The difference between communism and anarchism isn't the aims, but whether the state could immediately be abolished or that there must be a transitional period.
Anarchists don't want a fully publicly owned and planned global republic, Marxists do. Anarchists want networks of decentralized communes, Marxists do not.
The "state" for Marxists is the oppressive elements of society that make up class distinctions, such as private property rights and the current police structure, whereas for Anarchists its usually seen as a form of hierarchy entrenched with violence.
Chiefly, a decentralized network of communed does not get rid of class, but entrenches petite bourgeois class structures where each commune owns only what is within its commune, whereas Marxists want to abolish class by making all property equally owned by all in a highly developed and complex economy.
Maybe we should all specialize, and pay each other with our own goods, or better yet, a sort of representation of goods we all agree is valuable, so you can get one persons goods with anothers.
Kinda seems unfair that somebody's aunt should have to purchase insulin she needs to survive, like she shouldn't have to work harder to have the same lifestyle as someone without a disability. Maybe we should just give her the insulin she needs to survive, and compensate the people who make it out of some sort of common pool of resources everyone is required to contribute to, in order to distribute the costs more fairly.
That's basically what happened before money was invented. Imagine being a shoe maker and wanting to get some food, can you convince the sellers to take new shoes for the food/groceries EVERY DAY?
Like how people were gifted ability to have more knowledge at their hands than previous generations and rapid communication, and then came to the conclusion that the earth is flat, vaccines are poision, and facism is holy?
Humans are dumb fucks. They will inevitably fuck up even the most perfect utopia they arrive in short of some mass hive mind brain washing Equilibrium style. i don't hold that high an opinion of human society.
Leave the world to the animals. Humans are a failed experiment and a virus to the world.
If you believe in great man theory™ and think that all political developments happen because one person can magically steer entire countries and the world, in geo-political terms, or idealists in thinking that if you have the correct ideas, you can magically steer the entire rest of the world to whatever you think, by having the correct thoughts. Then your theories of political developments are non-materialist, like this comment is objecting to. The system sets the conditions of who is going to be empowered or rewarded for their actions and positions.
People in this context appears to be plural, thus I don't see how Montreal_Metro's take is Great Man Theory.
The system sets the conditions of who is going to be empowered or rewarded for their actions and positions.
Ultimately, any system is operated by mere mortals who will arbitrarily reward and punish people based on their own bias, morals and desires. Systems only work so long as the people manning them follow the rules. Systems only last if the people running it punish rule breakers.
According to all of history, corruption, apathy, and pure human greed and ingenuity will gradually eat away any system, economic and political, until it collapses. Only for the failing system to be replaced by a "better" system, which begins the cycle again.
The fact that it is attributed to a very few actors and not a literal, singular actor does not negate great man theory.
The issue is that this is arbitrarily flattening of the actual material conditions. You can point out that nearly all political systems, on a long enough timeline lead to some form of collapse (Joseph Tainter is a good reference on this). But all of these things are dependent, not independent, of the systems and conditions they find themselves in. The timescales and forms can vary drastically depending on the material conditions actors find themselves in.
Did the system that created the conditions people find themselves in come first. Or did the people running the system create the conditions that they find themselves in?
It is not that there isn't some flow both ways, but that the material conditions is much more dominant than people coming up with ideas and mechanations moving things in ways contradicting the conditions. The system setting the conditions is in fact dominant. The way corruption and self-dealing manifests is different between where you can just create a private corporation and lobby for a government contract to justify being given a 500 million dollars of tax payer money, versus trying to massage Gosplan to syphon off several million Rubles of excess spending, versus tricking a sovereign wealth fund to hand over several billion dollars for some supposed innovative building company to create innovations for Neom.
you know, i tell you what. i'm fed up with all this gringo self-righteousness when you talk about "oh communism was bad, oh people where killed, oh people had no food, oh people had no liberty, oh people could not buy ataris, oh our countries are so democratic". your countries were democratic during the cold war in the first place because you had people to sort things out for you here in the global south. for each person complaining about how the food rations in eastern europe were not tasty enough, there were 10 dying of hunger or malnourishment here in the global south. for every person complaining they had to wait 5 years in a queue to buy a trabant or an oka, there were 10 who got no school in a range of 50 km. for every person complaining that their 8 hour shifts in state owned factories were overwhelming, there were 10 who were indentured workers. for every person complaining about how the stasi, kgb or the stb had bugged their apartment, there were 10 suffering the most horrific tortures inside black sites of the military of u.s. allies here in the "third world". for every person complaining about dull standard apartment blocks in mikrorayons, there were 10 who lived in mud shacks and slums, and those are just who were lucky enough to have a roof over their heads. finally, for everyone complaining about chinese sweatshops, which are indeed a problem, there are 10 americans who work and yet cannot afford proper housing.
you wanna complain about how communism was bad? go ahead. you wanna complain how your parents lived under communism and could not drink coke? do so if you wish. but there are still millions of people down here who would give an arm and a leg to have a polish ration, an apartment in a russian gray building, or a yugoslav job. and while the chinese maoist red guard was bad, surely it won't be an inch closer to the harassement people endured on a daily basis by our police forces.
again: you wanna complain? be my guest. but for me that's an encyclopedic example of white privilege.
Seeing some of the zingers in the comments here, now seems like a great time to plug my "Read Theory, Darn it!" introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. Read up, comrades!
For those that don't like to read, you don't have to read theory. In fact, most theory is old. There are newer and better takes on these ideas. Find a good YouTube channel that goes over the ideas. I like Vaush.
If you like to read theory, go for it. But I think there are faster and easier ways to get the concepts.
Support for chasers and sex-pests like Vaush is pretty awful, not to mentions his awful politics and constant butchering of Marxist theory for an audience that usually can't tell the difference.
Theory is important. Much of my list is newer, some is older when it holds up, some is newer when it meaningfully adds to the discussion. However, as someone who had your approach, reading theory directly genuinely is much faster than rolling the dice.
I have audiobooks linked as well that people can listen to if they prefer, and importantly they won't be distorted by a sex-pest who complains about Marxists constantly while misrepresenting them.
The vast majority of them, to be honest. He has no grasp of Dialectical and Historical Materialism, has no knowledge of AES, and horrendously distorts Lenin.
He's a liberal that cosplays an Anarchist and pretends to have beyond a Wikipedia understanding of Marxism.
That's, of course, ignoring that he's a chaser, pedophile, sex offender.
One of the worst issues is when he depicts AES as "not real Socialism" because they contain contradictions, when Dialectical Materialism shows that all systems contain contradictions and must resolve them, that doesn't mean they aren't that system. Ie, Capitalist states contain public ownership, which is a contradiction but does not define the system.
One of the recent and larger-scale issues was when he tried to explain Lenin advocated voting Socialism into existence.
I don't make it a point to hate-watch sex offenders that do the work of the US state department.
Yeah, I am not surprised that you have disagreements behind Lenin and AES. The two are pretty related and hard to pull apart. I was just surprised that you would disagree with any of his Marxist takes. I think you both agree what the problems are from a Marxist perspective.
As for the sex offenders/sex pest stuff. I don't think he is those things, but I understand I am just one person. From the stuff I have seen it is mostly people that disagree with him that label him as such as a way to get around the fact they don't really have a leg to stand on; Fascists and the like. Not saying that is you of course.
Thanks for taking the time to talk this though by the way. I figure you get hit with a lot of stuff.
Vaush's whole thing is controversy bait. He purposely crosses lines to get people mad at him while maintaining some form of "plausible deniability" to where his fans can always find a way to defend and excuse his actions by talking about "you don't understand the context" or whatever, it's a very common and tiresome tactic. Like, if you're trying to promote a shitty video game that can't stand on it's own merits, just do something to antagonize either the left or the right (doesn't matter which) and then go to the other group and be like, "Look, the guys you hate hate us, you should check us out." Controversy generates clicks. A big reason for Trump's success is that he cracked the code on how to apply this formula to a political campaign. If you know how to recognize it, it's very obvious that Vaush does this.
This sort of opportunism is very detrimental to actually understanding the world or promoting ideas or building a movement. It's essentially brain-poisoning and a cognitohazard. You're much better off reading actual books than just following whoever's best at attracting attention on the internet. If you are going to shun books for videos, you should at least go with someone more educational, like Shaun.
I don't know where you are getting the idea that he purposefully generates controversies. He lost subs during most of his controversies, not gained. And it has down stream negative impacts on his channel other than just sub count.
No way it's just carelessness, nobody forces him to say edgy shit. It's the classic "no such thing as bad publicity," or, "but you have heard of me" thing. I'd have never heard of him without the controversies (of which there are many), and despite making a conscious effort to avoid him, even I've seen clips of him. When you get people talking about something, people will get curious and want to see it straight from the horses mouth, then some percentage of the people who show up "to get the full story" will like what they see and stick around, and even if they don't, a hate click is still "engagement," it doesn't matter why you click, if you click, it boosts him in the algorithm.
Going into examples will naturally only play into this effect, but I recall him once talking about performing eugenics to eradicate trans people from existence, under the idea of detecting gender dysphoria in the womb and aborting the fetus. This is an example of walking right up to the line and getting people mad on purpose, that's not something someone just "organically" says out of "carelessness," it's specifically formulated to generate outrage, while, as always, leaving him an out that he can fall back on.
There is 100% such a thing as bad publicity. Your post here is a literal example of this, you actively avoid him and there are many people who feel the same way as you.
Hes not forced to say edgy shit, he just doesn't put much effort into not saying edgy shit and he naturally wants to. He doesn't police his own words, for instance, his frequent use of the word "retarded" and his joking about hating women. He also constantly blurts out shit and then his audience points out he misspoke and he gets annoyed and says "You fucks know what I meant". He has no anxiety or shame about his wording of things. There is no worry on his end about saying something shameful, he's literally said that he thinks shame is a worthless emotion.
He doesn't "mask" essentially. He is not careful. Maybe to some degree that helps his internet career because of reputation of authenticity or something but it also frequently pisses off his own audience. The controversies have lost him subs, they've severely damaged his ability to engage with other creators because he has either alienated or outright insulted them, which means he doesn't debate anyone anymore, left or right.
Its not on purpose. Hes not playing 12D chess to boost his youtube career. He wouldn't be a leftwing creator in that case, he'd be a rightwing grifter instead. A lot more money in that.
Your post here is a literal example of this, you actively avoid him and there are many people who feel the same way as you.
And yet, I've given him clicks. And I'm talking about him. That's what he wants, that's why he does what he does. Were it not for the controversies, I wouldn't watch him either because I wouldn't have heard of him, and also because I'm not his target audience.
Hopefully my criticism calls out the pattern directly enough that people take away that they should just ignore him, as opposed to playing into his specific controversies that are calculated to make use of criticism and outrage.
Hes not forced to say edgy shit, he just doesn’t put much effort into not saying edgy shit and he naturally wants to.
All I can see is that I see a pretty clear method to the madness. There's always an out, it's always "you don't understand the context." It's the same tactic Trump uses, and the same tactic used in countless ad campaigns. I can't really prove it because it's just a matter of pattern recognition, but suffice to say, I don't fuck with what he does. Even if your interpretation were correct, associating with someone so careless about messaging and so prone to controversies is more of a liability to the left than an asset. But also, your interpretation is not correct.
The first time I see someone holding a bloody knife over a dead body, I might be willing to listen to their explanation and their side of the story. The 17th time I see the same person in the same situation, something's going on. How many times am I expected to give him the benefit of the doubt? Because whatever that number is, he's exceeded it, because he's doing this constantly, and you can pretend that it isn't a clear pattern of behavior all you want, but I'm not going to.
He wouldn’t be a leftwing creator in that case, he’d be a rightwing grifter instead. A lot more money in that.
No, there's lot's of little niches that one can carve out, regardless of being left or right. There's plenty of opportunists with supposedly left-leaning brands. The right-wing grifts and personality cults are more profitable, but it's also a fairly saturated market with a lot of competition. There's plenty of room for people like Destiny, Jimmy Dore, and Vaush to carve out their respective "left-leaning" niches.
Also, btw, I have never heard about any actual insight that watching Vaush gives. His content isn't educational or edifying, the way someone like Shaun's is. It's all about aesthetics and personality. The best thing anyone can really claim about Vaush is that criticism towards him is invalid, or that he makes people they don't like mad, nobody actually seems to learn anything from watching him.
I thought you said you only watched clips of him? I assumed you meant by other creators.
All I can see is that I see a pretty clear method to the madness. There’s always an out, it’s always “you don’t understand the context.” It’s the same tactic Trump uses, and the same tactic used in countless ad campaigns.
Trump supporters don't actually care about context though. They say that shit for propaganda purposes. Vaush supporters bring up context because he literally gets clipped out of context for oppositional propaganda purposes.
Also, there isn't always an "out". Some of the things Vaush has said/done are bad even with context. Like when he told his followers to go harass Contrapoints on Twitter once because he was upset with her and wanted to "Force her to see reason" or whatever. When he was unnecessarily nasty to TJ Kirk during some debate. Or when he flashed on screen AI generated and drawn porn of a canonically 16 year old character and bestiality.
There are a few other things I'm probably forgetting.
No, there’s lot’s of little niches that one can carve out, regardless of being left or right. There’s plenty of opportunists with supposedly left-leaning brands. The right-wing grifts and personality cults are more profitable, but it’s also a fairly saturated market with a lot of competition. There’s plenty of room for people like Destiny, Jimmy Dore, and Vaush to carve out their respective “left-leaning” niches.
Jimmy Dore is 100% vapid grift. Destiny is a terrible human being but he is also almost certainly not a grifter. He says what he means and means what he says.
Vaush is someone who is significantly egotistical, narcissistic, impulsive, and short sighted. But he is not a controversy-monger, on that front he is just a dumbass.
I do get that vibe from Vaush occasionally. Unfortunately the attention economy is a real thing and I would be impressed with anyone with the same reach as Vaush wouldn't be doing similar things. I am not sure I would be as far left as I am without his content.
A big difference between Hasan and Vaush is that Hasan generally wastes very little of his time with sectarian nonsense or left-punching, while Vaush makes that one of his core focuses. Hasan networks with the Deprogram crew, Chapo, and other more Marxist aligned groups without screaming about "tankies," while Vaush leans heavily into that.
Hasan is also generally much better with foreign policy, even though I don't always agree.
The biggest thing is that Hasan serves as a great gateway to Leftist radicalization, while Vaush ends up preventing further Leftist movement, kinda like a more Libertarian Socialist-coded Destiny.
My fiancé and I will still watch Hasan even when we may disagree with him on some issues because he is generally entertaining and generally more correct than not, but would never watch Vaush.
Hasan avoids arguing with leftists because hes a cowardly clout monger and can't debate for shit because he isn't really that smart and is captured to some degree by his audience.
I don't hate Hasan, I do agree with a lot of his takes but hes fundamentally a less ideologically honest person than Vaush. Vaush doesn't give much of a shit about pissing off his audience, he does it constantly.
Instead of sending you to the Vaush Gulag I'm going to instead reccomend that you try audiobooks. There are many on youtube, but that is not the only place you can find audiobooks of Marxist theory. Let's just say Marxists are real keen on making sure these texts are readily accessible. While a lot of theory is old, not all of it is, but you'll be lost in newer theory if you don't know the basics.
I highly recommend "Black Shirts and Reds" by Parenti for newbies to Marxism. I also recommend "Socialism Scientific and Utopian" by Engels, "Reform and Revolution" by Luxembourg. All of these can easily be found as both pdf and audiobook, and are short, and easily digestible by lay people.
