of wage earners in Russia's largest cities (who didn't even own their homes). The farmers saw no reason for the new policies so concessions had to be made.
Lenin's Russia had to leverage the state apparatus to fiercely industrialize and capitalize, effectively creating an enormous business conglomerate with a company store that encompassed nearly every product in the nation outside the black market. But with all the complacency of abject monopoly. They couldn't skip generalized capitalism, and so they created it in a way that seriously disadvantaged workers as capitalism does.
In other words: state monopoly capitalism. Wrong direction from marxist withering of state: instead seeks to establish a permanent totalizing state, oppressing all, including the vanguard. Stalin's paranoia metastasized and now oligarchs pick over the bones.
Centralization of decision-making. It's ironic actually. One of the main problems of capitalism that Marx described is the separation between labor and ownership. All the talk about "means of production".
Communism actually makes it worse. In capitalism yes you have the owners who have all the control and reap all the benefits, but you have many capitalists competing, so the power is kinda distributed inside the capitalist class. The way communism was always implemented is through a communist party and state control of the economy.
You get an even smaller group of people controlling the means of production. It amplifies exactly the main problem of capitalism by creating a very hierarchical class society where the party leadership takes a role of what is almost "nobility".
There's also just a fundamental problem with planned economies from a purely economic standpoint: they are much less efficient at actually providing the minimum set of goods and services required by a population, and they're worse at achieving growth. See the most recent Nobel Prize in economics for a citation. Funnily enough, the same paper's arguments apply equally to oligarchic economies and crony capitalist economies, which are semi-planned economies by a small group of the ultra wealthy.
More specifically to the OP, communist countries have planned economies, which by nature requires a strong authority to tightly control production. Hence why communist states always have very consolidated political power structures. And once the power is consolidated, all it takes is one bad actor to get that power and ruin everything.
Géza Hofi was one of the greatest comedians in Hungarian history. He was active under and very outspoken about the failures of the ruling communist party. One of his most memorable performances was "How many pigs will be born?" (video, unfortunately without subtitles).
Party officials, wearing nice brown trench coats, visit old man Joe's farm.
"Comrade Joseph, how many pigs will be born?"
"I don't know."
"Shut your mouth, peasant, and give me the number."
"What's the plan?"
"14."
"Then it'll be 14. Have you told the swine? Better that you talk to her, since you're both on the same level."
(the story goes on, but I don't want to translate the entire thing)
If you think about it every company is a tiny planned economy with all the power held by a few people, too.
Some of them even make brainwashing propaganda for their employees to think that sacrificing themselves to the company is glorious.
Not every company. There's plenty of free-lancers around. There's oddities like valve.
But yes, the idea is a mix of companies, different shapes and sizes, coordinating through markets.
This isn't always true, and is arguably not the natural state of capitalism. Capitalism, without state intervention, will tend towards monopoly as economies of scale and market power push out any competition.
Iirc this is what Trade Syndicalism was meant to solve. After all the talk about the people's rebellion it gets into balancing power by keeping it distributed among unions. So your political career would be to get elected in your union and then serve on the councils at different levels.
So we need to destroy the means of production, got it. Down with anything built after 1825, we living like its 1799!
Couldn't we live like it's 1825 if everything after that was destroyed?
Yeah, but I can't sing that to the tune of Prince's 1999
Chile was a communist country and didnt become autocratic because of it, the US murdered their democratically elected president then planted a dictator in his place. So my guess is it doesn't always end that way on it's own. Russia speedran the capitalism to fascim transition to, it's been capitalist since 1991, sham elections since 2005, so they're not a good example of any kind of economic or government system. China has a tight grip on their population but don't let the propaganda distract you from the fact that the US is just as much a surveillance state as China with the one exception being how much China micromanages it's people when they leave the country, but I wouldn't bet against America keeping tabs on expats the same way it was found out that America was spying on its allies in the EU.
I think this question ignores mountains of contexts in an attemtp at reducing a problem into one facet.
The US may collect as much or more information as China but their enforcement actions taken based on this information are far far more limited.
Not always. The US bombed striking workers on Blair mountain, and bombed a Philly neighborhood in the 80s to target activists. A portland protestor who shot a fascist demonstrator in self defence was summarily murdered by the cops days later before they even announced their presence. An unarmed cop city protestor was shot dead after one cop pretended a gunshot behind him was from the protestors. And god help you if youre a Boeing whistleblower or sex trafficker to the politicians. Even if China does this more often its hard to ascribe that to communism if the most anti communist nation in history does the same thing but just less often. These targeted things hide in the statistics for killings by cops because cops in the US kill more people annualy than mass shooters do.
The US has many flaws and these incidents were terrible. But these largely didn’t involve the modern intelligence apparatus we are discussing. We have large numbers of people here on Lemmy actively calling for a socialist revolution but they’re completely safe as long as they follow the law.
Try calling for revolution in China and see how it goes. Leaders of even relatively non-political protest movements or advocates for minority rights are frequently disappeared or executed. In the US, there may be isolated incidents of this nature (typically by local law enforcement) but largely social critics are free to organize legal resistance to the state without repression.
Of course, there are reasons to worry we might be headed in that direction. All the more reason to organize and resist while you still can.
To be clear, I don’t ascribe these actions to communism. China is not communist by any reasonable definition. I ascribe these actions to authoritarianism. While the US is somewhat authoritarian, it is less so than China (at least within its borders—foreign policy is a different can of worms).
To play devil's advocate, none of those vanguard parties were ever allowed to exist peacefully. They were always attacked, from the inside and out, by capitalist and fascistic powers. It's kind of hard to get rid of the state when it is needed to defend from other nations and groups looking to destroy it.
I'm not saying that a Vanguard party would necessarily ever voluntarily give up it's powers and disintegrate into pure communism without a large part of the world struggling against it, but it would be more likely to.
That is just pure speculation, though, because we live in a world that has shown that it will struggle against communism until the end. The Vanguard Party idea is flawed, because it fails to account for this indefinitely long struggle, and fails time and time again to offer a valid exit strategy into the next stage of Socialism/Communism.
Arguably defense will always be necessary until we actually achieve world peace, you can't just unilaterally start acting as if you won't get attacked. So the vanguard party thing is pretty fundamentally at odds with how the world works, if relinquishing control is actually the goal.
It's crazy how far down one has to go for the right answer. MLs are by definiton highly authoritarian.
It's like asking why successful fascist always creat dictatorships... Like that's their plan.
Ideologically, Leninism supported vanguardism, a variation on Marxism that said that the Communist party was supposed to drag the early-20th-century proletariat into the revolution, instead of waiting for late capitalism where the proletariat would (according to Marx) naturally become revolutionary. This, and the notion of "false consciousness", authorized Communist parties to go against the expressed (democratic) will of the proletariat, on the theory that the proletariat's judgment was clouded by false consciousness, while still claiming to act in the interests of the proletariat.
Basically, "we (the party) know better than you (the people)" was ingrained into Leninism from the beginning, and the major communist revolutions either were or became Leninist. Maoism was a branch off of Leninism as well.
Keep in mind that it wasn't even the proletariat that accomplished the Revolutions, it was the peasantry. Marx wasn't against the idea but he would have been surprised.
Towards the end, Marx actually expected Russia to go through a communist revolution, and that it may even be the start of the revolutionary wave in Europe. See the preface for the 1882 Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto for reference.
I love learning new things that had just never occurred to me before. It happens a lot more here than it ever did back on Reddit.
Equating all socialism with the authoritarian regimes of the 20th century oversimplifies a complex political tradition.
Dictatorial tendencies are not intrinsic to socialism but are contingent on specific historical and political contexts.
Russia: The Bolsheviks' turn to authoritarianism was partly due to the civil war, external invasions, and a lack of democratic traditions. These circumstances led to the consolidation of power to preserve the revolution, not as an inevitable feature of socialist theory.
In other contexts, socialist movements (e.g., in Scandinavia) have successfully implemented social democratic policies without authoritarianism.
The role of individual leaders and political choices in shaping socialist experiments. Figures like Lenin and Stalin made decisions that prioritized centralized control, which deviated from the principles of worker self-management and democratic participation.
These deviations were not a necessary outcome of socialism but reflected the particular decisions and dynamics of those historical moments. So a small sample size of major socialist states and people cloud judgement.
External hostility often pushed socialist regimes toward authoritarian measures. For example, the USSR faced significant opposition from capitalist countries, which influenced its militarization and political centralization. This external pressure created a siege mentality that undermined the potential for democratic governance.
Democratic socialism has thrived in various countries, showing that socialism can coexist with democratic principles. Examples include the welfare states of Scandinavia, where socialism has enhanced equality and social welfare without undermining political freedoms.
There is some truth to this but it overlooks the fact that the Bolsheviks were distinct from other socialist parties from the very beginning by their top-down, authoritarian party structure, with Lenin in control. As soon as they gained power, they immediately worked to impose this type of management on the entirety of Russian society by crushing first the Duma, then the Soviets, and finally eliminating any autonomy exercised by their own supporters, the labor unions. They also immediately began engaging in electoral chicanery and postponing or rigging elections in their favor. By destroying or subsuming every other institution in society, the party structure became the primary structure of governance, and Russia became a totalitarian state. Most of this took place even before the civil war and was arguably a major contributor to it.
So why did Russia become a dictatorship? Because the Bolsheviks decided it was desirable based on their understanding and development of socialist theory, and other forces failed to stop them for various reasons. It’s pretty much that simple. The civil war and foreign pressures probably strengthened this tendency but I don’t believe it was the primary cause.
And of course, almost every other socialist revolution since that time was inspired by the Bolsheviks since they “succeeded”. So they largely sought to impose dictatorships as well.
Ultimately it all goes back to Marx and his idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat which is one of the crucial flaws of Marxism in my view.
The dictatorship of the proletariat was supposed to describe the will of a fully conscious proletariat majority being executed by and with the consent of that class. In other words a democracy unclouded by bourgeois interest and false consciousness.
The problem was that at the time of the Russian revolution the proletariat weren't the majority, the peasants were, and what proletariat there were lacked full class consciousness. So Lenin used the vanguard party to emulate what a dictatorship of the proletariat would do, but that wasn't an actual one as Marxist would've described.
There has been some debate about exactly what Marx intended by this phrase but regardless his intentions, in my view it was always doomed to be abused in this way. This was pointed out forcefully by Bakunin and other contemporaries of Marx in the socialist movement, and it came to pass exactly as they predicted. Who decides what constitutes “bourgeois interest” or “false consciousness”? The party of course, and who controls the party? The party leadership, or in other words, Lenin, Stalin, or whoever else manages to connive their way onto the throne. This is far from a proletarian democracy, and if that’s what Marx wanted, he ought to have chosen his words far more carefully.
This also dovetails with another key flaw in Marxism which is its class reductionism. Political leaders can and do have distinct interests from the proletariat, even when they may have once belonged to that class. We see this tension clearly in every supposed proletarian government in history, and many others besides. So in addition to the problems of top-down hierarchy, the decision to have Bolshevik leaders be full-time revolutionaries was also a large contributor to their alienation from the people whose interests they claimed to pursue, and the horrific violence they soon inflicted in on them.
GREAT answer!
THIS. This is THE reason most Marxists give for the necessity of authoritarianism in the first stages of transition to a Communist society.
That makes pretty good sense to me, but what about China? They are no longer in the first stages correct? What's their excuse?
Note: all of this is steal manning dengism, I am not a tankie advocating for it
They are in the first stage. Classical Marxist theory divides development into two revolutions / stages:
The first revolution is the bourgeoisie overthrowing the feudal order, eg. The American revolution, the English civil war, French revolution of 1830. After the bourgeoisie take over they will use the proletariat to industrialize and develop the means of production. This will eventually lead to a boom in efficiency and production, the peasants moving from the countryside to cities, and abundance of necessities. Eventually though everyone's needs will be met and without an expanding market to profit from capitalist will be forced to produce more efficiently with less labor to get profits from there now limited market. This will lead to mass layoffs and unemployment which leads to
The socialist revolution where the proletariat overthrow the bourgeoisie and sieze the productive forces. They will then distribute labor fairly so you have 8 people working 10 hours instead of 1 person working 80 and 7 others unemployed. This then leads to communism where people have control over production and use it to guarantee well being and leisure instead of profit.