For all the people talking about Vaush and Hasan and their controversies, realize that there are other folks out there where you can learn about theory without the Twitch brainrot. The Revolutionary Left podcast is my personal favorite.
Absolutely, but many people do not have the time luxury to read dense theory books, and (good) podcasts can at least get people acquainted with the ideas.
Also, (and I’m putting words in your mouth, so sorry for that) I think it’s a fallacy to say that every comrade must be a theory scholar. Certainly our leaders and organizers should be, but I think it’s fine if people don’t have the academic inclination and want to contribute in other ways.
It's easy to say if one has never lived under communism rule. Stalinism caused the Holodomor in Ukraine and starved to death 2-7 million people. Mass deportations of people in Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and many other countries in Eastern Europe. Federated platforms? Forget about it. Everything is controlled by the state. Do you want to say something that the government doesn't like? You can, but then you are off in a concentration camp (gulag) or sent to Siberia. Almost every family has a history of one of its family members being sent or imprisoned because they said something bad about communists / had a farm and could feed themselves with the products from their farm or land. On the contrary I would recommend to read the Animal Farm by George Orwell. - "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".
The famine in the 30s was caused by natural causes and spiraled to greater heights because of collectivization, but this ended famines.
The Soviet system was similar to federated platforms. It was government controlled, in a somewhat federated manner. Read Soviet Democracy.
The GULAG administration was a prison system, not concentration camps. Read Russian Justice.
Orwell was a fan of Hitler, hated workers, and in Animal Farm specifically his biggest critique was that Russian Workers are stupid and destined to be taken advantage of. Read On Orwell and A Critical Read of Animal Farm.
"Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches. I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power — till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter — I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity."
liked hitler is not exactly true, he just found him charismatic, I think saying he liked him is rather misleading
Given that he was wildly aristocratic in demeanor, looked down on workers, and even wrote an entire book that spends time after time talking about how stupid Russian workers are and thus are destined to be taken advantage of by bad actors, I don't think saying "like" is wrong, here. The Anarchists he fought alongside in Spain even questioned why he wasn't fighting for the fascists. There's also the issue of Orwell's antisemitism to contend with.
Orwell says he would have killed Hitler had he the chance, but still clearly found him appealing.
In this case, I think saying he liked Hitler is actually weakening your argument, even if it's completely true, it's clear from the reading that he wished he could personally kill hitler, but found him charismatic, and is saying that charisma is what his success was found on.
All of what you said there might be true, and all of that makes your case that he was a bad man better, but doesn't make the case that he liked him better. At the end of the day, you don't like someone you wish you could have killed. Saying he liked hitler when the reading makes it clear he wished he could kill him makes your other claims more dubious, not stronger, you should probably refrain from that in the future if your goal is to convince people.
All of those things may be true bad things about orwell, but none of them means he was clearly a fan of hitler.
Furthermore, I think antagonizing orwell, even if he was bad is just bad praxis for convincing people to be anti-capitalist.
I suppose it's more of a different stance on the use of the word "fan." Saying you would feel no personal animosity for Hitler while killing him goes quite a lot beyond simply finding him charismatic. I can say Trump can be funny, but I hold a great deal of animosity towards him despite that.
Oh yes, my friend, I knew someone would repeat me this soviet narrative. I urge you to read about Mr. Jones or watch a film about these events. Regarding gulags, it’s the same as telling me about concentration camps built by the Nazis. They also claimed it was just for labor, you know. I see you are well prepared with communist materials, it’s the same as entering communist class in the Soviet Union and expecting they will share the truth.
Regarding gulags, it’s the same as telling me about concentration camps built by the Nazis.
I see you are well prepared with communist materials, it’s the same as entering communist class in the Soviet Union and expecting they will share the truth.
Those aren’t arguments, they’re vague, empty rhetoric.
Considering that once Capitalism was restored wealth inequality skyrocketed, 7 million people died, and previously relied on safety nets were destroyed or sold for parts to Capitalists, I don't think it's something that can be attributed to simple youthful nostalgia.
I don't know if you've noticed, but Europe is sliding into fascism too, just not as quickly. Regulating capitalism treats the symptoms and not the disease, and so it can only ever bring temporary relief. The problems we are experiencing now are not the product of a broken system, they are the inevitable result of capitalist economics, no matter how restrained.
This is 100% ahistorical, Communism has historically served the working class and opposed fascism while fascism has historically served Capitalists and oppressed workers and Communists. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
This is nothing more than a feeling that you have, and has no basis in fact. All the worst atrocities committed in the name of communism throughout history cannot possibly compare in scale or cruelty to the actions of even a single fascist state.
In addition to the difference in scale there is a difference in motive. Communists have noble goals, but atrocities result from threat-induced paranoia and selfish opportunists co-opting revolutionary fervor. The atrocities of fascism are pure evil in both motive and action. Fascists seek to eliminate those that they deem inferior, and they carry this out with unimaginable cruelty and glee.
"Totalitarianism" as a term was largely popularized in order to depict Communism and Nazism as "twin evils," when the reality is that Socialist countries have had dramatic democratization of the economy.
@Cowbee@memes might be true, but by definition (A system of government in which the people have virtually no authority and the state wields absolute control) my comment is correct
Unfortunately for many parts of the world, it doesn't matter if you're trying to go full socialist or not, if you get in the way of multinational exploitation and neocolonialism, you're gonna get couped. There's no shortage of left-leaning non-socialists who have also been targeted by the CIA. Like Guatemala, where they just wanted to do basic land reform so farmers could work their own land, but Chiquita didn't like that so it became the origin of the term "Banana Republic."
What do they do in China, exactly? It looks like single-party fascist corporatism. If it's communism, why do they have a rising number of billionaires and worse conditions for workers than many european countries?
China has a Socialist Market Economy. Large firms and key sectors like steel and banking are nearly entirely under public control, while there are a large number of self-employed people. They actually have a falling number of billionaires in the last couple years.
As for worker conditions, Europe is Imperialist and many European countries act like landlords, and China is still a developing country, though rapidly developing.
What do they do in China, exactly? It looks like single-party fascist corporatism.
The funny thing about discussions about China's economy is that you can use pretty much any term to describe it as long as it's bad. If "socialist" or "communist" is understood to be a bad thing to those in the conversation, you can use those terms without objection, but you can also say stuff like "Feudalism" or "Fascist Corporatism" or "Colonialism" or "Capitalist" or "State Capitalist" or whatever tf else, it's all just vibes-based and the only requirement is that the vibes be bad.
China has a mixed economy with a combination of state ownership and private investment, with the state maintaining a controlling share in certain key industries, and preventing (at least so far) economic elites from infiltrating the government for the purpose of widespread regulatory capture and deregulation. Billionaires exist but sometimes face real consequences for illegal activity, and the balance between public and private ownership tips more heavily towards public when compared to other countries such as those in Europe.
The partial liberalization of the economy is meant to encourage economic development post-industrialization, and prevent the challenges the USSR faced with economic stagnation post-industrialization. Central planning works great if you're just trying to meet people's basic needs like food or shelter, but the demand for consumer goods is more fluid. This policy is also adapted to the global situation, China has benefitted greatly from industry moving there and by becoming a major trade partner of the US and other countries (while also holding the bulk of manufacturing output), that makes it difficult for outside forces to go to war or level sanctions/tariffs on them.
It is not a "communist" country in the sense of having achieved communism (in this sense, a "communist country" is an inherent contradiction). It could be called a communist/socialist country in the sense that it is governed by (self-identified) communists. Socialism, or I should specify Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, aren't a set of specific policies but rather a materialist and class-based mode of analysis to be applied and adapted differently depending on material conditions.
Some hardcore Maoists would argue that China's current system is a deviation from the correct socialist ideas, as espoused by Mao. However, there's also this odd branch of Westerners that don't like China's liberalized system because "it has billionaires," but also don't like what they had before under Mao when they didn't have billionaires, but also claim to dislike full-on capitalism - so as far as I can tell, they just dislike China regardless of what they do or don't do. I've yet to find any such person who's actually willing and capable to engage in a discussion of "what should they do/have done economically" as opposed to just bashing them. And in fact, when asked what kind of economic system they support, they'll often describe a mixed system similar to what China has, but then be like, "but not like that."
I’ve yet to find any such person who’s actually willing and capable to engage in a discussion of “what should they do/have done economically” as opposed to just bashing them.
I didn't say they weren't doing fine or that they shouldn't be doing what they're doing.
I just said that they're not communists. This is not a bad thing! But lying about it is of course somewhat distasteful, especially for those people who think themselves as being communists.
I didn’t say they weren’t doing fine or that they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing.
So your position is that their system is "Fascist Corporatism," but also... that's fine, actually?
I just said that they’re not communists. This is not a bad thing! But lying about it is of course somewhat distasteful, especially for those people who think themselves as being communists.
Whether they're "lying" is a matter of interpretation and ideological differences. Like, if I'm a hardcore, traditionalist Roman Catholic, maybe from my perspective, all Protestants are "lying" about being Christian because "true Christianity" means my interpretation of it. Likewise, if you're a hardcore Maoist, then maybe you'd argue that China is governed by revisionists who are "lying" about being communists.
If we want to look at it from a relatively objective point of view, the largest number of self-identified communists in the world are Marxist-Leninists, who don't view China as "lying about being communist" but rather agree with or at least critically support their approach. So, idk, if you want to join some fringe Christian sect that claims every other sect as being heretical and themselves as the sole defender of the faith, or if you want to join some fringe communist group that denounces every other communist group as revisionist and themselves as the only "real" communists, then idk, you do you ig. But not everyone who believes different things from you is "lying."
I'm sure that your branding of the Chinese economy is based on a very high degree of intellectual rigor and definitely not just pulling words out of your ass based on vibes.
Oh boy, another batch of centrists coming in from the Reddit shitstorm... This one oblivious to the fact that far right parties are gaining traction all over Europe.
Needs: healthcare, utilities, public transport, even a minimal but quality food source. Even to the point of utilitarian but working phones/devices. State ownership where profits are minimal but go back into the state. The services aren't necessarily free, but are run without massive shareholder payouts.
Wants: upgrades and luxuries. iPhones, treat foods, nice cars, silk bedding and those ridiculous marshmallow shoes everyone loves. Regulated but free market.
Now all your basic needs are covered by the community together. You could probably live a simple life with very little income. If you want luxury or fancy, feel free to work too get it.
I have been trying to put together a document that attempt this concept of ensuring the survival of people, while making money into something used for lifestyle upgrades. Also, heavy emphasis on wealth limits and preferring people over corporations. IMO, corporations are great for personal interests, but are beyond terrible when it comes to the wellbeing of people. Thus, we should make having a job optional, but rewarding.
Trying to design a Utopia by fiat has historically failed, just look at the Owenites. The great advancement with Marx was studying societal development and mastering it, so that we can work it into our favor, not by designing systems in a lab that may have no bearing in reality.
High injury and fatality rates. An astronaut risks their life everytime they ride an occaisional rocket, but a lumberjack has to deal with falling trees on a daily basis.
This isn't true, though. You can't have a "little bit of Socialism" and a "little bit of Capitalism," Socialism and Capitalism are descriptors of overall economies. Regulation in a Capitalist system is still Capitalism, Europe in particular is Imperialist (and increasingly moving to fascism as they fade from relevance in the global stage).
Socialism, on the other hand, absolutely works, and is why the PRC is overtaking everyone else at the moment.
Yeah, but how is the quality of life for the average person in the PRC? Honest question, because I don't know. I'm American they would have us believe that the average Chinese citizen is living one step of from a factory slave.
Varies dramatically depending on where you live, because China is an extremely rapidly developing country that was as poor as Haiti is today 100 years ago. Quality of life overall is good, and rising rapidly.
The developers are Communists, and a lot of us are here instead of Reddit due to issues with the Capitalist nature of Reddit. There are some Lemmy instances that are more anticommunist, but there are also a good amount of Communist-aligned instances as well.
We are seeing the capitalist West's descent into fascism. The direct proof of the 1930's maxim, "fascism is capitalism in decay" between the AFD, Orban, Erdogan, Starmer being basically indistinguishable from a Tory, Macron pulling a Hindenburg by using the presidential power to appoint a prime minister that will unify the center-right liberals with the far-right to prevent the left from having any power in government, and Meloni being an acceptable, reasonable western leader because she follows through with whatever US foreign policy is on offer. We are seeing a direct breakdown because of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (law of diminishing returns, applied to profit, if you are a child that believes in neoclassical economics). So profit has to be sought out by purely national protectionism and reshoring since there is not a growing pie, but you just have to claim a greater slice of the pie. Capitalism on any sufficient timescale is Fascism, the destruction of WW2 and the Marshall Plan reset this "diminishing return on profitability" so that we are reaching the same state of the 1920s. But since there isn't a strong socialist movement we have to modify Gramsci's assessment. "The old world is dying, a new one is completely stillborn, now and forever is the time of monsters"
Is-ought fallacy? Understand me correctly, I like the EU system, but to pretend that it's the end of history and that we've reached perfection in this space is wrong.
I wonder if anyone ever said "Democracy would never work, just look at what happened to Athens".
Socialism and communism are relatively new ideas. While I don't believe communism is an effective form of government, it's still kind of silly to write it off so quickly.
This is generally wrong, though. Communist countries have dramatically democratized society, it works better at large scale if we are speaking of Marxian Communism because that's the Marxist reason for Communism to begin with. Competition centralizes, so in the future it must be publicly owned and planned. This is the basis of Scientific Socialism, primitive Communism is not the same as the post-Socialist Communism, which must be large-scale as production increases in complexity.
Independently of who I side with, I am blocking this community because of the stifling of Realitaetsverlust's comments.
edit: was baffled by the stifling and just researched and learned about Lemmy.ml
it all makes sense now. It is a Socialist Communist instance that censors those not aligned with them. Political leanings don't bother me, but the censorship does so I will be avoiding anything Lemmy.ml in the future. They of course have a right to run their instance how they wish. peace out
LOL
The horrible feodal system with serfs/slaves the Tibetans has was sooo much better.
Some CIA poking didn't work to bring that back.
And there was a small minority radicalised terrorists by Turkey and OC again the CIA to cause trouble, which they did.
blew up a plane with civilians, multiple other attacks on busses, trainstations, etc....
The majority never liked them and are glad it's over.
But nice try.
What, did a suicide happen years ago in a country you don't like? Quick, use that as a weak excuse to throw mud.
I'm sure suicide doesn't happen in companies from the fascist US, where they have to pee in bottles.
Sometimes a known fascist boss demands to keep his Tesla factory open in full covid peak and his slaves get sick and die.
Plenty of them die homeless or from drugs anyway.
No paid sick days, universal healthcare, unemployment, etc. Really a pathetic 3rd world country.
Not to mention no other regime puts more of its citizens in jail.
This is the embarrassing US banana republic.
Want to try again?
Ita wild to me that you can see the USs mas incarceration and tell its bad, but when the chinese govt imprisions and entire population based on their religion you act like its a good thing
"imprisions and entire population based on their religion "
That is a called a lie, or wild, baseless accusation at best.
It can be proved the US is the most authoritarian regime because facts and data about their prison slaves.
You just say stuff out of your unhealthy fixation with communism, which you even need to mention in your bio.
If that's all you're going to do then go away, not worth it.
The US propaganda machine’s “Uyghur genocide” psyop has been debunked six ways to Sunday already. [1] [2]
.
tibetans
I’m pretty sure virtually all of the Tibetan people are happy to no longer be suffering under theocratic feudalism. Happy to no longer be illiterate serfs and slaves, suffering depredation under a god-king. I doubt many of them are sad that CIA asset Dalai “suck my tongue” Lama is in exile. [1] [2]
Not sure what you're trying to say. Uyghurs are systematically eradicated and tibet is controlled by china since their invasion in the 1950s. Not exactly speaking in favor of communism.