In order to get to this communist phase though you need to industrialize and develop the means of production so you can provide people with basic needs with little labor. The problem is the two major countries where socialism took hold, Russia and China, were still largely agrarian feudal societies. So they had to develop the means of production, Russia, and maoist china did so with 5 year plans, which had some success and some catastrophic failure but was ultimately pretty inefficient. So after mao a new leader in China named deng Xiao ping took over and followed a policy of allowing capitalism into the country to develop the means of production and industrialize. This unleashed powerful forces in the country that needed to be tamed by an even more powerful state, otherwise they would take over like they did in other capitalist countries. Then all the bloodshed from the original Chinese revolution would be for not as they would have to do another revolution to remove the bourgeoisie again. So the state maintains tight control to avoid "regressing" into a capitalist democracy until they fully develop and industrialize. At which point they will use that powerful authoritarian state to disposses the capitalist class and usher in communism.
Thanks for that explanation!
So, arguably, a country like the US is a better place for such ideals to minimize the time spent in the first phase and hasten the transition to the second phase since we are already industrialized?
(Not, by the way, that I say this to suggest it is necessarily a fair tradeoff for the first phase. I'm not making a judgement there at all.)
Yes, marx always thought a socialist revolution would come in the late stages of industrial capitalism. Everyone thought it was going to be in Germany up until WWI. The problem is capital becomes entrenched and people become comfortable, especially if they benefit from imperialism and exploitation abroad or of a minority racialized underclass.
Another problem with skipping the first revolution and industrializing under socialism is it gets blamed for the the horrors of industrialization. The early stages of industrialization are always horrific with long hours, bad working conditions and slum living conditions. Combine that with general conservatism and desire to stick to a traditional life and you have to coerce the peasents into going into the cities to become industrial laborers. Capitalism did this through enclosure and farm consolidation, the soviets did it more blatantly, sometimes at gunpoint. Either way it builds an animosity with the system that robbed you of your traditional life.
Post Qing/Early Republican China was an absolute mess of competing factions, and it's here that the CCP - with strong Russian backing was born.
The 1920s and 30s saw the government of the Republic of China decide that defending itself from Japan was less important than crushing the Communists, and was embroiled in civil war (and a continuation of the warlord battles consolidating power post-Qing collapse) with both sides receiving foreign support.
In the end, the Japanese invasion became big enough Chaing Kai-shek was forced to work with/not actively fight against the CCP, which the Communists took as an advantage to resupply and restock and engage in guerilla war against Japan while letting the Republic's forces waste manpower and supplies with the pitched battles, so the Communists were able to overwhelm the Chinese Government in the reopening of the civil war after the end of the Second World War.
Early Communist China spent its life on a war footing, expecting (quite validly as declassified US documents show) the Korean War to push into China itself if the UN forces weren't held in the peninsula, or the Civil War to warm up again with Chiang trying to retake the mainland with US backing.
This led all led to, from during the Long March in the first part of the Chinese Civil War and into Mao's rule of the PRC, the establishment of a strong authoritarian government ideology. And while after the failing of the Great Leap Forwards and the resulting famine, led to Mao's politiking ending the push to a less centralised power body with the Cultural Revolution and his taking back centralised power over the country.
Mao's legacy has lingered, and the '89 protests led to a decided nailing shut of the slow shift wider democratic rule in the PRC, at least until Xi is gone and his picked successor is deposed, as the CCP feel that remaining in power is more important than anything else.
Not sure if /s
This is something that I wish more people who talked about this would acknowledge and engage with. I get it, authoritarianism isn't good. It's not like we want that. It's not the goal. But it's really easy to sit on the sidelines from a relatively cushy life in the imperial core and judge all the people out there who are dealing with the historical reality of colonialism and feudalism and the current reality of imperialism. They are actively engaged in the practical task of liberating themselves from forces, both external and internal (old power structures/privileges) that seek to violently return them to a condition of servitude. The decisions they made have to be viewed through the lens of that context.
That doesn't mean we can't discuss and criticize them, but it's worth engaging in the nuance of the history rather than out of hand dismissing their attempts as inherently illegitimate, evil, and/or misguided. What were the conditions they were operating under? What dangers did they face? Were their actions the best strategy for achieving the future they wanted? Was what they gave up too great? Did they have the capability to take a more open path? Have/had their decisions irreparably led them astray or were/are they still on the path to that eventual communist society on some time scale?
If you think they're wrong for what they did, you still have to be able to answer the question of how you protect your revolution from forces that will spy on you, sabotage your industry, fund right wing militias to terrorize people, sanction and blockade you, or even invade you? Or if you think the path wasn't even violent revolution in the first place, what is your answer to how you get to where you want to be when the power structure that would need to allow this is also invested in not allowing this? It's a bit harder to see how this is made difficult or even impossible in liberal "democracies," but it should be uncontroversial to acknowledge that some kind of force was necessary to escape from illiberal systems like Feudalism in Russia/China or from colonial regimes like in Vietnam.
The one thing I'd push back on from your comment is about the welfare states of Europe. That's not really what socialism is about. They've made life better for people in their own country, yes, but it's on the backs of those exploited in the third world. That's why communism is inherently internationalist. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." You need to be able to build a movement that can work to lift everyone up with you, or at least not drag them down for your own benefit. I'd be interested to have more of a discussion on this, but that's the standpoint I'd start from.
democratic socialism has thrived in in imperial states
Imagine asking a question to a less qualified, more ideologically antagonistic group of people than you just have.
That's fair, but frankly, in my experience, the average American's idea of communism is "evil bad oppression big gubmint dictatorship". I was never taught in school about the theory behind communism or the practical government of the USSR (regardless of how close they may or may not have been), so I have little understanding into how these systems actually work and whether it's actually beneficial for those under them. I'm trying to rectify that on my own time but there's many people who don't care enough to do so and just parrot the same thought terminating cliches like "human nature".
Since you said you're trying to rectify that, allow me to hijack and recommend my introductory Marxist reading list. Section 1 is all you need to get the basics and a decent contextualization of AES states, but you can feel free to continue onward. Nearly every work has an audiobook and a text format linked, and the 2 works without an audiobook are short (and there are hopes of getting an audiobook for them, fingers crossed!).
I'm almost finished listening to Blackshirts and Reds by Parenti, one of the books in the list that @[email protected] posted as a reply to your message. I think it's been a great introductory book - brief and easy to understand.
It's wide-ranging book even though it's brief, and one of the things I found interesting about it was that he not only gave credit where it was due (ex: producing vastly more egalitarian society with all the benefits that come with that) but he also pointed out some shortcomings, such as the failure of centrally planning national economies, like someone else has pointed out in another comment here. I highly recommend the book.
Edit: I also wanted to say props to you for being open-minded and trying to learn and understand instead of just swallowing the narrative we've been fed our whole lives.
Yep, exactly why I put it there! In the eyes of many non-Marxists, the USSR was an irredeemable monster of a country. This leads to conflicts with the general rising opinion of Marx among liberals as well, that must mean either the USSR wasn't Marxist, or that Marx himself is outdated. On the contrary, more mundane yet heroic than all, the USSR was real, not a paradise and not a hellscape. Marxism in the heads of dreamers is always going to veer towards impossibility and be pure and free of struggle, when history tells us otherwise. In fact, such an attitude is anti-Marxist.
The reason I put it there is because Parenti has done what I believe to be the best job contextualizing and myth dispelling surrounding AES. Most people seem to think mere awareness that the Red Scare existed means that that was something from the past, and not still ongoing. They believe simple awareness allows them to see through it all, without actually digging into it.
There are a great many reasons to remain a Marxist and to continue believing in Public Ownership and Central Planning, but without learning what did and did not work we will repeat their mistakes. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for continuing to suggest Parenti's book! I think you're the poster who has been regularly suggesting it in your posts as a first read, correct? If that's the case, it was thanks to you that I read it! It's a great book. Once I finish this I will work down the rest of your reading list.
Thanks for the kind words! I do throw it around a lot, haha. If people actually read what I link, that's a massive victory! Feel free to ask any questions you may have about it. I also think following Blackshirts up with the famous Yellow Parenti Speech is a great way to close out that section.
You're welcome! I just wanted to let you know that you're making a difference. :) Thanks for the offer to answer questions and also for the link to the speech!
Easy.
Ask this question almost literally anywhere else on the Internet.
The english speaking internet
I don't think the Polish parts are going to be friendly either.
Lots of reasons, but here's one:
Because one of, if not the main purpose of money is to provide a decentralized way of transferring information about economic needs and capabilities. Without that mechanism in place, the only way of determining where goods can be created and where they need to go (a massive problem that it is a daily miracle we don't generally have to deal with) is by an overbearing authoritarian state.
Spoken like someone that hasn't paid attention to the supply chains of places like Walmart.
We already have command economies. They exist and are functional. The owners are simply siphoning away the surplus value.
So you're saying you agree?
Walmart is absolutely a result of capitalism, those intricate supply chains are in place to make money. Maybe we could do it without a common way to track needs for a while, but would it adapt? Would the alternative resist corruption better? The invention of Money almost seems an inevitable consequence from one perspective.
I don't think this answers the original question, but it's an interesting side topic.
That really depends on what you mean by money and how it’s used in the economy. David Graeber wrote a really great book covering this called “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” that I highly recommend.
As large as Walmart is, it is still absolute peanuts compared to the scale and (especially) dynamism of global production and consumption as a whole. Global supply chains have to change much faster and in arbitrary ways, compared to the centralized chains of something like Walmart, which in turn is also still subject to the external pressures of competition -- even just hypothetical competition based on some hypothetical course of action is a powerful constraint.
There's a lot of confusion in these comments regarding Marxist theory, presumably from people who haven't actually engaged with the source material, so I want to clarify something I see repeated frequently in this thread with little pushback. The Marxist theory of the State is not the same as the Anarchist, nor the liberal. Marx defined the State as a tool of class oppression.
The reason I state this is because there's a confused notion that Marxists think there should be
I'll address these in order. First, the Vanguard is in no-way meant to be unaccountable, nor a small group of elites, but the most politically active, practiced, and experienced among the proletariat elected by the rest of the proletariat. The concept of the "Mass Line" is crucial to Marxist theory, that is, the insepperability of the Vanguard from the masses. If this line is broken, the Vanguard loses legitimacy and ceases to be effective, whether it falls into Tailism or Commandism. These tendencies must be fought daily, and don't simply vanish by decree.
Secondly, the basis for Marxian Communism is the developmental trends of Capitalism. Markets start highly decentralized, but gradually the better Capitalists outcompete and grow, and as they grow they must develop new methods of accounting and planning. Capital concentrates in fewer and fewer hands, yet socialization increases as these conglomerations begin to reach monstrous heights and require incredibly complex planning. The development of such methods and tools is the real, scientific foundation of Public Ownership and Central Planning.
Continuing, once the Proletariat takes control and creates a Proletarian State, the Proletariat, the more experienced among them the Vanguard, gradually wrests from the bourgeoisie their Capital with respect to that industries and sectors that have sufficiently developed. This process continues until all Capital has been folded into the Public Sector, at which point laws meant for restraining the bourgeoisie begin to become superfluous and "die out." The Vanguard doesn't "dissolve" or "cede power," but itself as a concept also dies out, as over time new methods of planning and infrastructure make its role more superfluous. Classes in general are abolished once all property is in the Public Sector, and as such the State no longer exists either, as there isn't a class to oppress.
This is why Marxists say the State "withers away." It isn't about demolishing itself, but that Marx and Engels had a particular vision of what the State even is, and why they said it could not be abolished overnight.
Hope that helped! As a side note, asking this on Lemmy.world, an anti-Marxist instance, is only ever going to get you answers biased in that direction. I suggest asking on other instances as well to get a more complete view.
I wouldn’t call Lemmy.world anti-Marxist. I would say there has definitely been some knee-jerk to the heavy-handed moderation of Lemmy.ml, but being opposed to the more extreme methods of Lemmy.ml doesn’t mean opposition to Marxism in concept. It means you’ll get a broader set of responses since criticism won’t get deleted by the mods/admins, but there are still plenty of leftists on Lemmy.world.
Similar to how opposing Stalinism doesn’t mean one opposes Marxism, you know?
Lemmy.world defederated from the largest explicitly Marxist aligned instances, their thread going over why spells out pretty clearly that opposition to liberalism was the key determining factor in doing so. Lemmy.ml isn't even a Marxist instance, only admin'd and moderated by Marxists, yet is the instance with undeniably the most conflict with Lemmy.world currently among their federated instances. Moreover, many lemmy.world mods have expressed negative opinions towards Marxism directly, here's an example.