So, if you'd like to expand on your point, I might be able to discuss this further.
eradicated LOL, their population is growing, despite the many some US backed terrorist killed.
And Tibet doesn't have slaves anymore who literally had chains around their necks suffering under the religious buddhist monks terror.
Yawn, can you bring up Tiananmen square again to not be original? I'll wait
According to who? The chinese government? Lmao. Ye I would DEFINITELY trust the ones that are performing the killings on reporting accurate numbers.
And Tibet doesn’t have slaves anymore who literally had chains around their necks suffering under the religious buddhist monks terror.
Imperialism good when country does bad things?
Yawn, can you bring up Tiananmen square again to not be original? I’ll wait
I could, but if you want some originality, I can also bring up one of the other atrocities directly ordered by communist regimes, like the Prague Spring, Hungarian Revolution or the mass executions by the Khmer in Cambodia.
oh, the khmer rouge, that one that the u.s. supported along with britain, china (not so dirty back then, right) and who were toppled by the socialist regime of vietnam?
I already answered that to someone else so I'll just copy and paste it:
The US never directly supported pol pot. Before 1975, they supported Lon Nol, who was fighting against the communist Khmer Rouge.
The part that IS true is that the US did support China and Thailand at the time, which in turn used that aid to support resistance groups in cambodia because vietnam invaded cambodia in 1979 - something the US had no problem with since vietnam was backed by the soviets. Also, it is true that the US and other western countries supported keeping the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s official UN representative, however, that was mostly done to undermine Vietnam’s rule over cambodia.
So, yes, by extension, the US supported pol pot, but it’s not the big “gotcha” you think it is - it was the cold war, an extremely complex geopolitical time.
I don't need to prove something that didn't happen which isn't possible, you show me proof of your fantasy eradication that isn't from the sick nutbag Adrian Zenz. Must be easy if it's such a genocide.
Kinda? China has a Socialist Market Economy, and this is building up the productive forces dramatically, but not every country will work the same way or have the same path.
Communists on the VERGE of UTOPIA fails after evil CAPITALIST CIA does line of coke and give some power hungry general(s) and the local homeless men some guns and cash.
This isn't true, actually. AES states are democratic, you should read Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan.
Northern European countries aren't role models, either. They depend on Imperialism to fund their safety nets, and are dictatorships of the Bourgeoisie, hence why their safety nets are declining.
They are adhering to Marxism, I am curious why you say they aren't, and if you are getting that from Marx, or second-hand interpretations of Marx. I don't want to get into the rest of your comment until we get past the part where you think there's such thing as a "true communism" that, say, the PRC is not genuinely working towards.
We weren't talking about the Russian Federation, but Soviet Union. The RF is Capitalist, sure, but the USSR was absolutely Socialist.
As for the PRC, it is Socialist, and does follow what Marx described. Are you getting this from actually reading Marx, or second-hand?
For starters, Marx described the economy of a post-revolutionary state to nationalize the large trusts and gradually fold the smaller firms once they get large enough. This is mentioned many times, from the Manifesto of the Communist Party, to my favorite concise explanation in Engels' Principles of Communism:
Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?
No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.
The PRC mirrors this. The vast majority of large firks are under public control, and the vast majority of the private sector is made up of self-employed people or small firms. If the CPC attempted to forcibly acquire them without letting them develop, they would be committing an error by Marxist standards, unless they truly had good reason.
Key industries like finance and steel are publicly owned as well, if you control the rubber factory you control the rubber ball factory without needing to own it directly.
We were talking about the Soviet Union, that's the one the original commenter said wasn't democratic and that's the one I responded to. You disagreed with my comment, but without actually pivoting the conversation to the RF at all, just assuming we were talking about the RF and not the USSR.
Either way, the Soviet Union was Socialist. It was not a divergence from Marxism or Marxism-Leninism, the foundations of the economy were in public ownership of the Means of Production. "Stalinism" generally refers to advocacy for Socialism in One Country as opposed to Permanent Revolution, not the entire economic foundations of the Soviet Union.
The Proletariat owned the Means of Production through the Public Ownership model. This is Marxism not from Stalin, not from Lenin, but Marx and Engels themselves. Marx was not an Anarchist that wanted decentralization, rather, Marx advocated for full centralization of the Means of Production.
I recommend checking out my introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, as you certainly have a confused understanding of Historical Materialism and Scientific Socialism.
Again, we were talking about the Soviet Union. You misunderstood and pivoted to the Russian Federation without telling anyone, but if you go up the comment chain the original comment was about the Soviet Union. Anyways...
Marxism - The overarching family of Marxist tendencies chategorized by Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Scientific Socialism, and Marx's Law of Value.
Leninism - The term for the specific strategic and tactical advancements of Lenin upon Marxism, such as analysis of Imperialism, the Vanguard party platform, national liberation in the Global South, and much more.
Marxism-Leninism - The subset of Marxism that accepts Lenin's contributions and upholds AES. By far the most common form of Marxism.
Stalinism - usually a reference to support for Socialism in One Country over Permanent Revolution.
Either way, you're entirely wrong about what led the USSR to dissolve, and the nature of its economic model.
The USSR was Socialist, because Public Ownership was primary in the economy. The Proletariat controlled the Means of Production through the public sector. Marx was not an advocate for decentralization, but centralization over time as large industry formed and could and must be planned centrally.
The USSR dissolved for numerous reasons adding up, some of the larger reasons were the liberal economic reforms of Gorbachev and later Yeltsin, as well as needing to spend a much larger portion of their GDP on the millitary to keep parity with the US.
Your central argument is genuinely that the Workers in the Soviet Union, despite being taught Marxism in school, were too stupid to realize that they were not living in a Marxian system. This is wrong on both fronts, the Soviet citizens had a much better understanding of Socialism as people living in it, and the system itself did follow Marxist principles.
The State is the only method for which all of property can be held in public. "Statelessness" refers to the stage in upper-Communism where all property is publicly owned, and the elements that reinforce class society like armies and private property rights no longer have any reason to exist. Government will continue to exist even in Communism, as will social workers, yet this would be considered "stateless" by Marx as the oppressive elements of government whither away by virtue of having no reason to exist.
I recommend checking out my introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, as you certainly have a confused understanding of Historical Materialism and Scientific Socialism.
Literally any socialistic country turned in a shitty dictatorship. Do you still need further investigations?
The biggest example is China. They opened to capitalism in order to let the greedy comrades survive in their power and what you have know? Chinese are free to earn tons of money, but not to say what they think.
It's the biggest paradox of the world.
In the biggest socialist country capitalism is tollerated more then free speech.
Everything you know about these "shitty dictatorships" has been told to you by a media and a government that has a direct monetary (and by extension, power) interest in maintaining and legitimizing the current system you live under. They are free to lie to you as long as they make it believable enough. Not to mention how the ruling class would have profited immensely from assimilating the resources and labor of these "shitty dictatorships". When that fails, they will profit by generating war and weapons contracts.
This is accomplished by lying and manipulating half truths in order to call them "shitty dictatorships" that need to be dealt with through military action (and destabilization via propaganda and collective punishment to make conditions favorable to accepting capitalism as their way of life). They must justify their actions to the American people in order to generate the least friction within their system, but when it does generate friction, they do it anyways, because their power ultimately lies in capital and not in the people's opinion of them. This is often when things turn to fascism, but let's be honest, it's not "not fascism" just because it's done in the light of polite society.
This is unique to imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, which "shitty dictatorships" like China do not practice. China takes advantage of western capitalist's greed to fund their socialist project, but they are not themselves capitalist. They are in what they define as their first stage of socialism with Chinese characteristics, which has already lifted millions out of abject poverty. The presence of a market-based economy does not make a system capitalist, just as the presence of social welfare does not make a system socialist. Being openly vigilant (which likely means far less than you imagine it does) to intentionally subversive western propaganda does not mean they can't be democratic in far more meaningful ways, without the burden of constantly re-hashing information that has already been proven faulty.
We are the last people that should be telling China how to run their country and media. Because, in contrast,
Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. they know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism.’
Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions.
This is is at once the most comic and most tragic aspect of the excitable alarm that talk of social democracy or democratic socialism can elicit on these shores.
An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than, say, Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete.
They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone too irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, far more subject to income inequality, and so forth, while effectively paying more in tax (when one figures in federal, state, local and sales taxes, and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover).
One might think that a people who once rebelled against the mightiest empire on earth on the principle of no taxation without representation would not meekly accept taxation without adequate government services.
But we accept what we have become used to, I suppose. Even so, one has to ask, what state apparatus in the “free” world could be more powerful and tyrannical than the one that taxes its citizens while providing no substantial civic benefits in return, solely in order to enrich a piratically overinflated military-industrial complex and to ease the tax burdens of the immensely wealthy.
Also *waves generally at the current state of things in the US*
Could a Communist Nation be considered viable if such a hostile force can take it down? Does it all come down to survival of the fittest (in the best use of the term)?
Kinda. They are nicer to work at, but aren't what Marx is talking about, as they still retain classes due non-coop people having different property relations to those in the coop.
Any one party political system can either fail or be maintained through violent oppression. People need to have a say in who represents them and what their values are.
A more sustainable solution than soviet style communism is to have proportional representation and work on instilling socialist virtues such as kindness, social responsibility, and fairness in the population. over time, the people in government will start to reflect those values.
What if the answer to all of our worldwide problems is finding a balance between decentralized and centralized structures, balancing technology and the environment, finding a balance between currency and a moneyless society, and achieving balance between authority and liberty (with the goal of individual and societal sovereignty), and so forth?
In this thread, I see Anarcho-Communists (or final stage Communists/ideological purists) taking bat at Marxist-Leninists (who espouse mostly outdated theory, but not always) and Liberals who fail to understand really any ideology that differs from their own because of how thick the propaganda is (and who espouse ideals like Democratic Socialism while failing to realize that their social support is still enabled by modern slavery - such as the exploitation of third world countries).
I think a direct democracy, with authoritative and libertarian elements (such as enforcing liberty/a universal bill of rights for individuals) would be ideal.
It could have an economic system with built-in social supports (each according to their need) that emulates cash and all the best parts of blockchain (that isn't hoardable or worth hoarding, that also doesn't enable slavery/other forms of parasitism, and is generally private at the transactional stage - yet is auditable at a larger-scale), with centralized control of natural resources that still respects decentralized development and balance with the environment. And also does not have debt or parasitism of any form, instead encouraging diplomacy - such as contracts/agreements taking the place of debt to better the planet and encourage societal responsibility and stewardship (e.g. contracts that result in the stabilization of the society incurring the would-be debt).
Instead of total anarchy or various forms of authoritative control/dictatorship, we could simply combine direct democracy and hierarchy by electing leaders based solely on merit in the areas that are most needed, with strong controls so we get the best out of leadership and hierarchy and the resultant clarity and direction, without letting leaders and other experts become drunk on power. While also preventing the corruption of the individuals in power and the various forms of stagnation that result from entrenched power not conceding to new developments or advances.
I know I'm an idealist, but I'd like everybody to turn the chapter and realize that we are in 2025, not the 1900s. Technology and science have advanced every area of our society. We are so beyond scarcity that we are producing well beyond our needs with conditions and methods that are not even close to ideal (with ideal and emergent solutions and methods ready to take the place of those unsustainable methods).
We also have a global communication network - we can understand foreign languages without any human intervention in some cases, we can bridge cultural gaps, we can seek understanding and truth with our fingertips, and also we can push past the propaganda we are served on a platter, etc.
We can achieve something better than anything that has ever been conceived of previously, and it starts by crumpling up all of the things that no longer serve us. Concepts like racism, nationalism, really all of the isms that promote superiority over others. Bridging gaps, joining hands, while also countering disinformation (not misunderstanding) and bad faith.
We truly are not facing the same limitations that we did in the 1900s, although we may be facing new challenges like the rise of AI and the misuse of it by those currently in power.
There really is no more room in society for mucking about and fighting others while everything is in such disrepair, with so much needless suffering happening.
Yeah, capitalist Britain, France, and America were terrible in their use of famines and genocides. The problem with capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people's land and food.
Almost as if every person is capable of shitting their pants, and I will baselessly assume, does so regularly like me. As always, there are differences in degrees and causes. Outside of capitalism, famine actually correlates to not having food to feed people, rather than markets saying that food has to be wasted while people starve because it is not profitable to feed them (e.g. the Dust Bowl and Great Depression for American examples). Also ignoring how it was intentional in colonial powers.
Yeah, as someone with Lakota, Irish, Bengali, Kurdish, and Iraqi friends and opiate and meth addicted family, I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at children of your kind. I am sure the 1990s and the introduction of capitalism was a great and prosperous time.
American Capitalism? I invoked multiple genocides and political repressions that weren't American. I am sure that 1840s Hungarians and Irish, 1930s Bengalis, and 1990s and 2000s Iraqis are glad to know that capitalism isn't repressive or intentionally creating starvation because the people creating the repression and starvation said that they aren't. Even though China gave up on most communist ambitions post-Dheng and Cuba has been strangled by American blockades, both have not been nearly as active in war mongering as "Western Nations", nor as repressive, despite active propaganda about them. And Western repression is much more tied to their economic modes than other nations. You have to kill anti-war protesters (e.g. Kent State) because if not full colonialism, we need neo-colonialism, so pro-Vietnamese protests can't be tolerated. And we need to support Israel, so "anti-Semitic" a.k.a. anti-Zionist protesters can't be tolerated and have no rights, because of their ties to the military and arms industry. Such as Mahmoud Khalil, who needs to be disappeared and sent to an undisclosed location to try to push fascist anti-protest, anti-speech laws.
China did not abandon Communism, they pivoted from their Left-deviationism that was based in idealism, not materialism. The Gang of Four tried to achieve Communism through Fiat, despite the Productive Forces being far below the level for that to be feasible. They rejected markets out of a miral fetishization of Poverty in an entirely publicly owned economy, rather than for Materialist reasons, so they course corrected to Marxian economics.
The 1930s famine was the last major famine out of wartime in the Soviet Union, same with the Great Chinese Famine, in countries where famine was common and regular before. Life expectancy doubled under Socialism in both the USSR and PRC as a consequence in the first few decades.
Famines had been commonplace occurrences in feudal China and Russia, which the communist states brought an end to. And those final famines occurred under post-war conditions, and under disastrous crop seasons that affected neighboring states as well.
I really didn’t expect lemmy to be already filled with russian trolls and tankies.
We’re not trolls, and many of us are socialists. Actual socialists, not “capitalism with a social safety net” like Bernie Sanders or the Nordic countries. I understand if it’s a bit of a shock to leave the echo chamber that is imperial core corporate social media and hear different perspectives for once. Lemmy is “already filled with” socialists because it was created by socialists. You are in our anti-capitalist space.
Lemmy is a free software, GNU (A)GPL makes no distinction between ideologies. Your "anti-capitalist space" is only in your head or at maximum on a few server instances.
Also Lemmy creator last time I looked was no socialist but die-hard tankie, listing Stalin and Castro as his recommended reading.
Marxism-Leninism is the guiding ideology of every existing Socialist state. The leaders of some of these states have unique viewpoints that should be studied critically.
Moreover, anti-Capitalism dominates Lemmy, even if Marxism-Leninism isn't the only manifestation of that.
Socialism is a Mode of Production determined by having public property as primary. In China, large firms and key industries are firmly under public ownership and control, and they actually have a falling number of billionaires in the last couple years.