Lemmy.world is a liberal instance, is admin'd and moderated largely as such, and has taken deliberate measures against Marxism and Marxists. I believe it's fair to consider Lemmy.world to overall be anti-Marxist. Does that mean no users share Marxist sympathies? No, of course not, but overall the bias is clear. Similarly, by defederating from the larger Marxist-aligned instances, a thread on Lemmy.world is shutting out the viewpoints of most of the Marxists, rather than having a "broad" view, this minimizes the variance in responses.
Just my 2 cents.
I'd agree the MLs aren't Marxist. I don't think a Marxist would unironically stan China Russia and north Korea.
On what grounds do you say Marxist-Leninists aren't Marxists? The world over, the vast majority of Marxists fall under the umbrella of Marxism-Leninism.
You can't just claim ownership of all communism and claim everyone falls under the ML umbrella, especially when MLs support dictatorial regimes that are antithetical to communism.
I am not "claiming ownership of all Communism," I am accurately stating that Marxism-Leninism is by far the most common form of Marxism, as it is the basis for the vast majority of AES states past and present. It has real, practical foundations and as such has continued popularity internationally. This is less true in the West, where AES states are violently combatted daily.
I guess there's a disconnect on what Marx actually thought and what they believe then, as op has pointed out. And the whole Russia China north Korea thing.
Well, first of all, Lenin betrayed the revolution and implemented a new form of Feudalism, not communism. His party lost the 1917 election, and he threw a hissy fit that launched a civil war.
All because he thought that his way was best, so he created a totalitarian dictatorship. And then handed it over to Stalin, who made everything worse.
Marx himself said that communism needed to rise out of capitalist democracy. It cannot rise out of a dictatorship, because dictators never voluntarily give up power.
This is extremely wrong on several accounts, to the point of absurdity in several parts.
First, Lenin did not "betray the revolution." Lenin and the Bolsheviks carried out the revolution. Had they not had the real support of the working class via the Soviet system implemented prior to the establishment of the USSR, they could not have established Socialism to begin with.
Secondly, Lenin did not "implement a new form of feudalism." This is utterly divorced from reality. Feudalism is characterized by agrarian peasantry that live on land owned by a feudal lord, till the land, pay rent to said lord, and manufacture for themselves the bulk of their consumption. The Soviet model was that of a Soviet Republic, characterized by Public Ownership and Central Planning, both of which are key aspects of Marxism as conceived by Marx himself, not Lenin.
Third, the election in the liberal bourgeois government. Russia in 1917 had 2 governments, the Soviet Government supported by the Workers and Peasants, and the Provisional Government supported by the Bourgeoisie and Petite Bourgeoisie. The Socialist Revolutionaries won the election in the Constituent Assembly for the bourgeois government, however faith in the bourgeois government was already gone! The Soviet Government toppled the Provisional Government, solidifying itself as the only legitimate government. Lenin did not throw a "hissy fit," the point of the Constituent Assembly was to show just how detached from the will of the Working Class the bourgeois government was.
Fourth, the notion of the USSR as a "totalitarian dictatorship." This is false on both accounts. The Soviet Democratic model is well documented, such as by Pat Sloan in his book Soviet Democracy. The Soviet Republic extended democracy to economic production, and was a dramatic improvement for workers over the Tsarist regime and the bourgeois Provisional Government. The USSR was also not a dictatorship, the General Secretary was not a position of absolute control, even the CIA didn't believe it to be.
Fifth, Marx himself. This is perhaps your most absurd claim. Marx never once said Communism "rises from Capitist Democracy." Marx was both entirely revolutionary, believing reforming Capitalist society without revolution to be impossible, and similarly did not even believe Capitalism was required for said Communist revolution to take place. Marx believed Markets have a tendency to centralize, laying the foundations for Public Ownership and Central Planning. Even in a Socialist state, markets can and will exist. From Marx:
Marx believed Capitalism makes Communist revolution inevitable by its own mechanisms, but not that Capitalism is required to perform said revolution! We see with real, practical experience that the Proletariat is the true revolutionary class, but even in countries where the Proletariat make up a minority of the population as compared to the peasantry revolution is still possible. Markets cannot be abolished overnight, but that doesn't mean it is not a Socialist system.
I seriously recommend you read theory, or revisit it if you're just rusty. If you want help, I made an introductory Marxist reading list, and I'd love feedback.
Wow, the alternate reality you live in must not be littered with millions of bodies of the people Lenin and Stalin murdered.
They were both monsters and, by every single definition, totalitarian dictators. But you keep on worshiping them
What do you think 'Stalinism' is, besides "Marxism but bad" as framed by people who are already staunchly anti-marxist?
I’ve been told by people who hold communist ideals that there’s a difference between Marxism and the brutal totalitarian implementation that was Stalinism in practice. People far more knowledgeable than I am have made this distinction better than I can articulate.
Would you argue there isn’t a distinction?
Marxism isn't a religion, it's a social and political science. It's not a list of rules about what you're supposed to do, it's a method of understanding social and historical forces. The socialist revolution was supposed to happen in Germany according to Marx. When the conditions of the world change the people who are alive then are the ones who have to interpret and react to them. So Stalin was doing Marxism in the context of the 1930's soviet union.
Sounds sensible from an economics perspective but what about violence? How can state wither away when there needs to be control of violence?
From what I understand the people individually would be responsible for helping each other which is why there's a strong emphasis on an "armed proletariat." An example, I believe from State and Revolution, was that of a common person helping someone who was being mugged. We'd all have a responsibility to help each other.
Not entirely sure on their concept of military protection though. Except for lenin they didn't really live in an age of crazy military capabilities so it was always man vs man not man vs b52 bombers.
Most universal answer I can give is:
Every country that has attempted communism has been desperate and vulnerable.
Desperate to find a strongman to save their crumbling old government, and vulnerable to having the CIA appoint their own strongman in turn.
That's a dumb take, given that the two largest communist countries so far were both founded before the CIA ever existed. Lenin started the authoritarianism of the USSR by 1923 (not terribly long after WWI, although the Bolshevik coup took a while to consolidate power), and the revolution in China that put Mao Zedong in power in 1945, shortly after the end of Japanese occupation. But, as with the Russian revolution, the Chinese revolution had been going on for some time prior to WWII.
Meanwhile, the CIA didn't even exist until 1946. The predecessor to the CIA, the OSS (Office for Strategic Services) was founded in 1942, specifically as part of the wartime effort.
Moreover, the US fought in two wars to prevent communists from taking over, since the communist governments were unfriendly to US interests, notably Kim Il-Sun in North Korea (took power in '48), and Ho Chi Min in Vietnam (took over part of Vietnam in '45). Additionally, Fidel Castro overthrew the Cuban gov't led by Fulgencio Batista; Batista had the support of the US, and was friendly to US interests in the region, while Castro was decidedly not. The US attempted multiple time to overthrow Castro, and failed each time.
So the idea that the CIA is appointing the heads of communist countries is simply not supported by facts.
Lenin started earlier than that... It started almost right after the Black Army aided the Red Army to defeat the White Army... The Red Army turned around, and murdered workers in the Black Army, because "They didn't do socialism, and went right to implementing full communism"...
I should have been a little more precise; 1923 was, IIRC, when he'd consolidated power. It wasn't an instant process as soon as the tsar and his family had been murdered, and the government overthrown.
It's the opportunist problem. We see this throughout rebellions in history, not just when communist countries are made. Basically, anytime conditions are bad enough for the people to demand change it's really easy for someone to trade on their ignorance. They can push policies that sound like they'll help but really consolidate power. And if anyone speaks up, they're an enemy of the people.
For a non Communist example of this in modern history check out the French Revolution.
Yup. And I've spent the last decade and a half telling people the working class isn't going to take it anymore.
The Paris Commune is a great example of the class war being brutally engaged by the bourgeois.
Because communism is the end goal, but one of the transitionary phases is the dictatorship of the proletariat , where a representative of the people is given sweeping power to prevent a counterrevolution from the bourgeoisie.
But that kind of power is hard to give up; foreign powers are trying to sew discord, and it's really convenient to get stuff done. It's ok, you're one of the good guys anyways, right?
So communism never really makes it past that stage
I think those quotes answer your question well enough
Most countries we would label as communist didn't form as Marx expected. Marx expected relatively advanced nations to revolt and claim control over capital. Instead, most Communist revolutions occurred in generally despotic and less developed countries.
When times are good, the government can use the material improvement of people's lives as a reason to be in power. However, if times stop being good, the government becomes more overtly autocratic to maintain control.
Hate to break the news, but it appears capitalism is also heading in that direction.
The myth that Capitalism is immune to dictatorships was Cold War propaganda. Capitalism actually shows just how good a well established Democracy works to prevent Dictatorship. Because the defining trait of Capitalism is to concentrate wealth in the most efficient manner and money often equals political power.
There were plenty of Capitalist dictators during the Cold War and off the top of my head there's still Saudi Arabia with a Monarchy.
I'm sure you know this, but for others that don't: That monarchy in Saudi Arabia didn't exist in 1916
The greater the income disparity, the stronger authoritarianism becomes, the more fascistic it becomes. It's always the same, which is why it has to be held in check, something the USA outspokenly do not want to do. Communism, Maoism, Xiism etc. are just taking a shorter route to authoritarianism.
Always has been…
Eventually, "our" pretty much always becomes "my".
Why? I'm not clear, but power corrupts regardless of the political system surrounding it (e.g. look at pretty much any HOA).
This isn't communism it's every government type
If it's not from the Communist region of China it's just sparkling socialism.
Because there was never anything communist about these states in any way whatsoever.
Communism is a state (as in a social, political and economic condition, not a government). None of these states ever reached this condition, and, therefore, was never communist. And, one could argue, that their development literally went the opposite way to what could be called communist with a straight face. As the anarchist Bakunin famously said, "the people's boot is still a boot."
This is why the Maoist-types call this shit "democratic centralism," which is essentially just double-speak for "what the party says goes."
This does not make the idea of communism invalid - but it's still as perfectly vague as ever, unfortunately.
slight correction, you have state and government backwards.
Communism is a stateless, classless, currencyless society in which the workers own the means of production.
They had no communist intentions to begin with. The benefits of communism are just an easy way to market any nefarious movement with anticommunist intentions
The core principles of communism are basically an antithesis of these authoritarians/totalitarians/autocratics/oligarchs (how ever you want to describe them). Such a shift isn't accidental
All (>30 countries) of them (1)?
Which ones aligned with the principles?
My take on it from the theory is that most advocates say that you have to go through a period of single party socialism before the state somewhat fades away and it becomes communism.
I don't think it's actually possible in reality for a single party state to cede the power back to the people afterwards.
This is kinda off topic so I'm putting it in a reply to myself like a weirdo, but despite being something of an anarchist / left-libertarian in mindset... I don't actually think most people are capable of living in a world where someone isn't ordering them around. Many people need and crave a power hierarchy, and if they were ever gifted some kind of anarchist utopia by way of magic they'd likely form up another hierarchy based system all over again from scratch.
This is what actually got me banned from lemmy.ml. I said that although Communism can be done in a ML way, it has never actually happened because it has never actually be a revolution by the people. In the case of Russia and the places they influenced, it was a group of self-appointed elites that did the actual revolting, and then they imposed a new system on the populace.
In all of my debates with those types they always see shadowy conspiracies preventing Americans from having real actual communism....whereas I see that nobody in this country -- especially in this country -- would vote for a communist.
The US spent 60 years actively treating Communists as enemies of the state and propagandizing against them. There's no need to talk about shadows and conspiracies. The capitalist and political elite were very open about it.
There's multiple elements to why people won't vote for a communist, but they still won't.
Certainly state actions play a role, and communists were victims of free speech violations in a much realer sense than victims of "cancel culture" ever were.
What on earth are you talking about? How would "a group of self-appointed elites" even be enough to overthrow the government? That fundamentally doesn't make any sense.
It's also whitewashing the Tsar. As if the Russian people were happy and content while they were starving and subject to serfdom and being fed into the meat grinder of WWI.
Hell, Lenin is even on record saying that Russia wasn't going to have a revolution, before it did, and by the time he arrived in Russia, the Tsar had already been forced to abdicate!
The Marxist theory of the State is as an instrument of class oppression, not all forms of government. The idea is that the Proletariat, after destroying the Capitalist State and replacing it with a Proletarian State, this "dictatorship of the proletariat" will gradually fold Private Property into the Public Sector after markets cease to be an effective tool for developing and Public Ownership and Central Planning becomes more effective.
This happens unevenly, and there are different points where some sectors can be publicly owned much earlier than others, so this doesn't happen overnight. Once all property is in the Public Sector, there are no more classes, and thus all instruments that protected against the bourgeoisie become superfluous and "dies out," leaving a stateless, classless society with central planning. Engels calls this the "administration of things."
That's a type. It's what Russian Communism developed into. Not all Communist theory says you need to get rid of the state either, that's Chinese Communism.
There's even Communist theory that includes a thriving democracy.
...
And?
Communism requires no state, no class, and no money. So, yes, all communist theory calls for the abolishment of the state.
Lmao. No.
That's literally the definition of communism.
That's the definition of one kind of communism.
Its literally the communism described by Marx, which, is, by nature, THE Definition of what communism is: https://web.archive.org/web/20090605001014/http://www.economictheories.org/2009/05/full-communism-ultimate-goal.html
This might be news to you but it's not the mid to late 1800's anymore. Marx is about as relevant as Locke.
Where was communism adopted?
Countries with a strong history of authoritarian leadership, which continued under communism but with a fig leaf of public support. Kind of like how the US was formed as a democracy, but only for male white land owners who were already the ruling class.
The governmental structure has an impact on culture, but it doesn't magically override existing social connections and norms. The people really did elect Putin before he consolidated power and turned it into completely sham elections. The communist party in China was originally what the people wanted before being turned into an authoritarian regime.
It isn't like this is that unique to the countries that adopted communism. Many large countries, including western democracies, end up leaning into authoritarian tendencies over time because central leadership structures tend to encourage the leadership styles of 'strong men'. If the culture isn't there to hold those that abuse their power accountable, that country will slide into authoritarianism over time.
Personally, I don't see communism ever scaling well above maybe a few hundred people because the more people that someone doesn't know is involved the harder it is for the whole to feel like a community. Democracy has a similar scaling problem, but it doesn't lean into authoritarianism as fast. yeah,
watch the video on the rules for rulers by the youtube channel cgpgrey for one explanation.
love that video
It's just The Prince tho
I meant the series, probably should have specified
The same threat that democracy faces, it's vulnerable to charismatic people who become entrenched and draconian. I'm not convinced it can ever work without some competing force that resists the consolidation of power, such as highly educated and politically involved populace.
Communism probably works at smaller scales but for larger populations it would only be feasible when the leadership is benevolent. A robot administrator would be an interesting experiment.
This is strongly supported by Wengrow and Graeber's "The Dawn Of Everything", though I think they would say that in the case of state communism, it's bureaucratic power/control of information, rather than charismatic power. I think charisma is more relevant in fascist dictatorships (which I guess some communist systems evolve into).
Someone please correct me if I am misunderstaning or mischaracterizing this ideology:
From my limited understanding (because enthusiastic support for mass executions of anti-communists caused me to totally abandon it as a viable ideology) Lenin posited that it was necessary to violently rid the world of capitalist tendencies by force in order to protect the slow transition to the collectivist utopia he envisioned. This is my biggest problem with Marxism....or perhaps the brand of Marxism that has been adopted.
My background: I consider myself a libertarian socialist at the moment. I wholeheartedly agree that capitalism will kill our planet but I am not willing to support an autoritarian regime that promises to execute or imprison its critics for life (which both the US and China do ALL THE TIME). From my limited understanding, Marx didn't start there but was "radicalized" into firmly believing that the only way to get capitalists to go along with his plan is to eliminate them from society. The authoritarian behaviour reportedly came about from a very real need to prevent capitalists from meddling in order to protect their consumer ideology throughout the world.
If I am wrong, the people on hexbear have also misunderstood it. They believe that the only way to the utopia they want is through China's authoritarian methods. Their support for China is about as pervasive there as lemmy.world's support for DLC style neoliberal globalism.
I believe you mean anarchist when you say “libertarian socialist.”
There are some important distinctions in my own ideology that prevent me from characterizing myself as an outright anarchist. For one, I do believe in the rule of law (to a certain extent in that I can scarcely imagine a fully anarchist society where murder and robberies are not rampant).
I also believe in state-funded fire departments, educational systems (with controls built in to prevent ideological brainwashing), roads, utilities, etc. So, I stop short of calling myself a Democratic Socialist because I think that that ideology is fraught with capitalist apologia (and actual sheepdogging for the capitalist class as perpetrated by AOC and Bernie as of late). But I am certainly not an Anarchist in the traditional sense of that word.
Yeah, if you still want a state you’re not an anarchist. And also if you believe a state either prevents violence or that people can’t behave themselves without one.
I think on a small scale, communities are self-governing and anarchism can work well.
I have seen evidence of this.
In my current understanding of this admittedly SUPER complex topic, the problem perhaps lies in the overpopulation by way of capitalist expansion.
It feels (if you won't shame for attempting to take a stab in the dark at a reason) like at the scale of modern society, community policing can lead to an uptick in crime.
I have seen it in VT, CA, OR, and other places where this transition to a less punitive society is taking place. Ideologically, I actually wish for a society like that...but then I go to Brattleboro VT and get robbed at gunpoint by some guy who has been released from jail 2 times this month. I agree that ACAB. But then, I also want peace and I don't want to have to fear for my safety when what we asked for is given to us.
I wish I had an answer...frankly, I have a hard time coming to terms with the real-world implementations of some of my ideas like this one. I want to eliminate the disgusting white supremacist police...but I also want to prevent Proud Boys from murdering me.
I don't think it's a belief that a state prevents violence so much as it is a belief that you cannot address violence when it occurs without some form of state.
Let's say someone is raped in an anarchist society. What are your options of redress, short of simply lynching the perpetrator?
Any form of court, law, jail, etc all have "the state" as a prerequisite.
In either system the violence happens regardless. There is no preventing it. The question is, is "the state" a requirement to properly address that violence when it occurs?
Hold on, if the state can't prevent violence then what is the point of addressing it? Just trying to get your thinking straight, seems a bit paradoxical to me.
We're overloading terms here a bit. When I say "a state cannot prevent violence," it might be better phrased as "ALL violence."
Of course the state can prevent some violence. I don't think anyone would argue against that? If the state imprisons or kills a serial rapist, they have prevented that person from committing future violence, no?
I don't think that is exclusive to communism. I rather assume that this has more to do with how the government is structured. Long-running politicians tend to being more open to corruption.
I can easily see Trump going the same way. He has assembled enough power within the system to break it from within like most dictators did.
OP how much of today's markets and politics are definited by Oligarchs and the rich? Can you really say that a plutocracy isn't it's own kind of dictatorship?
Even more so, many westerners have been fooled by culture to think this is natural, inevitable, and good.
In terms of per capita rates, the Irish Catholic Church was incarcerating more of Irelands population than Stalin did to Russia during his reign.
Just two companies; The British East India company and the Belgian Rubber plantations of the Congo killed more people than Stalin or Mao (especially if you factor out the deaths from Lysenkoism, which wasn't a part of communism).
So early Capitalism and Colonialism killed far more than Communist dictatorships have....
And finally there is this to say - Communism is an economic system designed to interrupt plutocratic rule. It's not a governmental system of elections and checls and balances....
...and if we are to be the most up to date with this: China and Vietnam have Socialist Oriented Market Economies. The one in Vietnam, has almost eliminated homelessness entirely. Is that a dictatorship compared to the woes of the west's housing crisises?
Early systems from both economic models - Capitalism/Colonialism and Communism - both had events of mass killings. Both have seen dictatorships... You only focus on these things in the Communist model, because of your background. Likewise, someone from China or North Korea might hear more about the famines, deaths and genocides of the Capitalist and Colonial corporations I've mentioned above.
P.S. Are Cancer deaths from chemicals Capitalists kept on the "safe" list indicative of a dictatorship by the wealthy? What about the deaths and famines from weather disturbances in the climate? If we're counting the famines under Communism, then why not these things to? It's because of a hidden Western ideology/indoctrination culture.
The road to autocracy is paved with people who meet every criticism of the system with, "But look at how bad this other system is!"
It's really not. It's mostly nepotism and reproducing the an untouchable ruling class that creates an autocracy. Put simply; when one system goes too far into autocracy, you should entertain the values of another system.
Condemning that is approving of the current autocrats. But perhaps you're a particular fan of Trump/Musk.
It really is.
And all along the way, people protecting the budding autocracy from criticism by diverting attention to the faults of some other system in some other place and/or time.
Um... sure. But that's neither what you were doing nor what I was criticizing, so it's not relevant.
So... condemning people trying to shift attention away from the current autocrats by bitching about some totally different aurocrats is protecting the current autocrats?
Are you even trying to make sense any more, or are you just desperately stringing together random claims?
Just desperately stringing together random claims. Got it.
Authoritarians everywhere: “You need my boot on your neck, because the other guy’s boot will be even worse!”
True, but when one system becomes sufficiently crushing, it's best to popularize an alternative so the guy in the boot has to focus on other things for a moment.
If the boot changes colour and doctrine, and becomes crushing again, I'll happily advocate for a free market system to distract him again...
Or perhaps some third system such as a mix of communitarianism, distributism, and Georgism. I'm not going to be particularly ideological in this.
...and the Truth is we're speeding towards a techno-feudalism (it's no longer Capitalism when places like Amazon dictate prices and promotions to both producers/sellers and consumers/buyers, that's not Capitalism anymore), so unless you like licking that particular boot, your noted point may not actually serve anything than a heavier foot.
I think it’s more helpful to identify that the issue is boots on our neck, not who is wearing them. What’s the point of fighting for a new government that’s hardly better than the last?
Even if there’s no clear alternative focused on human liberation today, it’s better to build consciousness so that one can be created than tug of war back and forth between tyrants with different colored flags.
How so? Lysenkoism was wholely a result of the political ideology (environment determines wholely a crops' yield), supressing scientific results (genetic differences exist).
No where in Communism does it say to fake one's scientific results in order to simulate higher crop yields. That's not part of the doctrine. That's why it became known as Lysenkoism, because it came down to one con man.
Had the same man been born into the position under a different system, a similar result could emerge. If he were a UN director for farming undee Capitalism a similar result could occur.
Was it an inevitable byproduct of Communist doctrine that would have occurred no matter who Stalin picked? No. Did it happen in Vietnam and Cuba because of the doctrines there? No. So whilst Stalin chose him because he was told he was a good working class lad, doesn't make Lysenko's deceptions part of communism. They're not written into it anywhere.
It happens all the time. Take Theranos as an example.
The famine and millions of death are a consequence of the communist doctrine of not having different ideas compete, and have market forces reward the better ideas. Instead they took Lysenko's ideas as true, implemented it nationwide, forbidding competing ideas, because it was politically agreeable. That is communist doctrine.
I'd argue it always takes ignoring reality, favouring faulty wishfull and selective thinking, to be communist.
No, you're measuring perceived deficits of "Communism" based on what you think about Stalinism (which is not the same thing). Technically Communism or "Scientific Socialism" would have used science to test various techniques of growing crops than selected the best (roughly what happened in Vietnamese Communism).
But Stalinism is called Stalinism because it's not exactly faithful to Communism as a philosophy.
But yes there are plenty example of profit driven systems of Capitalism creating starvation famines ect. Whether it be the East India Company, or the leveraged loans of the World Banks in Africa, or the effects of Climate change, when combined they have a far greater death toll than Communism.
...and you had/have genocides and gulag style systems of punishment in Capitalism as well, whether it's the workhouses of Ireland in the past century (with their mass graves of Children), Prison Labour in the US, or the blood mining and rare minerals in Africa.... Hell Capitalism has set machine guns on workers before in South Africa. Even America has things like the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Ludowlow worker massacre in its history (where mine security had a license to r*pe the wives of workers).
You're just not taught about these things. I can provide you references for any fact I give you here. Just ask.
So whilst you think I'm ignoring the ills of Communism (or it's Stalinist incarnation), which I'm not. I think you're being totally blind of the fact Capitalism has a far greater death toll, and other detriments to the world you're purposefully overlooking, or just ignorant of.
PFAs, Bisphenol A, micro plastics in fetuses, thalidomide, the military industrial complex, the wars of the banana Republics (placing them under corporate tyranny), Pinochet, the list is infinite because it's ongoing.
... and here there I'll make this point: Atleast Communism refines its practice and goals, it has progressively become less brutal as it refined its understanding of agriculture and to be VERY CLEAR that's where the greatest number of deaths associated it come from, not as an intended or desire outcome but by accident.
The same cannot be said for the stagnation and purposeful creation of sufferings under Capitalism, from the minor wage slaveries and wage theft, to union busting (CokeCola even going as far as to kill union organizers in Latin America), to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire (where as with many factory fires, workers were locked in so their pockets could be checked for stolen sewing equipment), to more major things like mining strikes, or the awareness Exxon had around climate change in the 1960s, or Phillip Morris had about causing addiction, cancer, and fatalities.