I think the problem with Communism and Capitalism, is that both were implemented in the first place without specific goals or structure. Those things got added on later, such as the 5 year plans or how lobbying works.
IMO, we will need a v2.0 Constitution in the future, designed not only to address political issues, but also create fiscal rules. Things like universal benefits and healthcare, how much people should be payed, wealth limits, workers voting for their leadership, and so on. This, like the Magna Carta or the French Revolution, will require force in order to displace the ways of old.
It will suck, but conflict seems inevitable. Might as well make the most of it, and forge a new way forward.
This is just Utopianism, repackaged. Communism was planned, but you can't just design a system in a lab and implement it through fiat, which is why you must regularly adapt to your materil conditions.
Money is imaginary. It was invented for the purpose of saving time through pure convenience. Why not go a step further, and sacrifice some profit for the sake of giving everybody some security and agency? What efficiency we lose, we get back in people being able to enjoy the fruits of civilization. Money only has value if people agree that it does, and we should apply that understanding towards redefining the purpose of money: luxuries.
The elite have hoarded the value of what workers have provided to society, and then consistently throws those same workers under the bus. Your "material conditions", is just unfettered abuse.
Also, the system I laid out? It gives political agency to ordinary people, because they can protest and strike without losing their home or starving. This takes away the greatest tool of coercion that capitalism wields against workers. That is way more valuable than raw profit, because people can oppose bad actors in society. Like Schuemer, or Trump himself. Same goes for shitty workplaces - people can genuinely wait for a better job. This will force many bad companies out of business, because people want to be treated humanly.
Even without interference communism can never work, it's not how human nature works, it relys on everyone being on the same page which will never happen
It's in our genetics to engage in a perpetual exponential quarterly growth and make our decisions based on the benefit it brings to our investors. Any caveman could tell you that smh...
E: my god it's a hyperbolically absurd take in memes and even with the caveman comment I still need to /s apparently...
No, cavemen were very egalitarian. This is because back then, you couldn't hoard much of anything - food spoils quickly, sex requires your partner to like you, and personal possessions were things like tools or the odd bit of clothing. It was when wealth could be preserved, such as livestock, stored grain, jewelry, and eventually coinage, that wealth became an hereditary thing.
This is why a future economic system has to be designed to prevent the excessive hoarding of wealth. Not too little, nor too much. Humans weren't evolved to be free of consequence, especially from each other.
Very frequently, but it is exactly just as likely it would have moved on to Socialism and eventually Communism, or retained feudalism, it all depends on when in development.
Fantastic question! The answer is no, not necessarily. The PRC is Socialist, and never had a true "Capitalist" phase. It currently has a Socialist Market Economy, but never really had a stage dominated entirely by Capitalism.
There are also reversions. Russia reverted to Capitalism, and Germany almost became Communist, but was stopped by the Nazi Party coming to power.
However, all of that being said, history does generally progress alongside technological development, and the Mode of Production follows suit.
Far less often than we end up with communalist hunter gatherers and early agrarian communes and evidently for a much shorter time. Does that mean feudalism can never work? Capitalism is never at any point of productive development possible?
Edit: deleted a section that assumed you were the same guy who said communism was against human nature. Apologies.
If you wanna talk psychology, the ultracompetitive demands of modern capitalism have to be drilled into each of us from birth, and most of us resist it all the same. Mark Fisher elaborates on this in Capitalist Realism, this learned behavior is in large part responsible for the mental health crisis in the world.
It's an unanswerable question. Just something to think about. My intention was to ponder how much external forces dictate our society rather than the internal expressive ones.
The "in one word" bit I believe is a remnant of older speaking styles, but it's always funny. I also really love the abrupt pivots to dunking on Kautsky Lenin makes all the time, lmao
Kind of some level of any system isn't it? In short if a system has a means to power that can tweak the rules. Inevitably will result in one group ceasing the rules, turning them to raise how much they can tweak them, and ensuring they continue to be tweaked in their favor.
Communism relies on a possibly impossible starting point. Theoretically if the starting point were reached, it seems the most sustainable. Whether it's possible to reach that starting point is the great mystery.
What "possibly impossible starting point" does Communism rely on? This reads like someone that hasn't actually attempted to engage with what Communists believe, to be honest.
Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head here. It's interesting to think about how even though communism could theoretically be the best system, it could mean nothing if we don't know how to meet the conditions to achieve it in the first place.
I don't think money makes a society inherently capitalist, money predates capitalism by a loooong time, but I agree that if it has money it isn't communist. It can be on its way to communist, a transitonary state, and depending on your definition it can be socialist, but communist is explicitly a moneyless, classless, stateless society. So, yeah, if it's got it money, it's not communist, but saying it's capitalist is to create a false dichotomy of there only being fully realized communism or capitalism, with nothing outside of or in-between the two.
Eta: replied to the wrong person in the thread. Whoops. Meant to reply to the original commenter on this thread.
The comment your replying to (or meant to) has to be being purposely dense. There is obviously a difference between being a communist, having a communist party take power, and "achieving" communism. No one with a brain would think the OOP was talking about the last use of the word in that sentence.
It's a common "dumb guy that thinks they're being smart" take because they haven't actually ever read a book in their life. They just read the definition of communism once.
I hope this comes across as a genuine question, despite the thread itself getting a little jacked up. Like many of us, I'd like to find better systems of governance / better solutions to the problem of needed / beneficial coordination.
How does a communist society as you've described defend itself against opportunistic, hierarchical forces that would subsume and control it? What is the (de-coordinated? If you'll accept my term?) answer to such a problem, pragmatically?
The "State" for Marxists is largely the elements of government that upold class society, like Private Property Rights. Social workers and government would still exist, moreover hierarchy is only a problem for Anarchists, Marxists understand it as a necessary tool.
That's a dramatic oversimplification, but I can elaborate on whatever you wish, or provide a Marxist-Leninist intro reading list I made.
Oh Lord, ask someone smarter than me! Lol. I was clarifying terms more than anything else. Communism is an end stage, an eventual goal. That's the big sticking point between anarchists (hi!) and communists. Communists believe in capturing the state so that it can be transformed and eventually wither away to become a communist society, anarchists believe in dismantling the state and creating communism directly. There are other differences, including how we define terms such "the state," but that's the jist.
I guess firstly, I should probably out myself that I'm not a Marxist leninists, but more along the lines of a syndicalist or platformist. Council communist is a semi appropriate term. I also don't believe the same system that would work in rural Tennessee would be viable for urban New York. I believe in democratic, worker control. Consensus democracy and direct democratic control. The trouble is, I, and many others, don't believe that communism is possible in just a single area. It would be subsumed, attacked, overthrown. It, by necessity, must be either a world wide movement to achieve True Communism™, or it would need to be isolated, insular, and completely or near completely self sufficient. The latter option is, frankly, kind of shit, and in my opinion, when combined with more authoritarian means and the "capture the state" side of things, leads to dictators and shitty conditions.
Not to be mean, but this is actually wrong. Anarchists and Marxists don't simply disagree on means, but also on ends. Anarchists want full decentralization, as they see hierarchy as the chief problem, whereas Marxists want full centralization, as we see Class as the primary issue. Communes don't get rid of class, as they create different groups that share ownership of their MoP but not other communes, ie everyone becomes petite bourgeoisie.
I can elaborate more and offer readings if you'd like, I'm a former Anarchist (syndicalist, specifically) and am firmly a Marxist-Leninist, so there's common ground there. Really, I am not trying to be rude, it's more that I think your characterization of Marxism as wanting the same thing as Anarchists in the end is a pretty common but entirely untrue notion that unfortunately makes things difficult.
Doesn't come across as rude! Always happy to be educated.
Okay, so, it was my understanding that the ultimate end goal, say, 200 years after the revolution, the society would be practically the same between anarchists or communist. That just the means and transitonary state would be different. Once the state has withered away, once we have achieved classless, stateless, moneyless, it would be virtually or actually, and definitely practically, the same.
I'd love to know to more if that's not the case, and how they would differ. To be honest, I knew more 5 years ago, but I've forgotten a lot of theory and checked out pretty substantially for a while.
Speaking in over-generalized strokes, most Anarchists want some form of horizontal network of Communes. The Marxist critique is that this doesn't get rid of class, it makes everyone a petite-bourgeois owner of their commune's MoP, and further this isn't a natural progression from Capitalism like (Marxian) Socialism is.
Marx's core critique of past Socialism, such as the Owenites, is trying to design an ideal society in a lab, and create it, rather than continue to build up society and erase contradictions gradually. Capitalism centralizes, because production becomes incredibly expansive and complicated, ergo he believed it would eventually be necessary for the government to take over just to run it, and that this government must be of the workers to properly handle it as Capitalists outlive their usefulness.
I recommend checking out my introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, at least the first few sections, for more on this.
To be clear, primitive Communism and Marxian Communism are just about polar opposites, one is the smallest unit of society and the other the largest and most vast, one full decentralization the other full centralization.
Well, I would say Marx has generally been proven spot-on. He didn't predict the way Imperialism would function, or what impact that would have on revolution, but we have Lenin for that. What, exactly, did you think was wrong with what Marx wrote? I find it puzzling that you say he seems focused more on the far-flung, when it was the opposite, he focused on analyzing Capitalism and arming the Working Class with the knowledge of how to overcome it by knowing its laws.
Either way, I bet Marxists end up correct, the PRC is the world's most developed Socialist state and it's also becoming the world's power as the US and EU crumble.
Money and trade are not Capitalism. Capitalism is a specific Mode of Production that rapidly expanded with the Industrial Revolution, surrounding the M-C-M' circuit of production.
Socialist societies have existed and continue to, such as the PRC, Cuba, and former USSR.
Says there's communist countries, lists off all capitalist countries instead.
All of those countries have used money, had a class system, have used wage slave labour and are nation states. All of that combined makes a nation capitalist in my view. Just because a country says it's "communist" doesn't mean anything when all those countries are playing the capitalist rule set. It's like saying you're going to play candy land but you have the rules of monopoly. It just doesn't work to call those countries communist or socialist when they are still playing the capitalist rule set.
It's pretty clear that you haven't read Marx, and think Communism means "immediately implement a far-future, highly developed society devoid of any remaining class antagonisms" through fiat, by pushing a button, but this would make Marx howl with laughter.
A Socialist system is one where public ownership of property is primary in society, and in all of those societies this is true. Having money, wages, even classes is indeed contradictory to late-stage Communism, but they never claimed to be. Socialism is the long, drawn-out process of erasing those contradictions, which cannot be waved away but must be erased through building up the productive forces and erasing their foundations, and the method of doing as such is to hold all large industry in the control of the public, and increase this control over areas that develop into large industry.
I recommend checking out my Marxist-Leninist reading list, at least the first couple of sections, before trying to take an authoritative stance on Marxism.
I have read Marx, thank you very much and you even said I was right about what communism means so maybe you should take a look at your own reading list.
No, your belief that Socialism must be devoid of any contradictions is anti-Marxist and goes against Dialectical and Historical Materialism. By that definition, "Real Capitalism" hasn't existed anywhere either, as all Capitalist systems have had single proprietorships, public ownership, and more that contradict the Capitalist system.
Explain this quote from Marx himself, in Critique of the Gotha Programme:
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and with it also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but itself life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
Wait, I thought Socialism couldn't have contradictions, according to you? Why is Marx saying even Communism would have contradictions? Why is Marx talking about society as it develops, and not as magically appearing with the touch of a button?
I'm being sarcastic, of course. If you want to learn more about Marxism I can help you along, but without accepting that Socialism is a lengthy process of working out contradictions, and that therefore it is categorized by Public Ownership being primary, you'll end up walking yourself into endless traps.
It doesn’t matter what ideology. If the people running it are rotten, any system can be corrupted.
So then the solution is to decentralize so everyone is running it.
Communism by any other name would smell as sweet
A co-operative ?
Communism is more about centralization, Anarchism is the one about decentralization as a rule.
The difference between communism and anarchism isn't the aims, but whether the state could immediately be abolished or that there must be a transitional period.
Anarchists don't want a fully publicly owned and planned global republic, Marxists do. Anarchists want networks of decentralized communes, Marxists do not.
The "state" for Marxists is the oppressive elements of society that make up class distinctions, such as private property rights and the current police structure, whereas for Anarchists its usually seen as a form of hierarchy entrenched with violence.
Chiefly, a decentralized network of communed does not get rid of class, but entrenches petite bourgeois class structures where each commune owns only what is within its commune, whereas Marxists want to abolish class by making all property equally owned by all in a highly developed and complex economy.
And likewise, oligarchy calling itself communism smells just as rancid.
And have a way for it to be trustless as well
It's simple: teach everyone to make everything they need for themselves, so they can't be expoited
Sure bro lemme teach my aunt to make her insulin, her own needles, her own glucose test strips and all that cheers
Maybe we should all specialize, and pay each other with our own goods, or better yet, a sort of representation of goods we all agree is valuable, so you can get one persons goods with anothers.
Kinda seems unfair that somebody's aunt should have to purchase insulin she needs to survive, like she shouldn't have to work harder to have the same lifestyle as someone without a disability. Maybe we should just give her the insulin she needs to survive, and compensate the people who make it out of some sort of common pool of resources everyone is required to contribute to, in order to distribute the costs more fairly.
When I was younger, I tried to design an universal constructor.
Unfortunatelly, I was using Roblox studio to do this.
How's that for insanity?
I also carved a log with a knife, hacking off pieces in an attempt to make a 3D printer
It's not insane! 3D printing is making huge strides. You were just a little ahead of your time.
If we can run Doom on 16 billion crabs, then you can carve a 3D printer.
That's basically what happened before money was invented. Imagine being a shoe maker and wanting to get some food, can you convince the sellers to take new shoes for the food/groceries EVERY DAY?
I just described money…
There is a group actively working to open source Insulin manufacturing to make it practical to self produce.
How about both? I'm always down for access to education.
Something something darwin
What does Darwin have to do with enslavement of the human species?
Like how people were gifted ability to have more knowledge at their hands than previous generations and rapid communication, and then came to the conclusion that the earth is flat, vaccines are poision, and facism is holy?
Humans are dumb fucks. They will inevitably fuck up even the most perfect utopia they arrive in short of some mass hive mind brain washing Equilibrium style. i don't hold that high an opinion of human society.
Leave the world to the animals. Humans are a failed experiment and a virus to the world.
Start from yourself
Deeply anti-materialist take.
Can you explain how you disagree? Is it about incentives to be corrupt (or against) depending on the system?
If you believe in great man theory™ and think that all political developments happen because one person can magically steer entire countries and the world, in geo-political terms, or idealists in thinking that if you have the correct ideas, you can magically steer the entire rest of the world to whatever you think, by having the correct thoughts. Then your theories of political developments are non-materialist, like this comment is objecting to. The system sets the conditions of who is going to be empowered or rewarded for their actions and positions.
People in this context appears to be plural, thus I don't see how Montreal_Metro's take is Great Man Theory.
Ultimately, any system is operated by mere mortals who will arbitrarily reward and punish people based on their own bias, morals and desires. Systems only work so long as the people manning them follow the rules. Systems only last if the people running it punish rule breakers.
According to all of history, corruption, apathy, and pure human greed and ingenuity will gradually eat away any system, economic and political, until it collapses. Only for the failing system to be replaced by a "better" system, which begins the cycle again.
The fact that it is attributed to a very few actors and not a literal, singular actor does not negate great man theory.