Sorry, but in reality Capitalism has caused more suffering, in a more substantial and intentional way, that's more connected to the Capitalist doctrine of profit making and wage minimization, than Communism ever has.
Even today America essentially has had its democracy usurped by Capitalist Oligarchs (Musk, Thiel, Andresseen).
You'd have to be absolutely blind to ignore all this history, all this connectedness to the doctrine, the purposes of profit and hence exploitation, and all that continues to this very day.
Without a doubt Capitalism is responsible for everything I've spoken about here, and it has within it no means, or even the suggestion of being a reformist system. Communism does and has made meaningful reforms and strides in the short periods it exists in. Which is why places like China, and Vietnam have made the strides they have, and why Americans visit Cuba for healthcare.
What I've said here, you cannot deny. Like I say, I can provide sources for all of it.
P.S Just to clarify China and Vietnam have Socialist Oriented Market Economies, Vietnam is probably the closest to a Marxist Socialism as its internal tension are mediated through giant Social Union movements that go far beyond just representing workers, there is a national union just for women, one for disabled people, one for students ect. They all have a voice/power capable of directing how the party forms policies and directs resources.
If it was an accident, the accident repeated several times. Even engineers got murdered for correctly saying you shouldn't overload trains (1).
But then again, it wasn't real communism, right. DDR, not real communism. Albania, not real communism. China, not real communism. Romania, not real communism. Etc. Etc.
That's because real capitalism hasn't been tried yet. All the capitalist systems still had subsidies, governments beyond enforcing property law, ...
No, because that was not real capitalism.
Wow, you mean Authoritarian Communism is still Authoritarian? Yeah no shit (and as you can read from earlier I've already mentioned many such things happening under conditions of Capitalism, directly from the doctrines practices of cost cutting and wage theft or brutalization, but fine, "I'll see your engineers there and raise you the British Bopal disaster" that killed and deformed generations of Indians in their home village and is still causing health effects today).
As you've dropped in I'm going to assume you saw me mention that Stalinism was not Communism in its ideal form, but was a Stalinist form.
Your point is thus not about Communism, but about Communism under Authoritarian leaders... And I have already shown that Capitalism is capable of mass killings and atrocities under all sorts of conditions as part of the philosophy (ingrained to it). Where as Stalin's actions here aren't specifically connected to Communist doctrine. I've already covered this point several times with the previous respondant.
That there is a written philosophy - that of Marxism, that of the Communes and the Commons, is why I can say these things. It has a primary set of writings. But we can say that about Capitalism too...
...because Marx was ALSO the person who first defined and wrote about CapitalISM, in his work DAS KAPITAL 1867.
You can look and find commentaries about other concepts in different languages and different sounding words that aren't Capitalism, such as Merchantilism, or in The Hollantse, or you can find the word Capital here and there and claim it relates, or instance around the time of Marx's first treatise on the subject, but none are systematic, focused on the right topic using the ism repeatedly and providing a widely agreed in definition of it.
Like all concepts it has these forerunners that are related but NOT it. So you have tried to be clever here without realizing that when we discuss Capitalism in the way I have - we are talking about Marx's original definition of it. Which was the phenomena of using an unearned accumulation of KAPITAL in order to purchase, own, and exploit workers for the purposes of profiting from exploiting their now alienated Labor.
Oh yes, as you can read above, it very much is. It is in its original description as found in the criticism by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, in 1867. A description so accurate that it's widely agreed with - even among the Capitalists. He was the first and primary text on what the doctrine of "real Capitalism" is. Capitalists hitherto didn't want what they were doing to be known so openly, and intimately and for good reason. Just as any abuser doesn't want what they're doing to be described. It comes naturally to them, and that is no excuse for it, doesn't make it more moral or acceptable. Only once it's pointed out accurately described does the argument start, only then can the behaviours meet reforms. Which is why in Marx's writings we also find advocacy for labor rights.
Sorry my friend, but what I've spoken about is indeed, Real Capitalism™ - down to the origin of the term.
P.S there's also Proudhon: the capitalist's employee was "subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience" - so not much better. People of the era were writing things as they saw them emerge. It's still the problem of the abuser as described above.
It isn't according to the earlier definition of capitalism. Real capitalism hasn't been tried yet. Show me an example of a real capitalist country? What's Marx's opinion on capitalism worth, as he hasn't ever experienced a real capitalist country?
The vanguard party is essentially an oligarchy. It chooses its own successors, and we’re supposed to trust that they are too smart and on the lookout for the populace to not abuse power selfishly. A core tenet of anarchism is that while people may hold authority, nobody should hold positions of power.
Though I would say that while quite corrupt, one-party, and authoritarian, Cuba is a lot more democratic than people think
Because, at a high level, communism requires that a leader or group of leaders get things on track and then give up all of their power over time. Instead, the type of people who tend to lead revolutions are the same type of people who are unlikely to want to give up power and instead end up wanting more power. So no true communism has ever existed because it never gets to that phase.
That's Leninist "Communism".
As a reminder, Lenin lost the 1917 election and then seized power to make himself a dictator, then wrote about how dictators are essential to communism.
The Truth is that Dictators are anathema to communism. A dictator who seizes the means of production is called a king, and the people are then called serfs. It's a full step backwards in the pursuit of the communist dream.
In 1917, there were 2 governments, the Worker and Peasant supported Soviet Government, and the Bourgeoisie and Petite Bourgeoisie supported liberal Provisional Government. Lenin was elected via the Soviet system, and the Socialist Revolutionaries were elected in the bourgeois controlled Provisional Government. After the election, the Soviet Government disbanded the Provisional Government via revolution, the same measures proposed by Marx the entire time.
Secondly, Lenin never once wrote about how dictators are essential to Communism. Lenin fully believed in Soviet Democracy, ie workers councils, and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, a term coined by Karl Marx to describe a Socialist State that had not fully absorbed all Capital into the Public Sector, and thus had to suppress the still existing Bourgeoisie. The reason for this is that Capital can only be wrested by the degree to which it develops! Per Engels:
Dictators are indeed antithetical to Communism, but you've entirely misframed Marx, Lenin, the USSR, and the October Revolution. The Soviet Republic in control of a largely Publicly Owned, Centrally Planned economy is in no way comparable to feudalism, but is actually existing Socialism.
Funilly enough, Lenin described exactly what you're now doing in The State and Revolution:
It's funny that you describe Communism as a "dream," it accurately depicts your idealistic understanding of it, along with your "reminder."
That's an interesting reading of history... I'm sure.
But the truth is that Lenin lost the 1917 election, threw a hissy fit and demanded that the newly elected assembly cede all power to him, or else.
The Bolsheviks seized power and banned all opposition parties, and then Lenin justified his coup by claiming that "Vanguard Parties" are part of communism, when all they actually are is a dictatorship.
Stalin wasn't the first Soviet Dictator. He was just more honest about being a monster. Well, to himself, anyway.
It isn't an "interesting reading of history," it's what literally happened. The fact that you're placing such importance on the vestigial Provisional Government's election when the Workers had already embraced the Soviet Government and used it for all intents and purposes as their only government is liberalism, and anti-revolutionary.
Secondly, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as envisioned by Marx is fully compatible with a One-Party system. Multi-party systems are not more democratic, just more divided. Within the Soviet system, there was more democratic control than in the liberal Provisional Government system.
Finally, the idea that a mass worker party can be a dictatorship, as in the modern, single-person autocracy, is absurd. Vanguard Parties, moreover, are a proven method to establish Socialism. They aren't unaccountable cabals, but large worker parties made up of the most politically experienced of the Proletariat, which has been successfully replicated in countries like Cuba and the PRC in establishing Socialism.
You seriously need to read Marx, it's desparately obvious that you are working off of Wikipedia articles and not actual Marxist theory. I suggest my intro to Marxism list.
Lenin was a monster. He just had slightly better PR after his death because Stalin was so much worse.
Because one party bullshit dictatorships are not the proletariat.
They are the new feudal lords, who then need the guillotine.
The Bolsheviks were a minority party overall, if they hadn't been they would have won Russia's only free and fair election. But they lost and launched a coup.
Then the tankies come in and pretend the new lords are still part of the people.
One Party democratic systems are not dictatorships. I don't know how else to explain this in clearer and more simple terms, moreover the Bolsheviks were made up of the Proletariat, and countless workers joined their ranks.
Further, the economic system of the USSR was based on Public Ownership and Central Planning, not agrarian feudalism. You keep using words that have specific meanings to elicit an emotional response despite having no actual bearing in reality.
Finally, the Bolsheviks were the majority, that's what the name "Bolshevik" stems from. Why is it that you rely on the muddy results of a vestigial illegitimate government that had already been abandoned by the Workers, and not the Soviet Government that existed alongside it and had already elected Lenin and the Bolsheviks prior to the disbanding of the Constituent Assembly? You are calling liberal dictatorships of the bourgeoisie "free and fair elections," this is the level you stoop to in order to piss on Marx's grave one last time.
Additionally, it was a revolution, not a coup, as the majority of people supported the Soviet Government over the liberal Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks enjoyed the power they had because they were real representatives of the Working Class, even Kropotkin recognized this.
Your idea of "Marxism" doesn't follow any strain of Marxism historically, it's so confused and self-contradictory that you end up praising liberalism and calling Socialism "feudalism." Again, read Marx.
Keep telling yourself that.
But no, the truth is single party "communism" is just a new form of nobility and peasants. How many millions did Stalin and Mao kill? All because they had totalitarian control.
If Leninism worked, the Soviet Union wouldn't have fallen. But no, Leninism led directly to Stalinism. There were no guardrails, no protections, because Lenin had already banned opposition, Which is dictator 101.
Theoretically, one could spontaneously be created from scratch starting with a small group of people on a new world who have never experienced a centralized form of government. Formal governing is not required if the society is small enough and there are no outside forces at work to create a threat. But once governing is required, there will generally be forces at work that will centralize it. The only exception might be in a society with very limited need for cooperation due to plentiful resources available to all, such as a utopia like Star Trek's Earth.
In all other, realistic scenarios, there will need to be a revolution. That will always be led by a person or group of people to organize the overthrow and coordinate the changes. This group will inevitably be in search of power themselves, corrupted by the power they are given, or infiltrated by those in search of such power and are unlikely to give up that power.
That village that talks out their problems and thus needs no government is A, a fiction, and B, a form of extreme democracy. Every decision is discussed and agreed upon by the group. That's extreme democracy.
And if you push for more democracy, you can get it. But you have to resist the revolutionaries and the fascists. All while prepping to be a revolutionary if required.
Work within the system as much as possible, because when it's gone, when that fragile peace is broken, nothing good can come out. As you said, the revolution is inevitably betrayed.
Now if we could actually teach people what a Tariff is. Fuckers voting for Trump wanting to bring prices down, when that's exactly the opposite of what happens with a Tariff. And Democrats abandoning their base to chase a mythical center that just does not exist...
I understand the push for revolution. I just know that in order for things to get better, the transition to communism needs to happen slowly and democratically.
Which is why I was emphasizing that theoretically it is possible, but that it's not realistic. The realistic scenario is revolution which would require centralized leadership which then never actually gives up the power and money they were put there to redistribute and decentralize. Thus it's never been done. The only way for communism to exist without the need for a group of people to give up power would be in that theoretical world where no elite-run government ever existed to need to take the power and wealth away from and that only historically has existed in very small communities prior to them having regular contact with hostile outsiders. Currently only a few "untouched" tribal societies exist in that way.
Of course, we're ignoring the European Social democracies, many of which are well on their way to true communism.
It's a slow process, but they're doing the work to get there. But they don't count? for reasons?
Seriously. The blueprint of how to get to communism from democracy is right there in the European Social Democracies.
Universal healthcare and efforts to make food and housing basic rights. That's like 90% of what you need.
Social Democracies cannot get to Communism without revolution and replacement with Socialism. This is because the dominant system in Social Democracy, especially the nordic countries, is Capitalism and Imperialism. They fund their safety nets from massive exploitation of the Global South with brutal IMF loans, exporting Capital for outsourcing production, and more, they are parasitic.
Further, European Social Democracies are seeing sliding worker protections and social safety nets. Because the Capitalists are in control, they wear down the safety nets via austerity politics to further their profits. This is due to the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, Capitalists are forced to expand internationally and seek further and further exploitation due to competition forcing rates of profit down, so they counteract by expanding to raise absolute profits. Austerity measures are one example of Capitalists lowering their expenditures.
Next, Socialism is democratic. Whether it be the Soviet Model (for more in-depth accounting of it, Soviet Democracy by American Pat Sloan who participated in and observed it directly in the 1930s), or otherwise, Socialism has always been democratic. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the dictatorship by the proletarian class as a whole against the bourgeois clasd as a whole, as a direct contrast to liberal democratic dictatorships of the bourgeoisie found in the world over, including European Social Democracy.
Social Safety Nets alone are not Worker supremacy over Capital, hence why the US saw the erosion of social safety nets from FDR to complete obliteration, and why we are seeing the same trend in European countries. This is unavoidable as long as Capital is the dominant factor in the economy and humans are not, due to the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall. In 1900, Rosa Luxemburg already proved why this is the case in Reform or Revolution. Reformism has never worked, because it cannot work. Even when a Communist does get in via existing democratic systems, such as Salvadore Allende in Chile, they get couped by the national bourgeoisie with the aid of Imperialist countries like the United States or EU.
Finally, there is no "true communism." Every country will have a different path to Communism, but certain factors will remain the same, such as the necessity of revolution. The idea of a pure, untainted "true communism" that has never been actually tried is a western-chauvanistic attitude that necessitates that workers in AES countries are simply "too dumb" to understand what communism is or how to build it, despite their real, practical work. The only Communism is the kind that exists in the real world, not in the figments of imagination alone.
You would do well to watch Dr. Michael Parenti's 1986 lecture and read his seminal historical book Blackshirts and Reds.
This is an incorrect interpretation of the phrase "withering away of the state," which I elaborated on here.
I'm not really talking about Marxist communism. See my other comment, but in any realistic scenarios, communism is unlikely to form spontaneously as the first form of government in a new society.
And since revolution on a large scale requires centralized coordination and leadership, there will always be someone or some group given centralized power that is unlikely to allow for decentralization to happen on a large scale and is actually more likely to grab the power of the previous government system and keep it centralized, "for the good of the people" or "to defend the people" or whatever. Even well meaning revolutionaries are highly likely to crave control and be unlikely to want to allow "someone else" to change what they put in place. This then leaves in place the centralization indefinitely and never leads to communism.
Communism is centralized. Central Planning and Public Ownership are the core foundations of the economy in Communism. You're talking about Anarchism as though Marxists were trying to achieve that, and you're calling Anarchism "Communism."
But communism is less centralized than representative democracy or dictatorship or whatever the pre-revolution government likely was. These portions of the government must decentralize as part of the process of moving between government types. That decentralization is essential or it's not true communism, it's the fake things that pretend to be communism like PRC, USSR, DPRK, etc.
The only way that some amount of decentralization doesn't need to happen is if were talking about a society with no previous need for government forming into a communist state, which is what I mentioned was extremely unlikely, even if there were societies isolated enough to still exist without any form of centralized government.
No, Communism is centralization. It isn't less decentralized than pre-revolution government, but more. That's the point, to fold the entire private sector eventually into the Public, with Central Planning. You keep saying "decentralization is essential for Communism" but that's Anarchism. AES are examples of Socialist States trying to work towards Communism.
Where on Earth are you getting your ideas? It certainly isn't Marx.
No, now you're talking only about Marxist communism. Communism as a whole does not state that a single central power owns everything or that individuals can't own property. Marx was very much against almost all personal property, but communism is simply about making the means of production owned by the people doing the production and not a small subset of individuals. That doesn't mean ownership by a single entity. That very much could be local community governments that own each factory or power plant or whatever. And it's only about the "means of production" not the products necessarily. People can still own the products in many forms of communism. Communism doesn't necessarily dictate a specific economic theory beyond the idea that entities that produce goods that are to be owned by the people, should be owned by the people making the goods, not individuals, and especially not individuals who don't participate in the production, only in the sale and profit of the goods they don't produce.
You're conflsting Communism, which refers in 99% of cases to Marxism, with Socialism, which is more broad.
Even popular egalitarian movements face significant resistance to social and economic change. This will not only come from elites who stand to loose from social change, but also from common people who for one reason or another oppose that which benefits themselves. Beyond the social and economic connections to the elite, the social inertia to change is on the side of capital.
The solution, from Bolivar to Lenin to Castro has been to force the people to be free because you can't have socialist democracy if people would vote to return to capitalism or colonialism.
Leftists have long talked about "educating" the populace, but this is another tempting avenue for creeping totalitarianism. It's not like capital is innocent of coercion, but so long as it accommodates the ignorant, it has an overwhelming advantage over a system that requires an improved humanity.
I suppose we'll iron this out. Remember that the social anchors for capital are hundreds of years old and have their roots in feudalism and aristocracy. Socialism is young and her sins are close in our minds not because their failures are extraordinary but because they're recent.
What hierarchical structure exists in any type of system that doesn't breed corruption?
"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
One thing I'll add that I haven't seen mentioned is communisms relative weakness in the propaganda department. If you look at democracy as a bunch of competing interest groups i.e. parties trying to win the masses over to there side to win, then there main tool / weapon is information that will make the opposition look bad and your side look good, i.e. propaganda. Good propaganda requires intimate knowledge of people's desires and a knowledge of how to shape those desires to the benefit of your program. Capitalism is very good at this due to competition forcing them to better understand there customer so they can sell them more. Capitalism creates great salesman which is fundamentally what you need to create good propaganda. You can see this expertise most plainly in advertising pushing the message that consumption is good, fulfilling and will make you happy.
This expertise combined with the large amount of resources capital can Marshall to push there message makes electoral politics extremely difficult for communism or any program that goes against consumption like environmentalism. Even if you completely eliminate capital and it's control over media in one nation foreign actors will still come in using the same expertise and resources to try and bring back capitalism. So since communists can't compete electorally with a free press they go towards autocracy to keep power.
So to begin with all communism so far has never been democratically voted in as far as I know and pretty much starts with an ideological military government that then needs to transition back to democracy.
Many do transition to a one party system where all democracy is contained within the party and essentially becomes a "primaries only" type.
Then slowly over time power consolidations and purges bring it towards a dictatorship because there are no checks and balances against it.
So it seems to me that the only way to get to the ideological communism is through democracy and constitutional changes, proportional representation and coalition governments that don't allow any one toxic pernon to consolidate power.
Well communism has never been achieved, so the name is always aspirational.
But aside from that split hair, you might be interested in reading about communism in India:
"The Communist Party in Kerala has functioned under the conditions of a liberal democracy, relying on success in multi-party elections to remain in power. CPI's 1957 constitution stated it would allow the existence of opposing parties after it had a parliamentary majority."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism_in_Kerala
I stand corrected, that's an excellent case of socialism working that was democratically elected in a multi party system. I didn't know one existed! Thanks for sharing. It also has some really good numbers for a state in India.
Here's a paragraph from Wikipedia page on Kerala for everyone else that didn't know about it.
Because some people are more equal than others
Well it didn't happen in every case. In the UK socialists became a big faction within the post war labour party and created the NHS. Almost every other country in Europe has a similar story with the creation of their own healthcare systems. Russia and China have never been democracies at any point in their history so maybe that has more to do with it than socialist and communist ideas.
Because it is a dictatorship.
A dictatorship of the proletariat.
For real though we've not seen communism yet.
Greed. The Achilles heel of humans since the beginning of time. Greed breeds hate, hate breeds fear, and fear breeds violence.
No, fear is the mind killer dumdum
Or as seth from street fighter 4 said it so well :
"... The poor seek riches, the ugly; beauty, we compare ourselves to others and seek to cover our own inadequacies to find peace of mind. The mere existence of those who are better than us becomes intolerable. We fight in retaliation! if beauty is not enough, we use money. If money does not work, we resort to voilence! This energy is what powers our world! It is essential! All i seek is to help this natural process along! This destructive force begotten from confect! This power that everyone lusts for, i will spread it over the world in but a touch! It is like a well that can never run dry! A precious mineral flowing from an inexhaustable mine! This power will be mine!"
... Followed by ryu's stupid "no you" response
Tangential... Do you ever think it's kind of bizzare that we have instances of a fictional character having infamous lines or quotes but in actuality a different human wrote it who and will often not recieve any credit. Not at all a criticism, just an odd thought. Sorry for the diversion.
I do think its bizar, but the writer ( or in this case probably translator, i need to lookup the original japanese lines) knew full well what seth is about and what his goals are and nailed it so well. Props to that damn writer and/or translator. Also the voice actor, who delivered the lines perfectly. The raising of his voice, it slowly getting more and more agressive. Perfect.
The main reason is the Monroe Doctrine. The United States literally made it its business to terrorize any "communist" state, even if it's democratically elected. That breeds the conditions for paranoia, the desire for increased protection, etc.
But, in the context of endgame scenarios against dictators, the main factor usually is how the military responds, especially when asked to brutalize the population. If the military parts ways, they may start a coup of their own or they may (rarely) defer to the population.
So, by extrapolation, I imagine it's also true here: other powerful factions allow it because it opens opportunities for them to garner more power too. Business execs, politicians, and military officials alike are duking it out for influence amongst themselves as well.
Mao? Stalin? No need to make everything about the US.
Yeah so 2 examples that either predate the Monroe doctrine or are outside of the bounds. Do you always selectively read and assume everyone is a tankie or just right now? Also way to ignore the substance of my comment. Go away if you’re gonna be unnecessarily argumentative.
Mao and Stalin predates James Monroe? Let me know what you're smoking!
Many informed responses already so I'll add my uninformed opinion.
Political change has never occurred in a vacuum. Communism is a direct threat to capitalism. So
the UScapitalists will do everything in their power to undermine and disrupt communism.It's a bit cheap to just try and blame all the problems on the opposition with no evidence though.
No evidence? Aren't there a ridiculous number of cases where the CIA openly destabilised communist regimes?
The CIA openly destabilises monarchies, republics and democracies as well.
There is little evidence that the CIA specifically targets communist countries, more that they target anything thats not America.
You should check out Willam Blum's "Killing Hope" (pdf link), and/or "America's Deadliest Export", by same (pdf link).
― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
.. Dude, I don't know if you've heard about this thing, but it was pretty big. They called it "the cold war".
I didn't say they didn't overthrow Communist governments.
You may have heard of this thing called Iran? They aren't picky about who they hurt.
The argument for Iran was that Mossadegh was "turning towards communism". Same for Allende, same for Arbenz. Hell, just the concept of "domino theory" was all about stopping the spread of communism. Pretending they were some sort of equal opportunity saboteurs is deeply disingenuous.
It would be if it wasn't extremely well documented.
It's definitely not impossible that communist regimes would consolidate into dictatorships on their own but if it was a guaranteed thing then the CIA wouldn't have spent so much time and effort making it happen.
Of course they would. And communist regimes literally did consolidate into dictatorships on their own from the very beginning. At the end communism is inherently authoritarian, which is the core problem.
The current downfall of capitalism could likewise be blamed on Russian influence to make it look less awful, which is likewise documented. While it holds truth it still is a really bad argument.
They didn't sprout from nothing. Even from the beginning, they were being interfered with by capitalist and anti-revolutionary forces who started out with all the money and resources, like the white army or the black hundreds, not to mention being neighbors with reactionary imperialist countries, like Germany, and coming from authoritarian countries, like Tsarist Russia, where those ruling elements (old regime nobles, business interests, rich landowners, generals, etc) still existed and were in power or at least a place to sabotage the effort.
We did kind of spend 60 years demonizing, embargoing, and physically destroying communist countries.
People are blind to the current propaganda, too. Just look at how many articles demonize China every day, which has never bombed a country, while ignoring other authoritarian countries and their imperialism that bomb countries every day (like Saudi Arabia or Turkey). Meanwhile, we need to turn to sources like Al Jazeera to find out what's happening in Israel with our own government money. Just look at how freaked out the country got to Bernie Sanders and how the capitalist class (including the media) closed ranks to stop him. Look at how the US treats Cuba and Biden still signed a law against them. Until Russia's war, the most sanctioned countries were all communist (Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela) while other authoritarian countries got a pass. But nobody notices. The propaganda has never stopped.
I agree with all of that but China is literally trying to bully everyone else out of the South East Asia Ocean area and is working hard to build up a Navy that can project force. They aren't Cuba.
Capitalist countries have never tried to stop communist ones? Holy bad take
Communist countries have tried to stop monarchies, democracies, capitalist, communist, too.
What makes communist countries special in that they turn out authoritarian, and the reverse, a communist country trying to stop a capitalist democracy, not?