The issue is that this is arbitrarily flattening of the actual material conditions. You can point out that nearly all political systems, on a long enough timeline lead to some form of collapse (Joseph Tainter is a good reference on this). But all of these things are dependent, not independent, of the systems and conditions they find themselves in. The timescales and forms can vary drastically depending on the material conditions actors find themselves in.
What came first? The chicken or the egg?
Did the system that created the conditions people find themselves in come first. Or did the people running the system create the conditions that they find themselves in?
It is not that there isn't some flow both ways, but that the material conditions is much more dominant than people coming up with ideas and mechanations moving things in ways contradicting the conditions. The system setting the conditions is in fact dominant. The way corruption and self-dealing manifests is different between where you can just create a private corporation and lobby for a government contract to justify being given a 500 million dollars of tax payer money, versus trying to massage Gosplan to syphon off several million Rubles of excess spending, versus tricking a sovereign wealth fund to hand over several billion dollars for some supposed innovative building company to create innovations for Neom.
I am not that person, but I guess you wouldn't like the ambassadors of fascism to be efficient and competent.
They didn't seem to express an argument or value judgment in their comment regardless of their actual opinion.
Don't feed the troll.
you know, i tell you what. i'm fed up with all this gringo self-righteousness when you talk about "oh communism was bad, oh people where killed, oh people had no food, oh people had no liberty, oh people could not buy ataris, oh our countries are so democratic". your countries were democratic during the cold war in the first place because you had people to sort things out for you here in the global south. for each person complaining about how the food rations in eastern europe were not tasty enough, there were 10 dying of hunger or malnourishment here in the global south. for every person complaining they had to wait 5 years in a queue to buy a trabant or an oka, there were 10 who got no school in a range of 50 km. for every person complaining that their 8 hour shifts in state owned factories were overwhelming, there were 10 who were indentured workers. for every person complaining about how the stasi, kgb or the stb had bugged their apartment, there were 10 suffering the most horrific tortures inside black sites of the military of u.s. allies here in the "third world". for every person complaining about dull standard apartment blocks in mikrorayons, there were 10 who lived in mud shacks and slums, and those are just who were lucky enough to have a roof over their heads. finally, for everyone complaining about chinese sweatshops, which are indeed a problem, there are 10 americans who work and yet cannot afford proper housing.
you wanna complain about how communism was bad? go ahead. you wanna complain how your parents lived under communism and could not drink coke? do so if you wish. but there are still millions of people down here who would give an arm and a leg to have a polish ration, an apartment in a russian gray building, or a yugoslav job. and while the chinese maoist red guard was bad, surely it won't be an inch closer to the harassement people endured on a daily basis by our police forces.
again: you wanna complain? be my guest. but for me that's an encyclopedic example of white privilege.
When people ask me what communist country was successful I usually say all of them until cia decided to go there and spread freedom 🇺🇸🦅
Seeing some of the zingers in the comments here, now seems like a great time to plug my "Read Theory, Darn it!" introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. Read up, comrades!
The struggle depicted perfectly lol
For those that don't like to read, you don't have to read theory. In fact, most theory is old. There are newer and better takes on these ideas. Find a good YouTube channel that goes over the ideas. I like Vaush.
If you like to read theory, go for it. But I think there are faster and easier ways to get the concepts.
Support for chasers and sex-pests like Vaush is pretty awful, not to mentions his awful politics and constant butchering of Marxist theory for an audience that usually can't tell the difference.
Theory is important. Much of my list is newer, some is older when it holds up, some is newer when it meaningfully adds to the discussion. However, as someone who had your approach, reading theory directly genuinely is much faster than rolling the dice.
I have audiobooks linked as well that people can listen to if they prefer, and importantly they won't be distorted by a sex-pest who complains about Marxists constantly while misrepresenting them.
Where can I find audiobooks you talked about? My app probably doesn't show your userpage right.
I have audiobook links after (almost) each listed work.
I am pretty familiar with Vaush's arguments on Marxist theory. What are your points of contention?
The vast majority of them, to be honest. He has no grasp of Dialectical and Historical Materialism, has no knowledge of AES, and horrendously distorts Lenin.
He's a liberal that cosplays an Anarchist and pretends to have beyond a Wikipedia understanding of Marxism.
That's, of course, ignoring that he's a chaser, pedophile, sex offender.
Can you list a specific example? I think he has a good understanding of this.
One of the worst issues is when he depicts AES as "not real Socialism" because they contain contradictions, when Dialectical Materialism shows that all systems contain contradictions and must resolve them, that doesn't mean they aren't that system. Ie, Capitalist states contain public ownership, which is a contradiction but does not define the system.
One of the recent and larger-scale issues was when he tried to explain Lenin advocated voting Socialism into existence.
I don't make it a point to hate-watch sex offenders that do the work of the US state department.
Yeah, I am not surprised that you have disagreements behind Lenin and AES. The two are pretty related and hard to pull apart. I was just surprised that you would disagree with any of his Marxist takes. I think you both agree what the problems are from a Marxist perspective.
As for the sex offenders/sex pest stuff. I don't think he is those things, but I understand I am just one person. From the stuff I have seen it is mostly people that disagree with him that label him as such as a way to get around the fact they don't really have a leg to stand on; Fascists and the like. Not saying that is you of course.
Thanks for taking the time to talk this though by the way. I figure you get hit with a lot of stuff.
Lmaoooo, ye I always follow the political opinions of some dude who watches child porn ... oh wait, not child porn, it's "shortstack goblins"
As far as I know, all the criticisms of Vaush watching child porn has been misinformation.
Then you clearly don't know much. Maybe you should actually learn about the people you recommend
I watch Vaush a lot and I haven't seen what you are talking about.
Big yikes
Vaush's whole thing is controversy bait. He purposely crosses lines to get people mad at him while maintaining some form of "plausible deniability" to where his fans can always find a way to defend and excuse his actions by talking about "you don't understand the context" or whatever, it's a very common and tiresome tactic. Like, if you're trying to promote a shitty video game that can't stand on it's own merits, just do something to antagonize either the left or the right (doesn't matter which) and then go to the other group and be like, "Look, the guys you hate hate us, you should check us out." Controversy generates clicks. A big reason for Trump's success is that he cracked the code on how to apply this formula to a political campaign. If you know how to recognize it, it's very obvious that Vaush does this.
This sort of opportunism is very detrimental to actually understanding the world or promoting ideas or building a movement. It's essentially brain-poisoning and a cognitohazard. You're much better off reading actual books than just following whoever's best at attracting attention on the internet. If you are going to shun books for videos, you should at least go with someone more educational, like Shaun.
I don't know where you are getting the idea that he purposefully generates controversies. He lost subs during most of his controversies, not gained. And it has down stream negative impacts on his channel other than just sub count.
He is just very careless.
No way it's just carelessness, nobody forces him to say edgy shit. It's the classic "no such thing as bad publicity," or, "but you have heard of me" thing. I'd have never heard of him without the controversies (of which there are many), and despite making a conscious effort to avoid him, even I've seen clips of him. When you get people talking about something, people will get curious and want to see it straight from the horses mouth, then some percentage of the people who show up "to get the full story" will like what they see and stick around, and even if they don't, a hate click is still "engagement," it doesn't matter why you click, if you click, it boosts him in the algorithm.
Going into examples will naturally only play into this effect, but I recall him once talking about performing eugenics to eradicate trans people from existence, under the idea of detecting gender dysphoria in the womb and aborting the fetus. This is an example of walking right up to the line and getting people mad on purpose, that's not something someone just "organically" says out of "carelessness," it's specifically formulated to generate outrage, while, as always, leaving him an out that he can fall back on.
There is 100% such a thing as bad publicity. Your post here is a literal example of this, you actively avoid him and there are many people who feel the same way as you.
Hes not forced to say edgy shit, he just doesn't put much effort into not saying edgy shit and he naturally wants to. He doesn't police his own words, for instance, his frequent use of the word "retarded" and his joking about hating women. He also constantly blurts out shit and then his audience points out he misspoke and he gets annoyed and says "You fucks know what I meant". He has no anxiety or shame about his wording of things. There is no worry on his end about saying something shameful, he's literally said that he thinks shame is a worthless emotion.
He doesn't "mask" essentially. He is not careful. Maybe to some degree that helps his internet career because of reputation of authenticity or something but it also frequently pisses off his own audience. The controversies have lost him subs, they've severely damaged his ability to engage with other creators because he has either alienated or outright insulted them, which means he doesn't debate anyone anymore, left or right.
Its not on purpose. Hes not playing 12D chess to boost his youtube career. He wouldn't be a leftwing creator in that case, he'd be a rightwing grifter instead. A lot more money in that.
And yet, I've given him clicks. And I'm talking about him. That's what he wants, that's why he does what he does. Were it not for the controversies, I wouldn't watch him either because I wouldn't have heard of him, and also because I'm not his target audience.
Hopefully my criticism calls out the pattern directly enough that people take away that they should just ignore him, as opposed to playing into his specific controversies that are calculated to make use of criticism and outrage.
All I can see is that I see a pretty clear method to the madness. There's always an out, it's always "you don't understand the context." It's the same tactic Trump uses, and the same tactic used in countless ad campaigns. I can't really prove it because it's just a matter of pattern recognition, but suffice to say, I don't fuck with what he does. Even if your interpretation were correct, associating with someone so careless about messaging and so prone to controversies is more of a liability to the left than an asset. But also, your interpretation is not correct.
The first time I see someone holding a bloody knife over a dead body, I might be willing to listen to their explanation and their side of the story. The 17th time I see the same person in the same situation, something's going on. How many times am I expected to give him the benefit of the doubt? Because whatever that number is, he's exceeded it, because he's doing this constantly, and you can pretend that it isn't a clear pattern of behavior all you want, but I'm not going to.
No, there's lot's of little niches that one can carve out, regardless of being left or right. There's plenty of opportunists with supposedly left-leaning brands. The right-wing grifts and personality cults are more profitable, but it's also a fairly saturated market with a lot of competition. There's plenty of room for people like Destiny, Jimmy Dore, and Vaush to carve out their respective "left-leaning" niches.
Also, btw, I have never heard about any actual insight that watching Vaush gives. His content isn't educational or edifying, the way someone like Shaun's is. It's all about aesthetics and personality. The best thing anyone can really claim about Vaush is that criticism towards him is invalid, or that he makes people they don't like mad, nobody actually seems to learn anything from watching him.
I thought you said you only watched clips of him? I assumed you meant by other creators.
Trump supporters don't actually care about context though. They say that shit for propaganda purposes. Vaush supporters bring up context because he literally gets clipped out of context for oppositional propaganda purposes.
Also, there isn't always an "out". Some of the things Vaush has said/done are bad even with context. Like when he told his followers to go harass Contrapoints on Twitter once because he was upset with her and wanted to "Force her to see reason" or whatever. When he was unnecessarily nasty to TJ Kirk during some debate. Or when he flashed on screen AI generated and drawn porn of a canonically 16 year old character and bestiality.
There are a few other things I'm probably forgetting.
Jimmy Dore is 100% vapid grift. Destiny is a terrible human being but he is also almost certainly not a grifter. He says what he means and means what he says.
Vaush is someone who is significantly egotistical, narcissistic, impulsive, and short sighted. But he is not a controversy-monger, on that front he is just a dumbass.
I do get that vibe from Vaush occasionally. Unfortunately the attention economy is a real thing and I would be impressed with anyone with the same reach as Vaush wouldn't be doing similar things. I am not sure I would be as far left as I am without his content.
Doesn't Hasan have a larger audience without doing that sort of thing?
No idea, I have only watch him one or two times. Seemed good to me.
A big difference between Hasan and Vaush is that Hasan generally wastes very little of his time with sectarian nonsense or left-punching, while Vaush makes that one of his core focuses. Hasan networks with the Deprogram crew, Chapo, and other more Marxist aligned groups without screaming about "tankies," while Vaush leans heavily into that.
Hasan is also generally much better with foreign policy, even though I don't always agree.
The biggest thing is that Hasan serves as a great gateway to Leftist radicalization, while Vaush ends up preventing further Leftist movement, kinda like a more Libertarian Socialist-coded Destiny.
My fiancé and I will still watch Hasan even when we may disagree with him on some issues because he is generally entertaining and generally more correct than not, but would never watch Vaush.
Hasan avoids arguing with leftists because hes a cowardly clout monger and can't debate for shit because he isn't really that smart and is captured to some degree by his audience.
I don't hate Hasan, I do agree with a lot of his takes but hes fundamentally a less ideologically honest person than Vaush. Vaush doesn't give much of a shit about pissing off his audience, he does it constantly.
Hasan has drama/beef with H3H3 & Lonerbox.
I don't know what it's about or who those people are really. Aren't they Zionists?
No. Or at least I know Lonerbox isn't.
Instead of sending you to the Vaush Gulag I'm going to instead reccomend that you try audiobooks. There are many on youtube, but that is not the only place you can find audiobooks of Marxist theory. Let's just say Marxists are real keen on making sure these texts are readily accessible. While a lot of theory is old, not all of it is, but you'll be lost in newer theory if you don't know the basics.
I highly recommend "Black Shirts and Reds" by Parenti for newbies to Marxism. I also recommend "Socialism Scientific and Utopian" by Engels, "Reform and Revolution" by Luxembourg. All of these can easily be found as both pdf and audiobook, and are short, and easily digestible by lay people.
All 3, including audiobook links, are on my list in the parent comment for this thread! Great suggestions, too.
For all the people talking about Vaush and Hasan and their controversies, realize that there are other folks out there where you can learn about theory without the Twitch brainrot. The Revolutionary Left podcast is my personal favorite.
Or even better, reading books. With respect to a small minority, podcasts are not a great source to learn about anything.
Absolutely, but many people do not have the time luxury to read dense theory books, and (good) podcasts can at least get people acquainted with the ideas.
Also, (and I’m putting words in your mouth, so sorry for that) I think it’s a fallacy to say that every comrade must be a theory scholar. Certainly our leaders and organizers should be, but I think it’s fine if people don’t have the academic inclination and want to contribute in other ways.
Death to America
Luckily the US is dismantling the CIA so that’s good news for communism!!!
And then 7 million people died, and most people feel they were better off under Socialism and wished it continued.
It's easy to say if one has never lived under communism rule. Stalinism caused the Holodomor in Ukraine and starved to death 2-7 million people. Mass deportations of people in Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and many other countries in Eastern Europe. Federated platforms? Forget about it. Everything is controlled by the state. Do you want to say something that the government doesn't like? You can, but then you are off in a concentration camp (gulag) or sent to Siberia. Almost every family has a history of one of its family members being sent or imprisoned because they said something bad about communists / had a farm and could feed themselves with the products from their farm or land. On the contrary I would recommend to read the Animal Farm by George Orwell. - "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".
The famine in the 30s was caused by natural causes and spiraled to greater heights because of collectivization, but this ended famines.
The Soviet system was similar to federated platforms. It was government controlled, in a somewhat federated manner. Read Soviet Democracy.
The GULAG administration was a prison system, not concentration camps. Read Russian Justice.
Orwell was a fan of Hitler, hated workers, and in Animal Farm specifically his biggest critique was that Russian Workers are stupid and destined to be taken advantage of. Read On Orwell and A Critical Read of Animal Farm.
"Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches. I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power — till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter — I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity."
liked hitler is not exactly true, he just found him charismatic, I think saying he liked him is rather misleading
Given that he was wildly aristocratic in demeanor, looked down on workers, and even wrote an entire book that spends time after time talking about how stupid Russian workers are and thus are destined to be taken advantage of by bad actors, I don't think saying "like" is wrong, here. The Anarchists he fought alongside in Spain even questioned why he wasn't fighting for the fascists. There's also the issue of Orwell's antisemitism to contend with.