Realistically anybody who can take control of a country is a bit of a ruthless cunt, and ones that take over in an armed uprising especially so.
It's not a massive shock that some of them don't want to give up the crown once they've got it.
Even in so called democracies, we basically get to choose our "king" from a heavily vetted list. It ain't going to be people like me and you rising to the top.
Simple. Power corrupts. Even with a socialist government there is always gonna be power hungry people seeking authority over their constituents. Think of the majority as sheep, comfortable with being herded and the power hungerers as the wolves slavering to enslave them.
I'd ended up having a conversation with an archivist about the somewhat related question of "What was the Soviet Union's history of itself, absent the editorializing that the rest of the world has been doing?"
For example, Tamim Ansary wrote Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes that explained a lot of things about the middle east through that sort of lens, so I was hoping that someone would write a history of the USSR in a similar fashion, which I didn't find.
One of the problems we have when approaching the more successful world governments is understanding ... well, I guess good intentions? There's kinda two sides to the story of Dear Leader. On one side, the self-aggrandizement as the father of the country, on the other side the act of actually trying to be the father of the country. Obviously a strongman today is mostly running the show almost entirely for selfish reasons but what you kinda see in the USSR and modern day China is at the same time an attempt to make the state better off. Which, of course, falls prey to effective use of power. "Do this or you will be executed" doesn't work very well.. not with the US approach to the death penalty, not to the totalitarianism of the attempted Communist state.
But, even today, there's tons of "Good idea, bad implementation" things that the Chinese government does where the rest of the world governments just let things get worse.
The vibes I was getting in the days of Lenin from my reading was interesting. Lenin was the leader of the USSR but not in the way that Stalin was. The Bolsheviks of the time insisted that things be discussed and debated and worked through and not even Lenin was above that. And there was a very forward-looking idealistic sort of viewpoint. They could reject everything and do things right for once and many of them were new to power so they were freed of that worldview. And a lot of those things didn't pan out as well as they wanted it to and people started to need to be "convinced" to do the new thing. First the "useless" hereditary upper-class, but then everybody else. And then eventually Lenin died and Stalin didn't have that much patience for the Bolshevik old-guard and took over.
tl;dr: In a sense, it's as if a bunch of Star Trek fans had toppled a government and were trying to build the best government ever for the future, using whatever means necessary.
Because nobody’s claiming all this stuff that’s now just freely lying around. Someone better claim it before it gets gone.
Bureaucratic systems world based on control of information and decision making. If there are insufficient mechanisms for maintaining checks on power accumulation, those systems can be abused by psychopaths and used to accumulate power. The same applies to capitalist structures.
Let's look at it this way - they were already going to be dictatorships, the dictator picked what he told the people they'd get. Most of the big ones all say Power To The People as they're pushing their way to the top, but as soon as they get there they make themselves permanent. Some of them took a pretty good stab at it like Mao or Stalin, but they killed their people in droves to make it happen. Once that happens you gotta stay in power or they're going to kill you. And of course, with themselves at the top of the heap, they took everything for themselves and The Party, and The Party became the end all and be all instead of actually advancing the country.
I think because true communism never existed. All the previous attempts were flawed, people got corrupted, misused their power and it's difficult to overcome human nature. It might work in theory (or not). But so far the attempts
weren't that many and theywere all flawed for different reasons.It's a pretty long list (1)
Regimes tend to change with violent revolution, as it's rare for a person to willingly give up their own power. Revolutions have leaders, and those leaders are the ones responsible for distributing the power to the masses. But it's rare for a person to willingly give up their own power.
Even in the rare instance where a person does give up their power, all you need is for one person to take advantage of the system. Communism rewards people for their labours, but someone will need to judge how much people should be rewarded. One corrupt judge slips in, and the system corrupts with them.
First, and above all else, there are assholes (US) who will prevent you from having nice things. Democracy is the easiest vector to let CIA/money get a corrupt asshole into power. Democracy tends to be a fiction anyway. Money/CIA/Media control is just part of the reason. Should you let corrupt assholes vote or run for power?
A country that has an army has dictatorial power, whether there is a theater of elections or not. An autocratic chain of command controls it, and if you don't behave, regardless of your constitution, you get smacked by the army.
In the US, there is communism for the corporatist oligarchy. Government they own will protect them from competition and bail them out when they fail. The CIA/media defines the communists as anyone who is not as pro business as the most pro business corporatist oligarch. US is a pure dictatorship in that Israel first corporatist oligarchy is guaranteed to win every seat/election, or 95%+ of the seats anyway. Every NATO country has a CIA allegiant party leader is also guaranteed to produce a CIA allegiant government. CIA vets all appointments to EU government to be pro US dictatorial NATO. IMF has 50%+ of votes all from US colonies.
Celebrating media simplifications of Democracy vs. non-US-compliant is the wrong metric to apply to nations. Industrial policy meant to promote equitable prosperity or defense from Imperialist forces determined to subjugate them are more important to a nation than what US media describes them as. "Everyone" loved Russia when they had Yeltsin as a puppet privatizing everything cheaply to US interests, just as they love Zelensky for the same. Ukraine, since US coup, is an apartheid ethnostate, which cannot qualify for any objective definition of democracy (we praise it for it anyway), and recently has suspended all elections.
ITT
To simplify, two main reasons. First when done via revolutions it often causes economic and societal shock in which autocrates take the power away from the people. And second, when done peacefull, foreign intervention of secret agencies which again try to put autocrates in powerful positions.
Any system that gives a relative few authority over everyone else will sooner or later become autocratic, simply because that power inevitably comes to be held by those who desire it the most and are most willing to do whatever it takes to gain and hold it, and they tend to be greedy, power-hungry, dishonest, amoral assholes.
As far as that goes, the only real differences between systems are the specific hoops the assholes have to jump through.
Broadly, in a capitalist system, political power is awarded to the wealthy, while in a communist system, wealth is awarded to the politically powerful.
So the greedy, power-hungry, dishonest, amoral assholes follow different paths in different cases - accumulating wealth with which to buy access to political power in one or climbing the ranks of the ruling party in order to gain wealth in another - but the overall dynamic is always the same.
And that's a large part of the reason that I'm an anarchist.
On Authority by Engels, question answered almost 200 years ago
Because at its very base it’s conceived in violation of consent.
“From each according to his capacity” is the absolute essence of exploitation. Like, there’s no more straightforward way of saying “You look like resources and we’re gonna take everything you have”.
It’s only a “good idea” if you don’t think of people as having free will and the ability to consent. Communism is a great idea if you’re playing Command & Conquer and all your little units exist only to act as pawns in your game.
...This is bait, right? It has to be, right? It's such a profoundly ridiculous statement that it can't possibly be anything else.
I don't think there is a more straightforward way of saying you believe some people deserve more than others.
is that not what taxes are? not being facetious, just genuinely trying to understand the difference
The pawn analogy is a little misplaced.
Capitalism is effectively the bishops, rook, and knight exploiting profit from the pawns. The king and queen exploiting everyone in the pyramid beneath them.
What tends to emerge from the ashes of war and empire.
My bro your lucky you didn't ask this in lemmy.ml,hexbears and lemmygrad.
3 explanations, in order from what I believe most likely to least:
It could be selection bias. All communist nations originated from dictatorships, and as democracy isn't a key part of communism, any democratic ideas get kicked to the side. It may require a dictatorship in the first place for a communist revolution to occur, as democracy may lead to people feeling content enough with the system that they may not feel it needs fundamental change.
The inevitable need for concentration of power in the hands of a few. Assume that the powerful will always try to concentrate power in their own hands one way or another. Capitalist societies use wealth (a.k.a. purchasing power) to replace the concentration of political power that a dictator would enjoy. As communist societies lack such a mechanism, the powers-that-be can only use political power to force their own superiority.
The centralization of economics leads to concentration of economic power that can be used effectively to buy loyalty from would-be challengers to a dictator's power.
Democracy isn't a core requirement of capitalism either. Saudi Arabia is very capitalist and they're a Monarchy.
It's far more likely to just be that communism was the new flavor for a while and they suffered the same fate as most rebellions. When the guard rails, (whatever they are), come down, then the bad guys will try to take advantage.
democracy is actually key to communist philosophy, dictators simply conveniently ignored that
Lea Ypi's book Free is a phenomenal book describing the albanian communist period. Can't recommend it enough.
I grew up in DDR. It fails because it doesn't reflect reality. People are different, can do different things, and want different things. An ideology that simplifies people into classes, stands between people and their dreams. And will always need an ever increasing police force to force reality to look like the ideology.
Thats like asking why North Korea became a dictatorship when it is a people's democracy.
Power gaps get filled, small states get conquered.
in theory communism makes resources the property of everyone. In practice, somebody has to manage the resources, and in doing so controls them. if you control the resources, and especially if you have the power to defend that control, you effectively own them. this means that while in theory the people own everything, the truth is that the government owns everything. by similar logic to the first bit, if they own everything then they have control of everything, meaning that they are authoritarian. that being one of the major defining characteristics of a dictator its not far from there to become one even if you aren't trying to. ironically, this is all how it's intended to work save for the dictator part. this is the apple mouse charging port of communism, an intentional thing with a bad result that can't be given up without invalidateing things you have said or done.
also, communism tends to be brought about by coups and coups tend to lead to authoritarian leaders, compounding the above issue.
Lots of good answers here - it's the kind of question where lots of explanations are partly correct. For me, the decision by early communists to advocate for violent revolution as the only or main way of bringing about communism is a key factor.
It's pretty common for revolutions to produce dictators, going right back to the fall of the Roman Republic. Ironically, the Roman Civil War that preceded the fall was won by the populares - the people's movement, as opposed to the optimates, the aristocracy. And yet, the end result was the abolition of the tribunes, which had been the people's branch of the legislature, and the establishment of the Dictatorship of Julius Caesar, then the Principate of his nephew, Augustus, who we now regard as having been the first Roman Emperor. It wouldn't be accurate to project back our exact ideas of democracy or class politics to the Romans, but it's pretty telling that one of the first explicitly 'class-based' civil wars in history turned out this way.
Many centuries later, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the British Isles had a similar outcome: the royalists were defeated by the parliamentarians, only for the victorious generals to set up one of their own as what we would now call a dictator (Oliver Cromwell as 'Lord Protector'), who was virtually a king himself.
(Worth noting here that many people assumed George Washington would turn out to be another Cromwell. The fact that he didn't and the question of why he didn't, is not something I know enough to even begin to speculate about, but is definitely something to look into when trying to understand this topic.)
Most relevant for the early communists was the French Revolution, which led to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte who, more or less explicitly imitating Caesar and Augustus, made himself sole ruler of France, first as 'Consul' (a title also borrowed from Classical Rome), then Emperor. He was also followed, a little later, by his nephew doing a very similar thing, again explicitly imitating the Romans.
Ironically, Marx himself wrote about this exact tendency, even calling it 'Bonapartism', to warn revolutionaries to try and avoid it. I don't know how exactly he missed the point that the very thing he elsewhere advocated for - violent revolution - was itself the cause of Bonapartism but it seems he did. Plainly, the early Marxists didn't sufficiently heed this warning, for whatever reason (and see other replies in this thread for many good suggestions!).
Basically, if you're going to advocate for the violent destruction of a system of government, you are running a major risk that in the ensuing chaos, someone very good at being violent and decisive will end with far too much power.
Ultimately, it's because the foundational ideas of communism don't scale.
In Russia it's because of the cult of personality, or populism, that developed around Lenin and Stalin. Mao in China, pretty similar. You should appreciate how a country falls into chaos and madness when a populist takes power and ignores all legal and cultural norms and gets away with doing whatever they want.
Thank goodness that would never happen in the enlightened, democratic West.
Because people like Communism and they don't understand it, so dictators lie and say they are communist to get in power.
Because it was spread by a totalitarian communist dictatorship. if the USSR were democratic , they wouldve spread democracy.
In modern communist societies the government has an insane amount of power and control over just about everything. This power and control attracts a certain type of person who thirsts for power and control. People usually develop a bloodthirsty desire for power and control due to underlying psychological issues. These issues influence the person to think they ALWAYS need more power (think anorexic person who weighs 95lbs but still insists they are overweight).
It's a human nature problem imo.
because of a few things
a) when you start a game of monopoly, everybody is equal. by the end of the game, wealth (think of wealth as an analog to power) snowballs and only one or two people will have all the resources.
when you start a communist government, it's not a fresh game of monopoly. it's a continuation of the previous game. and the vast majority of people are joining in after the wealth has been accumulated. therefore, power remains in the hand of the powerful
b) there is a large variance in human capabilities. to be frank, the vast majority of people are sheep. their world view is narrow and motivation stunted. they don't really care very much about things outside of their life and they don't want to learn, grow, etc. there isn't anything wrong with that, and there's sort of a whole religion based on this
but some people are very talented, ambitious, and greedy. these people will end up at higher positions, no matter your form of government. humans tend to naturally distribute ourselves in hierarchies. aka pyramids
this goes all the way back to our primate roots. look at chimps where the male leader of the pack has dibs on which female monkey he wants to mate with. the weaker monkeys have to bow their head and take what they can get.
tldr: hierarchy and pyramids are in the very fabric of human existence. doesn't matter what form of government or economic system you pick. pyramid will develop somehow, someway
Calling the skill and ambition distribution a pyramid is really an artifact of history, not biology. If you want to take on 'human nature' you have to examine millions of years of evolution as mostly egalitarian troupe hominids, and state that groups bigger than 100 people are something we haven't had time to evolve for yet.
So you put in checks and balances, it's what makes governance complex, and egalitarian governance is ironically going to be more complex and relational.
The Haudenosaunee / Iroquois Confederacy is a good example of how to approach such a problem.
"mostly" is pulling a lot of weight in that statement, eh?
sure, we took care of the elderly and others in the tribe. packs of wild dogs and monkeys have been seen to do that as well. share food, etc. but if our early tribes are anything like what we see in primates, and it almost certainly was, the distribution of power was not equal.
there are monkeys with differing levels. baboons have a much stricter hierarchy than bonobos, but the structure is still there
I do not claim it is impossible, although I also do not believe that the exceptions disprove the rule. My favorite example personally is the brief anarchist experiment during the Spanish Civil War. The anarchists managed to at least for a short period of time replicate what I believe would be the ideal society.
the issue is that this type of society simply loses to other more authoritarian ones in a sort of Darwinist playing field. the vanguard party commies beat the anarchists and then the nationalists beat the communists. bye bye egalitarian power structure
let's say i am a foot taller than you and weigh 100 pounds more. we have just finished a hunt and we are distributing the spoils. let's say I take double your portion. you speak up "hey I deserve an equal amount" and then I simply look at you and say "no"
what are you gonna do? my genetic makeup (along with external factors of course, like my mother's nutrition while i was in the womb) caused me to have more physical power than you. you have no choice but to bow your head and take what you get.
that doesn't mean it's impossible, for example, to create alliances with others in the tribe and end up with a "social victory" and we actually see these types of behaviors in chimps. but I think that in itself is just another form of power. social intelligence, political and diplomatic maneuvering is a function of intelligence which like physical strength is a makeup genetic (as well as external, like before)
so you may be physically weaker, but mentally stronger. but in the end, power is power.
the older I get, the more I realize how deeply ingrained this structure is in our societies. I wish it weren't, but it really is. the only way around it, I think, would require a radical restructuring of our society and would necessarily have to be just as dystopian as the opposite extreme
Because the Soviet Union was autocratic and communist/socialist countries had to choose between cosying up to them and being destroyed by the CIA.
Scratch a Bad and America bleeds
It's been the most powerful country in the world since my grandparents were kids I don't know what else you expect. Also I did say that the Soviet Union was autocratic.
The CIA isn't responsible for everything that happens in the world. Socialist countries have proven perfectly capable of screwing themselves up without American help.
Because thats the end result of embiggening the state: The state gets bigger, and the oligarchs just changes faces.
It was something Marx remarked on later, post Paris Commune.
To clarify, Marx remarked that the existing Capitalist State cannot be merely siezed, it had to be replaced by a Proletarian State. This is because Marx viewed the State as an instrument of class oppression, as a Proletarian State gradually absorbs all Capital into the Public Sector as it sufficiently develops, it slowly erases class distinctions, the complete absorption marks the disappearance of the State along with the disappearance of classes. Government is not the same as the State for Marx.
Oh, I get what Marx had said... Marx also changed his view post Paris Commune. He started down the track that its impossible to abolish the state, after concentrating all power in the state, as those holding power will never give it up.
And yes, governance is not the state, and yes, Marx later agreed with that point, as well.
You're a bit confused here. I'm explaining the takeaways for Marx from the Paris Commune. When the Communards seized the state, they did so on the basis of the existing state, they did not replace it but take hold of it, and as such they only held power for a short period as it quickly transitioned back to Capitalism. Marx then saw the need to replace the State with a Proletarian State. It isn't impossible to abolish Marx's conception of the State, rather, when the Proletarian State is founded and eventually folds all property into the Public Sector, there ceases to be a proletariat and a bourgeoisie at all, and thus there ceases to be a State. The State isn't a special class, but an extension of the Class in power.
Marx started to rework (greatly) his ideas of "The state" and if it should be seized or abolished early. He started leaning to "abolished quickly, and early".
He leaned towards elimination of the Capitalist State but that a Proletarian State cannot be abolished by decree, only via sufficient development of the productive forces and gradually wresting from the Bourgeoisie their control as such productive forces develop. To suggest otherwise would go against the concept of Scientific Socialism. Engels puts it best in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, which Marx said in his written preface in 1880 "best characterizes the theoretical part of the book, and which constitutes what may be called an introduction to scientific socialism:"
Another emphasis, from Marx himself in Manifesto of the Communist Party, which Marx stood by to the very end with only slight alterations regarding the immediate destruction of the bourgeois state and replacement with a proletarian state after the lessons of the Paris Commune:
Finally, Engels in Principles of Communism elaborating that the folding of Capital into the Public Sector is a gradual process and not an immediate one:
Marx was not an Anarchist.
I never said he was an anarchist, and I never said he claimed it should or could be done in a single stroke.
Scientific Socialism requires one to learn from the past, and adapt as needed. It doesn't mean a dogmatic prescription of "how".
Then I fail to see how you can make this claim:
The withering away of the Proletarian State is not on the basis of "giving" anything "up." The basis is on the State folding everything into the Public Sector, at which point laws like Private Property Rights disappear alongside it. When the government has folded all property into the Public Sector, the State itself ceases to exist, there's nobody to "give up" and nobody to "give up" to. There is just the people, as they make up the "administration of things."
In a decentralized network I wasn't expecting this amount of shallow answers about this topic
You can really ask the same question about capitalist societies. Why is there such oppression? Why is there a group that can do anything and a group that cannot? Regardless of your political system, human behavior is the same and it usually involves insecure ape-like people who want power for power's sake. Communism, just like every political system ever created, trends towards this sort of behavior.
As someone else said, desperation will cause people to move towards authoritarian thought, be that the extreme right (fascism) or the extreme left (communism).
"Why do tadpoles always turn into frogs?"
Short answer: Power abhors a vacuum. Natural hierarchies develop out of good old tribalism rather fast even with frameworks in place to avoid them.
Everybody wants to rule the world 🎶
By its nature, communism requires large amounts of control, as it's a centrally planned economy. The state decides if it needs more coal, wheat, tools, steel, etc, then conscipts people as workers for various industries. Instead of an economy controlled by demand business owners, it is controlled by the state.
To maintain that control you need to maintain control of the people.
The word "communism" means a specific social arrangement, but is misused to denounce things people don't like. Similar to the word "slavery" today.
Because extremes don't work.
From what I've seen over the past 100 years, pure capitalist societies fail (hello Americans!) just lie pure communist societies (hello Russia!)
What works well are free societies that mix strong capitalism systems to fund strong social systems and safety nets (hello, north west Europe!)
You're being downvoted probably because your take is unscholarly, but it is not wrong.
Marx predicts the withering of the state by developing democratic socialism further and further until capital and its hoarders are fully enclosed. Northern Europe is a good example of this trend on the long term, and this is as predicted.
I think a lot of ideologues have an element of religiosity to their adoption of marxist analysis and that leads to religious timelines: The End Is At Hand.
But it's not. Our lifespans are short compared with history. Late industrial capitalism will wither, and information capitalism will be further developed, before capital is enclosed by democratic development. Just waiting for how crazy genetics tech will make things... but I think we have to get through the fundamental questions that ownership of biology poses before we see the capacity for economic phase shift. History is accelerating, so...?
Gotta love how you talk about me being unscholarly, yet you literally pretend you can predict the future exactly
OK to be specific the USA is not pure capitalist as it has a huge number of public assets and social services, and the soviets were nowhere near pure communist, a long ways away from a stateless society run by a proletariat, more like state monopoly capitalism. Anyone who has studied the topic might be inclined to downvote such claims.
Anyway I was defending you not attacking, being pissy won't help.
Of course the US is not 100 capitalistic not was the USSR 100% communist.
Having said that, to clarify, the US is WAY too much capitalistic and needs to tone it down vastly. The rich upperclass is not happy about that idea, of course
Russia wasn't 100% communistic, and never could be because real communism will beber work as the vast majority of the population won't want it. There is a reason why the purges from when communism started there ended with so many murders. Get rid of those that oppose communism, then get rid of those that oppose all those murders too. Anyone wanting "real" Communism really should watch "the chekist" as a good example of what is to come.
Like it or not, capitalism is by far the most successful system of driving humanity forward. However, you need to control it, you need a lot of strict laws in place to keep it from spinning out of control. Use a controlled capitalist system to fund and support a strong socialist network on top of that and you'll end up with great countries
Because it is not human nature and has to be forced on people. Eventually even those who are in charge of it fall into the normal human nature of social structures and such.
People will help those they know personally (e.g. family units) and even then only to a point. Harboring resources for yourself is innate. Most organisms exhibit a form of territoriality to protect their resources. Communism breeds apathy, a struggle for resources and hopelessness, just ask anyone who has actually lived through a communist government.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3824382?seq=12
Because you concentrate all resources into the government and not distabute it with money. Communism = work for the government and hope they give you hand outs; Capitalism = work for enough money to buy anything you want, the better your skill the more money you make. The best system is obv social-democracy.
Like taking risk can lead to better gains? Or that one were the government is supposed to eat the people that take the biggest risks?
Chiapas doesn't seem to be failing. Going on 30 years now. Rojava isn't failing either, due to it's system, but rather being attacked on the regular by imperialist nations like Russia and the US.
What makes sense to me, is that unlike capitalism, communism requires a government to function. Well, and how do governments fail? By turning into a dictatorship.
Capitalism requires a State to enshrine Private Property Rights, neither can exist without a form of government.
Cuba exists and has better rankings than the US in higher education, and life expectancy.
Neither of those things are true.
According to Wikipedia USA life expectancy is 79.3, Cuba is 78.1
Ranking higher education is much trickier but pretty much every list I could find puts USA right at the top. American higher education institutions are world class and remains probably America's biggest competitive advantage (i.e. brain drain).
Also Cuba probably isn't the best example to rebut the "why does communism always turn into a dictatorship" question.
Is "working" a sliding goalpost for you, or can you define it? You made the claim that Communism only works on paper and are asking people to disprove your claim, rather than substantiate your claim yourself. Surely you can see why others find your comment unproductive, correct?
So capitalism has never been implemented and is mainly a term used by people who only "know" what state propaganda taught them to refer to things they don't like?
Ignoring everything that American media will tell you about China, the Chinese people seem to be quite happy with their central government. Far more than any western country would even consider possible for themselves.
It stands to reason that a capitalist state which hopes to maintain even a sheer facade of democracy and freedom of the press and speech, would do everything in its power to ensure that public opinion considers even the most successful socialist states as abject failures and something to be feared, maintaining that capitalism is the best thing the human mind can possibly conjure. This would ensure that the public never considers socialist ideas to be a realistic option worth educating each other about or exercising any of their democratic power to push for, so that the state never has to seriously confront anyone questioning the power of capital, and even gives the state cover to operate against socialist regimes and actors as a "humanitarian" or "national security" threat.
The delegitimization is already done to the point that the question of socialism is a non-starter, all thought is terminated at the mere mention of it, and the state media can jump straight to calling people terrorists and dictators without anyone questioning it or the words losing any weight.
Every single one its been tried in without exception
OP, do you have any knowledge about the CIA in the United States having involvement in "every single instance" you speak of?
Can you also please name those instances to better inform this conversation?
Instead of being condescending, how about you just go ahead and contribute that information yourself? Sheesh
Because that serves the "beg the question" crowd looking to sap energy with insincere questions. I don't need to just agree with their premise. They stated "all these instances" so why not give them the chance to qualify that and then we discuss? Sheesh.
Why don't you give them some credit that they may be sincere, as I'm trying to do?
Because only assholes and incompetent people become communists.