Orwell says he would have killed Hitler had he the chance, but still clearly found him appealing.
In this case, I think saying he liked Hitler is actually weakening your argument, even if it's completely true, it's clear from the reading that he wished he could personally kill hitler, but found him charismatic, and is saying that charisma is what his success was found on.
All of what you said there might be true, and all of that makes your case that he was a bad man better, but doesn't make the case that he liked him better. At the end of the day, you don't like someone you wish you could have killed. Saying he liked hitler when the reading makes it clear he wished he could kill him makes your other claims more dubious, not stronger, you should probably refrain from that in the future if your goal is to convince people.
All of those things may be true bad things about orwell, but none of them means he was clearly a fan of hitler.
Furthermore, I think antagonizing orwell, even if he was bad is just bad praxis for convincing people to be anti-capitalist.
I suppose it's more of a different stance on the use of the word "fan." Saying you would feel no personal animosity for Hitler while killing him goes quite a lot beyond simply finding him charismatic. I can say Trump can be funny, but I hold a great deal of animosity towards him despite that.
Just my 2 cents.
Oh yes, my friend, I knew someone would repeat me this soviet narrative. I urge you to read about Mr. Jones or watch a film about these events. Regarding gulags, it’s the same as telling me about concentration camps built by the Nazis. They also claimed it was just for labor, you know. I see you are well prepared with communist materials, it’s the same as entering communist class in the Soviet Union and expecting they will share the truth.
There have been millions of Mr. Joneses so you’ll need to be more specific. In the meantime,
.
Those aren’t arguments, they’re vague, empty rhetoric.
No, now you're doing holocaust minimization by supporting Double Genocide Theory. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
Because no one who experienced it thought hmm is briliant, yeh nah, socialist policies are needed but not any form of totalitarian communism
Most people actually preferred Socialism over modern Capitalism in post-Soviet states. Socialism works better than Capitalism, and was more democratic.
Find me an old person anywhere that isn't nostalgic for their youth.
Considering that once Capitalism was restored wealth inequality skyrocketed, 7 million people died, and previously relied on safety nets were destroyed or sold for parts to Capitalists, I don't think it's something that can be attributed to simple youthful nostalgia.
I don't know if you've noticed, but Europe is sliding into fascism too, just not as quickly. Regulating capitalism treats the symptoms and not the disease, and so it can only ever bring temporary relief. The problems we are experiencing now are not the product of a broken system, they are the inevitable result of capitalist economics, no matter how restrained.
Fascism vs communism is a prime example of a false dichotomy.
Communism is just socialism-flavored fascism.
This is 100% ahistorical, Communism has historically served the working class and opposed fascism while fascism has historically served Capitalists and oppressed workers and Communists. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
This is nothing more than a feeling that you have, and has no basis in fact. All the worst atrocities committed in the name of communism throughout history cannot possibly compare in scale or cruelty to the actions of even a single fascist state.
In addition to the difference in scale there is a difference in motive. Communists have noble goals, but atrocities result from threat-induced paranoia and selfish opportunists co-opting revolutionary fervor. The atrocities of fascism are pure evil in both motive and action. Fascists seek to eliminate those that they deem inferior, and they carry this out with unimaginable cruelty and glee.
@AeonFelis @vga @memes both are a version of totalitarianism
"Totalitarianism" as a term was largely popularized in order to depict Communism and Nazism as "twin evils," when the reality is that Socialist countries have had dramatic democratization of the economy.
@Cowbee @memes might be true, but by definition (A system of government in which the people have virtually no authority and the state wields absolute control) my comment is correct
No, it isn't. The Soviet system dramatically expanded worker control over Tsarism and Capitalism.
Yeah, or like they do in China.
Unfortunately for many parts of the world, it doesn't matter if you're trying to go full socialist or not, if you get in the way of multinational exploitation and neocolonialism, you're gonna get couped. There's no shortage of left-leaning non-socialists who have also been targeted by the CIA. Like Guatemala, where they just wanted to do basic land reform so farmers could work their own land, but Chiquita didn't like that so it became the origin of the term "Banana Republic."
What do they do in China, exactly? It looks like single-party fascist corporatism. If it's communism, why do they have a rising number of billionaires and worse conditions for workers than many european countries?
China has a Socialist Market Economy. Large firms and key sectors like steel and banking are nearly entirely under public control, while there are a large number of self-employed people. They actually have a falling number of billionaires in the last couple years.
As for worker conditions, Europe is Imperialist and many European countries act like landlords, and China is still a developing country, though rapidly developing.
The funny thing about discussions about China's economy is that you can use pretty much any term to describe it as long as it's bad. If "socialist" or "communist" is understood to be a bad thing to those in the conversation, you can use those terms without objection, but you can also say stuff like "Feudalism" or "Fascist Corporatism" or "Colonialism" or "Capitalist" or "State Capitalist" or whatever tf else, it's all just vibes-based and the only requirement is that the vibes be bad.
China has a mixed economy with a combination of state ownership and private investment, with the state maintaining a controlling share in certain key industries, and preventing (at least so far) economic elites from infiltrating the government for the purpose of widespread regulatory capture and deregulation. Billionaires exist but sometimes face real consequences for illegal activity, and the balance between public and private ownership tips more heavily towards public when compared to other countries such as those in Europe.
The partial liberalization of the economy is meant to encourage economic development post-industrialization, and prevent the challenges the USSR faced with economic stagnation post-industrialization. Central planning works great if you're just trying to meet people's basic needs like food or shelter, but the demand for consumer goods is more fluid. This policy is also adapted to the global situation, China has benefitted greatly from industry moving there and by becoming a major trade partner of the US and other countries (while also holding the bulk of manufacturing output), that makes it difficult for outside forces to go to war or level sanctions/tariffs on them.
It is not a "communist" country in the sense of having achieved communism (in this sense, a "communist country" is an inherent contradiction). It could be called a communist/socialist country in the sense that it is governed by (self-identified) communists. Socialism, or I should specify Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, aren't a set of specific policies but rather a materialist and class-based mode of analysis to be applied and adapted differently depending on material conditions.
Some hardcore Maoists would argue that China's current system is a deviation from the correct socialist ideas, as espoused by Mao. However, there's also this odd branch of Westerners that don't like China's liberalized system because "it has billionaires," but also don't like what they had before under Mao when they didn't have billionaires, but also claim to dislike full-on capitalism - so as far as I can tell, they just dislike China regardless of what they do or don't do. I've yet to find any such person who's actually willing and capable to engage in a discussion of "what should they do/have done economically" as opposed to just bashing them. And in fact, when asked what kind of economic system they support, they'll often describe a mixed system similar to what China has, but then be like, "but not like that."
I didn't say they weren't doing fine or that they shouldn't be doing what they're doing.
I just said that they're not communists. This is not a bad thing! But lying about it is of course somewhat distasteful, especially for those people who think themselves as being communists.
So your position is that their system is "Fascist Corporatism," but also... that's fine, actually?
Whether they're "lying" is a matter of interpretation and ideological differences. Like, if I'm a hardcore, traditionalist Roman Catholic, maybe from my perspective, all Protestants are "lying" about being Christian because "true Christianity" means my interpretation of it. Likewise, if you're a hardcore Maoist, then maybe you'd argue that China is governed by revisionists who are "lying" about being communists.
If we want to look at it from a relatively objective point of view, the largest number of self-identified communists in the world are Marxist-Leninists, who don't view China as "lying about being communist" but rather agree with or at least critically support their approach. So, idk, if you want to join some fringe Christian sect that claims every other sect as being heretical and themselves as the sole defender of the faith, or if you want to join some fringe communist group that denounces every other communist group as revisionist and themselves as the only "real" communists, then idk, you do you ig. But not everyone who believes different things from you is "lying."
Great point. That was a mistake from my part. So what China is doing is indeed not fine at all, even though it kind of works for them.
I'm sure that your branding of the Chinese economy is based on a very high degree of intellectual rigor and definitely not just pulling words out of your ass based on vibes.
Oh boy, another batch of centrists coming in from the Reddit shitstorm... This one oblivious to the fact that far right parties are gaining traction all over Europe.
Needs v wants
Needs: healthcare, utilities, public transport, even a minimal but quality food source. Even to the point of utilitarian but working phones/devices. State ownership where profits are minimal but go back into the state. The services aren't necessarily free, but are run without massive shareholder payouts.
Wants: upgrades and luxuries. iPhones, treat foods, nice cars, silk bedding and those ridiculous marshmallow shoes everyone loves. Regulated but free market.
Now all your basic needs are covered by the community together. You could probably live a simple life with very little income. If you want luxury or fancy, feel free to work too get it.
I have been trying to put together a document that attempt this concept of ensuring the survival of people, while making money into something used for lifestyle upgrades. Also, heavy emphasis on wealth limits and preferring people over corporations. IMO, corporations are great for personal interests, but are beyond terrible when it comes to the wellbeing of people. Thus, we should make having a job optional, but rewarding.
UNIVERSAL RANKED INCOME
Trying to design a Utopia by fiat has historically failed, just look at the Owenites. The great advancement with Marx was studying societal development and mastering it, so that we can work it into our favor, not by designing systems in a lab that may have no bearing in reality.
Yo, how do you have lumberjack in the same tier as astronauts ? One goes to space, and other is a guy in flannel swinging ax in the woods lol
High injury and fatality rates. An astronaut risks their life everytime they ride an occaisional rocket, but a lumberjack has to deal with falling trees on a daily basis.
Ok, I see where you are going with that. I don't personally agree, but I see where you are coning from
This isn't true, though. You can't have a "little bit of Socialism" and a "little bit of Capitalism," Socialism and Capitalism are descriptors of overall economies. Regulation in a Capitalist system is still Capitalism, Europe in particular is Imperialist (and increasingly moving to fascism as they fade from relevance in the global stage).
Socialism, on the other hand, absolutely works, and is why the PRC is overtaking everyone else at the moment.
Yeah, but how is the quality of life for the average person in the PRC? Honest question, because I don't know. I'm American they would have us believe that the average Chinese citizen is living one step of from a factory slave.
Varies dramatically depending on where you live, because China is an extremely rapidly developing country that was as poor as Haiti is today 100 years ago. Quality of life overall is good, and rising rapidly.
I know this doesn't say actual statistics and stats, but watching videos that actually show China can help de-mystify it.
Not really sure about taking China as an example for something "working"...
Why not? It's rapidly overtaking everyone else, and has made massive strides for workers. What would you call it?
Can you elaborate? They have a better respect for human rights than the vast majority of states.
Wtf are you talking about. There is no such thing as a free market.
Sir, this is lemmy. Moderate politics are highly upvoted and deeply resented here.
I can see that, wild that there are people here thinking Communism is ok
The developers are Communists, and a lot of us are here instead of Reddit due to issues with the Capitalist nature of Reddit. There are some Lemmy instances that are more anticommunist, but there are also a good amount of Communist-aligned instances as well.
This is a sane take. This is the only form of economy that actually works well.
We are seeing the capitalist West's descent into fascism. The direct proof of the 1930's maxim, "fascism is capitalism in decay" between the AFD, Orban, Erdogan, Starmer being basically indistinguishable from a Tory, Macron pulling a Hindenburg by using the presidential power to appoint a prime minister that will unify the center-right liberals with the far-right to prevent the left from having any power in government, and Meloni being an acceptable, reasonable western leader because she follows through with whatever US foreign policy is on offer. We are seeing a direct breakdown because of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (law of diminishing returns, applied to profit, if you are a child that believes in neoclassical economics). So profit has to be sought out by purely national protectionism and reshoring since there is not a growing pie, but you just have to claim a greater slice of the pie. Capitalism on any sufficient timescale is Fascism, the destruction of WW2 and the Marshall Plan reset this "diminishing return on profitability" so that we are reaching the same state of the 1920s. But since there isn't a strong socialist movement we have to modify Gramsci's assessment. "The old world is dying, a new one is completely stillborn, now and forever is the time of monsters"
Is-ought fallacy? Understand me correctly, I like the EU system, but to pretend that it's the end of history and that we've reached perfection in this space is wrong.
No, Imperialism doesn't actually work well and is failing, meanwhile Socialism is still working and on the rise, such as in the PRC.
Unless the population pyramid is destroyed, but that won't happen right?
I wonder if anyone ever said "Democracy would never work, just look at what happened to Athens".
Socialism and communism are relatively new ideas. While I don't believe communism is an effective form of government, it's still kind of silly to write it off so quickly.
And it often comes into being because of a CIA financed coup
It's like the chicken or the egg question.
When has the CIA ever financed a communist coup?
Never .... the communists / socialists / democratic groups usually reacted because of a CIA financed coup
not the same thing but this may be related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag
09/11 Chile vibes
This is generally wrong, though. Communist countries have dramatically democratized society, it works better at large scale if we are speaking of Marxian Communism because that's the Marxist reason for Communism to begin with. Competition centralizes, so in the future it must be publicly owned and planned. This is the basis of Scientific Socialism, primitive Communism is not the same as the post-Socialist Communism, which must be large-scale as production increases in complexity.
Pol Pot wasn't even a Communist.
Independently of who I side with, I am blocking this community because of the stifling of Realitaetsverlust's comments.
edit: was baffled by the stifling and just researched and learned about Lemmy.ml
it all makes sense now. It is a Socialist Communist instance that censors those not aligned with them. Political leanings don't bother me, but the censorship does so I will be avoiding anything Lemmy.ml in the future. They of course have a right to run their instance how they wish. peace out
Im sure the uyghurs and tibetans see it differently
EDIT: \s
LOL
The horrible feodal system with serfs/slaves the Tibetans has was sooo much better.
Some CIA poking didn't work to bring that back.
And there was a small minority radicalised terrorists by Turkey and OC again the CIA to cause trouble, which they did.
blew up a plane with civilians, multiple other attacks on busses, trainstations, etc....
The majority never liked them and are glad it's over.
But nice try.
Im sure they love making iphones until they jump off a roof
What, did a suicide happen years ago in a country you don't like? Quick, use that as a weak excuse to throw mud.
I'm sure suicide doesn't happen in companies from the fascist US, where they have to pee in bottles.
Sometimes a known fascist boss demands to keep his Tesla factory open in full covid peak and his slaves get sick and die.
Plenty of them die homeless or from drugs anyway.
No paid sick days, universal healthcare, unemployment, etc. Really a pathetic 3rd world country.
Not to mention no other regime puts more of its citizens in jail.
This is the embarrassing US banana republic.
Want to try again?
Ita wild to me that you can see the USs mas incarceration and tell its bad, but when the chinese govt imprisions and entire population based on their religion you act like its a good thing
It's the US who's been killing Muslims for decades, not China, which is why only the white-supremacist countries believe those lies.
"imprisions and entire population based on their religion "
That is a called a lie, or wild, baseless accusation at best.
It can be proved the US is the most authoritarian regime because facts and data about their prison slaves.
You just say stuff out of your unhealthy fixation with communism, which you even need to mention in your bio.
If that's all you're going to do then go away, not worth it.
The Schrödinger’s sarcasm edit 🙄
The US propaganda machine’s “Uyghur genocide” psyop has been debunked six ways to Sunday already. [1] [2]
.
I’m pretty sure virtually all of the Tibetan people are happy to no longer be suffering under theocratic feudalism. Happy to no longer be illiterate serfs and slaves, suffering depredation under a god-king. I doubt many of them are sad that CIA asset Dalai “suck my tongue” Lama is in exile. [1] [2]
Not sure what you're trying to say. Uyghurs are systematically eradicated and tibet is controlled by china since their invasion in the 1950s. Not exactly speaking in favor of communism.
So, if you'd like to expand on your point, I might be able to discuss this further.
eradicated LOL, their population is growing, despite the many some US backed terrorist killed.
And Tibet doesn't have slaves anymore who literally had chains around their necks suffering under the religious buddhist monks terror.
Yawn, can you bring up Tiananmen square again to not be original? I'll wait
According to who? The chinese government? Lmao. Ye I would DEFINITELY trust the ones that are performing the killings on reporting accurate numbers.
Imperialism good when country does bad things?
I could, but if you want some originality, I can also bring up one of the other atrocities directly ordered by communist regimes, like the Prague Spring, Hungarian Revolution or the mass executions by the Khmer in Cambodia.
oh, the khmer rouge, that one that the u.s. supported along with britain, china (not so dirty back then, right) and who were toppled by the socialist regime of vietnam?
I already answered that to someone else so I'll just copy and paste it:
The US never directly supported pol pot. Before 1975, they supported Lon Nol, who was fighting against the communist Khmer Rouge.
The part that IS true is that the US did support China and Thailand at the time, which in turn used that aid to support resistance groups in cambodia because vietnam invaded cambodia in 1979 - something the US had no problem with since vietnam was backed by the soviets. Also, it is true that the US and other western countries supported keeping the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s official UN representative, however, that was mostly done to undermine Vietnam’s rule over cambodia.
So, yes, by extension, the US supported pol pot, but it’s not the big “gotcha” you think it is - it was the cold war, an extremely complex geopolitical time.
I don't need to prove something that didn't happen which isn't possible, you show me proof of your fantasy eradication that isn't from the sick nutbag Adrian Zenz. Must be easy if it's such a genocide.
Hypocrisy good in the name of bringing democracy.
Lol I meant to reply to the main thread, but you could pretend im being sarcastic and it kinda works
Makes sense, I just was kinda confused and wasn't sure.
And it's a holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll what you're told
Holiday in Cambodia
Where the slum's got so much soul
DK
Well, let’s thank Trump for destroying the CIA!
Yeah.
The CIA is why the Soviets fell. Not corruption or incompetence.
I am a communist by heart, but I know that social market economy is the way to go, at least for now.
Kinda? China has a Socialist Market Economy, and this is building up the productive forces dramatically, but not every country will work the same way or have the same path.
I want that Star Trek future, please!
Communism has never been successful in history. Ever. It doesn't need to CIA to fail.
How is this trash getting this many upvotes?
Vintage cope.
Communists on the VERGE of UTOPIA fails after evil CAPITALIST CIA does line of coke and give some power hungry general(s) and the local homeless men some guns and cash.
This isn't true, actually. AES states are democratic, you should read Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan.
Northern European countries aren't role models, either. They depend on Imperialism to fund their safety nets, and are dictatorships of the Bourgeoisie, hence why their safety nets are declining.
They are adhering to Marxism, I am curious why you say they aren't, and if you are getting that from Marx, or second-hand interpretations of Marx. I don't want to get into the rest of your comment until we get past the part where you think there's such thing as a "true communism" that, say, the PRC is not genuinely working towards.
We weren't talking about the Russian Federation, but Soviet Union. The RF is Capitalist, sure, but the USSR was absolutely Socialist.
As for the PRC, it is Socialist, and does follow what Marx described. Are you getting this from actually reading Marx, or second-hand?
For starters, Marx described the economy of a post-revolutionary state to nationalize the large trusts and gradually fold the smaller firms once they get large enough. This is mentioned many times, from the Manifesto of the Communist Party, to my favorite concise explanation in Engels' Principles of Communism:
The PRC mirrors this. The vast majority of large firks are under public control, and the vast majority of the private sector is made up of self-employed people or small firms. If the CPC attempted to forcibly acquire them without letting them develop, they would be committing an error by Marxist standards, unless they truly had good reason.
Key industries like finance and steel are publicly owned as well, if you control the rubber factory you control the rubber ball factory without needing to own it directly.
What would you have the PRC do instead?
Someone who's so ignorant of geopolitics that they don't know about the fall of the USSR should not be so arrogant
We were talking about the Soviet Union, that's the one the original commenter said wasn't democratic and that's the one I responded to. You disagreed with my comment, but without actually pivoting the conversation to the RF at all, just assuming we were talking about the RF and not the USSR.
Either way, the Soviet Union was Socialist. It was not a divergence from Marxism or Marxism-Leninism, the foundations of the economy were in public ownership of the Means of Production. "Stalinism" generally refers to advocacy for Socialism in One Country as opposed to Permanent Revolution, not the entire economic foundations of the Soviet Union.
The Proletariat owned the Means of Production through the Public Ownership model. This is Marxism not from Stalin, not from Lenin, but Marx and Engels themselves. Marx was not an Anarchist that wanted decentralization, rather, Marx advocated for full centralization of the Means of Production.
I recommend checking out my introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, as you certainly have a confused understanding of Historical Materialism and Scientific Socialism.
Again, we were talking about the Soviet Union. You misunderstood and pivoted to the Russian Federation without telling anyone, but if you go up the comment chain the original comment was about the Soviet Union. Anyways...
Marxism - The overarching family of Marxist tendencies chategorized by Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Scientific Socialism, and Marx's Law of Value.
Leninism - The term for the specific strategic and tactical advancements of Lenin upon Marxism, such as analysis of Imperialism, the Vanguard party platform, national liberation in the Global South, and much more.
Marxism-Leninism - The subset of Marxism that accepts Lenin's contributions and upholds AES. By far the most common form of Marxism.
Stalinism - usually a reference to support for Socialism in One Country over Permanent Revolution.
Either way, you're entirely wrong about what led the USSR to dissolve, and the nature of its economic model.
The USSR was Socialist, because Public Ownership was primary in the economy. The Proletariat controlled the Means of Production through the public sector. Marx was not an advocate for decentralization, but centralization over time as large industry formed and could and must be planned centrally.
The USSR dissolved for numerous reasons adding up, some of the larger reasons were the liberal economic reforms of Gorbachev and later Yeltsin, as well as needing to spend a much larger portion of their GDP on the millitary to keep parity with the US.
Your central argument is genuinely that the Workers in the Soviet Union, despite being taught Marxism in school, were too stupid to realize that they were not living in a Marxian system. This is wrong on both fronts, the Soviet citizens had a much better understanding of Socialism as people living in it, and the system itself did follow Marxist principles.
The State is the only method for which all of property can be held in public. "Statelessness" refers to the stage in upper-Communism where all property is publicly owned, and the elements that reinforce class society like armies and private property rights no longer have any reason to exist. Government will continue to exist even in Communism, as will social workers, yet this would be considered "stateless" by Marx as the oppressive elements of government whither away by virtue of having no reason to exist.
I recommend checking out my introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, as you certainly have a confused understanding of Historical Materialism and Scientific Socialism.
Given your demonstrable lack of knowledge about the basics, you shouldn't be trying to opine on that kind of thing.
All communist states that survived early CIA coup plots were/are dictatorships
Not true, really, they tend to be some of the more democratic states for the Working Class.
Those aren’t/weren’t communist so per the post their leaders worked for the CIA
If it's not the CIA it will be a coup from some smart ass****e high ranked in the military/party.
Humans are to greedy to live in a socialist peaceful world.
That doesn't make any sense, though, greed has a larger impact on Capitalist systems as its the main mover and driver.
Have you considered a world where power is based in social welfare instead of capital?
Would be nice, but it just never going to happen.
We've been there already.
So no, you haven't.
Literally any socialistic country turned in a shitty dictatorship. Do you still need further investigations?
The biggest example is China. They opened to capitalism in order to let the greedy comrades survive in their power and what you have know? Chinese are free to earn tons of money, but not to say what they think.
It's the biggest paradox of the world.
In the biggest socialist country capitalism is tollerated more then free speech.
Everything you know about these "shitty dictatorships" has been told to you by a media and a government that has a direct monetary (and by extension, power) interest in maintaining and legitimizing the current system you live under. They are free to lie to you as long as they make it believable enough. Not to mention how the ruling class would have profited immensely from assimilating the resources and labor of these "shitty dictatorships". When that fails, they will profit by generating war and weapons contracts.
This is accomplished by lying and manipulating half truths in order to call them "shitty dictatorships" that need to be dealt with through military action (and destabilization via propaganda and collective punishment to make conditions favorable to accepting capitalism as their way of life). They must justify their actions to the American people in order to generate the least friction within their system, but when it does generate friction, they do it anyways, because their power ultimately lies in capital and not in the people's opinion of them. This is often when things turn to fascism, but let's be honest, it's not "not fascism" just because it's done in the light of polite society.
This is unique to imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, which "shitty dictatorships" like China do not practice. China takes advantage of western capitalist's greed to fund their socialist project, but they are not themselves capitalist. They are in what they define as their first stage of socialism with Chinese characteristics, which has already lifted millions out of abject poverty. The presence of a market-based economy does not make a system capitalist, just as the presence of social welfare does not make a system socialist. Being openly vigilant (which likely means far less than you imagine it does) to intentionally subversive western propaganda does not mean they can't be democratic in far more meaningful ways, without the burden of constantly re-hashing information that has already been proven faulty.
We are the last people that should be telling China how to run their country and media. Because, in contrast,
Also *waves generally at the current state of things in the US*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
Could a Communist Nation be considered viable if such a hostile force can take it down? Does it all come down to survival of the fittest (in the best use of the term)?
Worker owned cooperatives would go a fair way to seizing the means of production.
Kinda. They are nicer to work at, but aren't what Marx is talking about, as they still retain classes due non-coop people having different property relations to those in the coop.
Any one party political system can either fail or be maintained through violent oppression. People need to have a say in who represents them and what their values are.
A more sustainable solution than soviet style communism is to have proportional representation and work on instilling socialist virtues such as kindness, social responsibility, and fairness in the population. over time, the people in government will start to reflect those values.
Human greed destroys all forms of government.
What if the answer to all of our worldwide problems is finding a balance between decentralized and centralized structures, balancing technology and the environment, finding a balance between currency and a moneyless society, and achieving balance between authority and liberty (with the goal of individual and societal sovereignty), and so forth?
In this thread, I see Anarcho-Communists (or final stage Communists/ideological purists) taking bat at Marxist-Leninists (who espouse mostly outdated theory, but not always) and Liberals who fail to understand really any ideology that differs from their own because of how thick the propaganda is (and who espouse ideals like Democratic Socialism while failing to realize that their social support is still enabled by modern slavery - such as the exploitation of third world countries).
I think a direct democracy, with authoritative and libertarian elements (such as enforcing liberty/a universal bill of rights for individuals) would be ideal.
It could have an economic system with built-in social supports (each according to their need) that emulates cash and all the best parts of blockchain (that isn't hoardable or worth hoarding, that also doesn't enable slavery/other forms of parasitism, and is generally private at the transactional stage - yet is auditable at a larger-scale), with centralized control of natural resources that still respects decentralized development and balance with the environment. And also does not have debt or parasitism of any form, instead encouraging diplomacy - such as contracts/agreements taking the place of debt to better the planet and encourage societal responsibility and stewardship (e.g. contracts that result in the stabilization of the society incurring the would-be debt).
Instead of total anarchy or various forms of authoritative control/dictatorship, we could simply combine direct democracy and hierarchy by electing leaders based solely on merit in the areas that are most needed, with strong controls so we get the best out of leadership and hierarchy and the resultant clarity and direction, without letting leaders and other experts become drunk on power. While also preventing the corruption of the individuals in power and the various forms of stagnation that result from entrenched power not conceding to new developments or advances.
I know I'm an idealist, but I'd like everybody to turn the chapter and realize that we are in 2025, not the 1900s. Technology and science have advanced every area of our society. We are so beyond scarcity that we are producing well beyond our needs with conditions and methods that are not even close to ideal (with ideal and emergent solutions and methods ready to take the place of those unsustainable methods).
We also have a global communication network - we can understand foreign languages without any human intervention in some cases, we can bridge cultural gaps, we can seek understanding and truth with our fingertips, and also we can push past the propaganda we are served on a platter, etc.
We can achieve something better than anything that has ever been conceived of previously, and it starts by crumpling up all of the things that no longer serve us. Concepts like racism, nationalism, really all of the isms that promote superiority over others. Bridging gaps, joining hands, while also countering disinformation (not misunderstanding) and bad faith.
We truly are not facing the same limitations that we did in the 1900s, although we may be facing new challenges like the rise of AI and the misuse of it by those currently in power.
There really is no more room in society for mucking about and fighting others while everything is in such disrepair, with so much needless suffering happening.
Communism isn't bad, it just crumples as soon you put anything but saints in charge of it.
I'm not entirely sure anything works better in a long-term scenario though :)
lemmy.ml moment
Damn CIA created Maoism
This is a good example of one of things people hate about lemmy.
Communism fan boying, implicit denial of genocides committed by communist powers, out in the open on the front page.
Yeah, capitalist Britain, France, and America were terrible in their use of famines and genocides. The problem with capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people's land and food.
Almost as if every economic system is capable of causing famines and genocides.
Almost as if every person is capable of shitting their pants, and I will baselessly assume, does so regularly like me. As always, there are differences in degrees and causes. Outside of capitalism, famine actually correlates to not having food to feed people, rather than markets saying that food has to be wasted while people starve because it is not profitable to feed them (e.g. the Dust Bowl and Great Depression for American examples). Also ignoring how it was intentional in colonial powers.
Yeah, as someone with Lakota, Irish, Bengali, Kurdish, and Iraqi friends and opiate and meth addicted family, I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at children of your kind. I am sure the 1990s and the introduction of capitalism was a great and prosperous time.
American Capitalism? I invoked multiple genocides and political repressions that weren't American. I am sure that 1840s Hungarians and Irish, 1930s Bengalis, and 1990s and 2000s Iraqis are glad to know that capitalism isn't repressive or intentionally creating starvation because the people creating the repression and starvation said that they aren't. Even though China gave up on most communist ambitions post-Dheng and Cuba has been strangled by American blockades, both have not been nearly as active in war mongering as "Western Nations", nor as repressive, despite active propaganda about them. And Western repression is much more tied to their economic modes than other nations. You have to kill anti-war protesters (e.g. Kent State) because if not full colonialism, we need neo-colonialism, so pro-Vietnamese protests can't be tolerated. And we need to support Israel, so "anti-Semitic" a.k.a. anti-Zionist protesters can't be tolerated and have no rights, because of their ties to the military and arms industry. Such as Mahmoud Khalil, who needs to be disappeared and sent to an undisclosed location to try to push fascist anti-protest, anti-speech laws.
China did not abandon Communism, they pivoted from their Left-deviationism that was based in idealism, not materialism. The Gang of Four tried to achieve Communism through Fiat, despite the Productive Forces being far below the level for that to be feasible. They rejected markets out of a miral fetishization of Poverty in an entirely publicly owned economy, rather than for Materialist reasons, so they course corrected to Marxian economics.
It was right-deviationism of using markets and foreign capital investment to build up productive forces.
Oppressing the former oppressors is necessary, and famine was ended, not caused, by Socialism.
The 1930s famine was the last major famine out of wartime in the Soviet Union, same with the Great Chinese Famine, in countries where famine was common and regular before. Life expectancy doubled under Socialism in both the USSR and PRC as a consequence in the first few decades.
Famines had been commonplace occurrences in feudal China and Russia, which the communist states brought an end to. And those final famines occurred under post-war conditions, and under disastrous crop seasons that affected neighboring states as well.
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We’re not trolls, and many of us are socialists. Actual socialists, not “capitalism with a social safety net” like Bernie Sanders or the Nordic countries. I understand if it’s a bit of a shock to leave the echo chamber that is imperial core corporate social media and hear different perspectives for once. Lemmy is “already filled with” socialists because it was created by socialists. You are in our anti-capitalist space.
Lemmy is a free software, GNU (A)GPL makes no distinction between ideologies. Your "anti-capitalist space" is only in your head or at maximum on a few server instances.
Also Lemmy creator last time I looked was no socialist but die-hard tankie, listing Stalin and Castro as his recommended reading.
Marxism-Leninism is the guiding ideology of every existing Socialist state. The leaders of some of these states have unique viewpoints that should be studied critically.
Moreover, anti-Capitalism dominates Lemmy, even if Marxism-Leninism isn't the only manifestation of that.
Okay, horseshoe theorist. I also would recommend Stalin and Castro[1][2][3], as would others in this conversation.
Communist policies played a part because Communists were in power while they happened, and the Communists ended the famine. I never made anything up.
Lemmy has Marxists, the lead devs are Marxist-Leninists and some of the biggest instances are Marxist-based.
China
China is still Socialist.
What does it mean though? China's gini coefficient is higher than Europe's, and they have a growing number of billionaires.
Socialism is a Mode of Production determined by having public property as primary. In China, large firms and key industries are firmly under public ownership and control, and they actually have a falling number of billionaires in the last couple years.
Indonesia, Chile, West Germany, Congo, Iran, Bengal, Guatemala, Nicaragua...
can communism survive in a single country was always a big question.
I think the original idea was to try a world revolution but that didn't work out.
Us is the main holdout. Russia is basically socialist, EU is basically socialist. China is communist.
Us is the only serious holdout
I think the problem with Communism and Capitalism, is that both were implemented in the first place without specific goals or structure. Those things got added on later, such as the 5 year plans or how lobbying works.
IMO, we will need a v2.0 Constitution in the future, designed not only to address political issues, but also create fiscal rules. Things like universal benefits and healthcare, how much people should be payed, wealth limits, workers voting for their leadership, and so on. This, like the Magna Carta or the French Revolution, will require force in order to displace the ways of old.
It will suck, but conflict seems inevitable. Might as well make the most of it, and forge a new way forward.
This is just Utopianism, repackaged. Communism was planned, but you can't just design a system in a lab and implement it through fiat, which is why you must regularly adapt to your materil conditions.
Money is imaginary. It was invented for the purpose of saving time through pure convenience. Why not go a step further, and sacrifice some profit for the sake of giving everybody some security and agency? What efficiency we lose, we get back in people being able to enjoy the fruits of civilization. Money only has value if people agree that it does, and we should apply that understanding towards redefining the purpose of money: luxuries.
The elite have hoarded the value of what workers have provided to society, and then consistently throws those same workers under the bus. Your "material conditions", is just unfettered abuse.
Also, the system I laid out? It gives political agency to ordinary people, because they can protest and strike without losing their home or starving. This takes away the greatest tool of coercion that capitalism wields against workers. That is way more valuable than raw profit, because people can oppose bad actors in society. Like Schuemer, or Trump himself. Same goes for shitty workplaces - people can genuinely wait for a better job. This will force many bad companies out of business, because people want to be treated humanly.
I'm a Communist, so as a Marxist I reject Utopianism, as that has never worked. You cannot make a system through fiat.
Even without interference communism can never work, it's not how human nature works, it relys on everyone being on the same page which will never happen
It's in our genetics to engage in a perpetual exponential quarterly growth and make our decisions based on the benefit it brings to our investors. Any caveman could tell you that smh...
E: my god it's a hyperbolically absurd take in memes and even with the caveman comment I still need to /s apparently...
No, cavemen were very egalitarian. This is because back then, you couldn't hoard much of anything - food spoils quickly, sex requires your partner to like you, and personal possessions were things like tools or the odd bit of clothing. It was when wealth could be preserved, such as livestock, stored grain, jewelry, and eventually coinage, that wealth became an hereditary thing.
This is why a future economic system has to be designed to prevent the excessive hoarding of wealth. Not too little, nor too much. Humans weren't evolved to be free of consequence, especially from each other.
If you ran humanity in thousands of simulations how often would we end up in the same capitalistic situation?
Very frequently, but it is exactly just as likely it would have moved on to Socialism and eventually Communism, or retained feudalism, it all depends on when in development.
Is it always a linear path?
Fantastic question! The answer is no, not necessarily. The PRC is Socialist, and never had a true "Capitalist" phase. It currently has a Socialist Market Economy, but never really had a stage dominated entirely by Capitalism.
There are also reversions. Russia reverted to Capitalism, and Germany almost became Communist, but was stopped by the Nazi Party coming to power.
However, all of that being said, history does generally progress alongside technological development, and the Mode of Production follows suit.
Well, let's hope the great filter isn't something we encounter before we see some cool shit.
Far less often than we end up with communalist hunter gatherers and early agrarian communes and evidently for a much shorter time. Does that mean feudalism can never work? Capitalism is never at any point of productive development possible?
Edit: deleted a section that assumed you were the same guy who said communism was against human nature. Apologies.
Your words make no sense to me. If you want to convey ideas use the common tongue. It feels like you have some neat ideas though.
Edit: Can anyone please decipher what this guy said?
people share goods and culture naturally. the prevailing historical models are cooperative. anticooperative, competitive societies are rare.
Thanks man. So this guy is an expert on economies but not on psychologies. Is that fair?
If you wanna talk psychology, the ultracompetitive demands of modern capitalism have to be drilled into each of us from birth, and most of us resist it all the same. Mark Fisher elaborates on this in Capitalist Realism, this learned behavior is in large part responsible for the mental health crisis in the world.
So many it would be hard to count, at least 4 or 5. But numbers don't really go much higher than that. Any caveman could tell you that.
this rather shows the untestability of the hypothesis. this is no test at all.
It's an unanswerable question. Just something to think about. My intention was to ponder how much external forces dictate our society rather than the internal expressive ones.
No, but greed and envy is. That's why humans have written so much in the last thousand years about greed and envy.
Anthropology doesn't support the idea that humans are incapable of being communal.
I don't disagree with you, but the person you're responding to didn't mention capitalism?
where is human nature defined?
this is a thought-terminating cliche, not an my argument to be taken seriously
What part of communism relys on everyone being on the same page?
It's right there on Karl Marcos' "All About Capital", basic economics commie
im sorry Carl Marcos is too advanced.
they keep saying 'In one word; ' and then writing a whole paragraph. and why do they keep making economics all political?
The "in one word" bit I believe is a remnant of older speaking styles, but it's always funny. I also really love the abrupt pivots to dunking on Kautsky Lenin makes all the time, lmao
Its because he's German
Ah, gotcha! Makes sense, still funny in English.
It was a joke.
How does it rely on "everyone being on the same page?" What gave you that impression?
Kind of some level of any system isn't it? In short if a system has a means to power that can tweak the rules. Inevitably will result in one group ceasing the rules, turning them to raise how much they can tweak them, and ensuring they continue to be tweaked in their favor.
Communism relies on a possibly impossible starting point. Theoretically if the starting point were reached, it seems the most sustainable. Whether it's possible to reach that starting point is the great mystery.
What "possibly impossible starting point" does Communism rely on? This reads like someone that hasn't actually attempted to engage with what Communists believe, to be honest.
Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head here. It's interesting to think about how even though communism could theoretically be the best system, it could mean nothing if we don't know how to meet the conditions to achieve it in the first place.
There's never been any real communism. If a country has money then it is inherently a capitalist society .
What no theory does to an mf.
I don't think money makes a society inherently capitalist, money predates capitalism by a loooong time, but I agree that if it has money it isn't communist. It can be on its way to communist, a transitonary state, and depending on your definition it can be socialist, but communist is explicitly a moneyless, classless, stateless society. So, yeah, if it's got it money, it's not communist, but saying it's capitalist is to create a false dichotomy of there only being fully realized communism or capitalism, with nothing outside of or in-between the two.
Eta: replied to the wrong person in the thread. Whoops. Meant to reply to the original commenter on this thread.
The comment your replying to (or meant to) has to be being purposely dense. There is obviously a difference between being a communist, having a communist party take power, and "achieving" communism. No one with a brain would think the OOP was talking about the last use of the word in that sentence.
It's a common "dumb guy that thinks they're being smart" take because they haven't actually ever read a book in their life. They just read the definition of communism once.
I hope this comes across as a genuine question, despite the thread itself getting a little jacked up. Like many of us, I'd like to find better systems of governance / better solutions to the problem of needed / beneficial coordination.
How does a communist society as you've described defend itself against opportunistic, hierarchical forces that would subsume and control it? What is the (de-coordinated? If you'll accept my term?) answer to such a problem, pragmatically?
The "State" for Marxists is largely the elements of government that upold class society, like Private Property Rights. Social workers and government would still exist, moreover hierarchy is only a problem for Anarchists, Marxists understand it as a necessary tool.
That's a dramatic oversimplification, but I can elaborate on whatever you wish, or provide a Marxist-Leninist intro reading list I made.
Oh Lord, ask someone smarter than me! Lol. I was clarifying terms more than anything else. Communism is an end stage, an eventual goal. That's the big sticking point between anarchists (hi!) and communists. Communists believe in capturing the state so that it can be transformed and eventually wither away to become a communist society, anarchists believe in dismantling the state and creating communism directly. There are other differences, including how we define terms such "the state," but that's the jist.
I guess firstly, I should probably out myself that I'm not a Marxist leninists, but more along the lines of a syndicalist or platformist. Council communist is a semi appropriate term. I also don't believe the same system that would work in rural Tennessee would be viable for urban New York. I believe in democratic, worker control. Consensus democracy and direct democratic control. The trouble is, I, and many others, don't believe that communism is possible in just a single area. It would be subsumed, attacked, overthrown. It, by necessity, must be either a world wide movement to achieve True Communism™, or it would need to be isolated, insular, and completely or near completely self sufficient. The latter option is, frankly, kind of shit, and in my opinion, when combined with more authoritarian means and the "capture the state" side of things, leads to dictators and shitty conditions.
Not to be mean, but this is actually wrong. Anarchists and Marxists don't simply disagree on means, but also on ends. Anarchists want full decentralization, as they see hierarchy as the chief problem, whereas Marxists want full centralization, as we see Class as the primary issue. Communes don't get rid of class, as they create different groups that share ownership of their MoP but not other communes, ie everyone becomes petite bourgeoisie.
I can elaborate more and offer readings if you'd like, I'm a former Anarchist (syndicalist, specifically) and am firmly a Marxist-Leninist, so there's common ground there. Really, I am not trying to be rude, it's more that I think your characterization of Marxism as wanting the same thing as Anarchists in the end is a pretty common but entirely untrue notion that unfortunately makes things difficult.
Doesn't come across as rude! Always happy to be educated.
Okay, so, it was my understanding that the ultimate end goal, say, 200 years after the revolution, the society would be practically the same between anarchists or communist. That just the means and transitonary state would be different. Once the state has withered away, once we have achieved classless, stateless, moneyless, it would be virtually or actually, and definitely practically, the same.
I'd love to know to more if that's not the case, and how they would differ. To be honest, I knew more 5 years ago, but I've forgotten a lot of theory and checked out pretty substantially for a while.
Perfect, thanks for asking!
Speaking in over-generalized strokes, most Anarchists want some form of horizontal network of Communes. The Marxist critique is that this doesn't get rid of class, it makes everyone a petite-bourgeois owner of their commune's MoP, and further this isn't a natural progression from Capitalism like (Marxian) Socialism is.
Marx's core critique of past Socialism, such as the Owenites, is trying to design an ideal society in a lab, and create it, rather than continue to build up society and erase contradictions gradually. Capitalism centralizes, because production becomes incredibly expansive and complicated, ergo he believed it would eventually be necessary for the government to take over just to run it, and that this government must be of the workers to properly handle it as Capitalists outlive their usefulness.
I recommend checking out my introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, at least the first few sections, for more on this.
Communist can run a society that is not yet achieved communism. Not sure if you're being purposely dense or not.
Also, currency does not define a society as capitalist. We've have currency long before capitalism ever existed.
To be clear, primitive Communism and Marxian Communism are just about polar opposites, one is the smallest unit of society and the other the largest and most vast, one full decentralization the other full centralization.
That isn't the "core," of Communism. It's more of a side-effect and possibility only truly achievable in Upper-Stage Communism.
There are alternatives to Marx, but I'm not convinced of any of them.
Well, I would say Marx has generally been proven spot-on. He didn't predict the way Imperialism would function, or what impact that would have on revolution, but we have Lenin for that. What, exactly, did you think was wrong with what Marx wrote? I find it puzzling that you say he seems focused more on the far-flung, when it was the opposite, he focused on analyzing Capitalism and arming the Working Class with the knowledge of how to overcome it by knowing its laws.
Either way, I bet Marxists end up correct, the PRC is the world's most developed Socialist state and it's also becoming the world's power as the US and EU crumble.
Look up the gift economy, that was a society with no problems before currency took over.
Money and trade are not Capitalism. Capitalism is a specific Mode of Production that rapidly expanded with the Industrial Revolution, surrounding the M-C-M' circuit of production.
Socialist societies have existed and continue to, such as the PRC, Cuba, and former USSR.
Says there's communist countries, lists off all capitalist countries instead.
All of those countries have used money, had a class system, have used wage slave labour and are nation states. All of that combined makes a nation capitalist in my view. Just because a country says it's "communist" doesn't mean anything when all those countries are playing the capitalist rule set. It's like saying you're going to play candy land but you have the rules of monopoly. It just doesn't work to call those countries communist or socialist when they are still playing the capitalist rule set.
It's pretty clear that you haven't read Marx, and think Communism means "immediately implement a far-future, highly developed society devoid of any remaining class antagonisms" through fiat, by pushing a button, but this would make Marx howl with laughter.
A Socialist system is one where public ownership of property is primary in society, and in all of those societies this is true. Having money, wages, even classes is indeed contradictory to late-stage Communism, but they never claimed to be. Socialism is the long, drawn-out process of erasing those contradictions, which cannot be waved away but must be erased through building up the productive forces and erasing their foundations, and the method of doing as such is to hold all large industry in the control of the public, and increase this control over areas that develop into large industry.
I recommend checking out my Marxist-Leninist reading list, at least the first couple of sections, before trying to take an authoritative stance on Marxism.
I have read Marx, thank you very much and you even said I was right about what communism means so maybe you should take a look at your own reading list.
No, your belief that Socialism must be devoid of any contradictions is anti-Marxist and goes against Dialectical and Historical Materialism. By that definition, "Real Capitalism" hasn't existed anywhere either, as all Capitalist systems have had single proprietorships, public ownership, and more that contradict the Capitalist system.
Explain this quote from Marx himself, in Critique of the Gotha Programme:
Wait, I thought Socialism couldn't have contradictions, according to you? Why is Marx saying even Communism would have contradictions? Why is Marx talking about society as it develops, and not as magically appearing with the touch of a button?
I'm being sarcastic, of course. If you want to learn more about Marxism I can help you along, but without accepting that Socialism is a lengthy process of working out contradictions, and that therefore it is categorized by Public Ownership being primary, you'll end up walking yourself into endless traps.
I read this as communism has never failed
Well there's never been any real communsim on earth yet so that's technically correct.
What if a country has money but you also need monthly issued talons to get most goods?
Isn't that just called a paycheck?
No, it's called a ration stamp
So access to food and drink which you can't get otherwise you'll starve. Sure sounds like a paycheck to me.
Yeah, it's absolutely the same. I hope you'll experience it one day.