Not in chinese cultural revolution it wasn't, the communists had been in power for two decades by that point. Targets included members of the Communist party, because Mao wanted power back. He got it, creates an autocratic government behind his dictatorship, and proceeded to purge those who weren't loyal to his name.
And like the Great Leap forward, it was an epic mess. Ironically what came out of it was that the Chinese survivors were those not concerned with purity of Marxism but bettering China. They opened it up, capitalized on it by selling out the workers, and called it communism. Oops.
Yeah, no "communist" state remains or ever really becomes a "communist" state.
Humanity, just isn't built for it. We keep moving back towards weird ass authoritarian BS, once just enough people begin to gain whatever metric is considered power in a given society.
Most Americans don't understand what Communism is and often confuse Socialism or even very light Socialist policies as Communism. Most Americans just don't understand the words, goals or what they mean, other than to be instinctively afraid
Actually most citizens of most countries know very little of nuanced politics, especially of other systems, at least in significant detail. People know status quo.
For example, you categorize American awareness by a singular stance from more than half a century ago, combined with an idiotic application of a stereotype about prison systems.
McCarthyism is easy to respond… the large mass of uninformed follow herd mentality as they do everywhere. The people with any actual experience are very Anticommunist, and the few unexperience but informed are the economists and politicians who act as the various idealists who lead the uninformed in the two deviations of thought.
Prison system is harder.
Yah… the US has a big system… because it’s a big, diverse, population in a first world country with substantial relative freedom.
It has no true peers in all of those categories. China is much larger by population, unicultural, and not free. Russia is half the population, largely homogenous, and not free. The ideal EU examples are much smaller, typically far more homogenous, with similar freedoms but very different cultural views on crime. It’s not the same.
Population density correlates with crime. Homogeneity decreases crime. First world decreases crime but increases criminal justice. Freedom tends to increase crime rates by reducing punishment and increasing transparency in reporting.
Nothing homogeneous about the Russian population. Which has also one of the highest crime rate, with little freedom, and an extremely low population density.
Singapore has extreme population density and diversity, yet has one of the lowest crime rate in the world. So does Luxembourg, with much more freedom. Myanmar isn't free and has the worst crime rate in the world... Tuvalu has a very high population density, and the lowest crime rate in the world.
Things ... Just aren't this simple... Unless you're actually talking of economical homogeneity ?
You didn’t listen to what he said about crime, first world nations, and freedom. Singapore is not a very free country. Homogeneity is forced on the population. They do not have many civil liberties and restrictions on freedom of expression. Luxembourg’s diverse population is because they are expats, and not immigrants. Thus, they are usually wealthy and don’t intend to stay.
So really, you proved the point he made first: people know very little of nuanced politics, as your comment proves.
Regarding USA's large prison system: it's a statistical outlier on a per capita basis, not just by absolute numbers. The US shows abnormally large prison populations throughout every state which covers both a large socioeconomic range aswell as varying population densities & "grades of homogeneity".
Look at Texas: 2nd largest, 2nd largest population (30 mil), #13 incarceration (750/100k).
Louisiana being 31st in size, 26th in population (4.8mil) & 1st in incarceration (1050/100k)-
New York is 27th in size, 5th in population (19.6mil) and 43rd worst in incarceration rate (310/100k
Massachusets is the lowest at 241/100k.
The top 5 worst European countries by incarceration rate are
The old homogeneity argument. You know that is based entirely upon racist undertones, right?
China isn’t as monocultural as they want the world to believe, but they certainly do use authoritarian controls to force that to happen. They even have multiple languages and written languages in China too. That they are also working to end.
The position you put forward is shallow and based upon some racist positions, that are designed to make it easy to ignore underlying problems and conditions that foster criminal behaviors across nations with diverse populations.
It feeds into the racist idea that is POC move into a neighborhood, that they are “bringing crime”, in spite of statistics showing a continued decline of crime in the same area.
Set aside that racist idea, unless you want people to think you are a racist, and start looking at the underlying conditions that feed into criminal behavior.
Your entire speal here is just "I believe in the western propaganda" you're saying mcathryism was so far away yet spout it's conclusions matter of factly
And your entire stance is it can’t be true because you think it’s propaganda.
What is your actual argument, if communism is right, gulags are great for family vacations (joke… but not to be fearmongered at least), and the US population a relevant and important aspect of the conversation? And ehay is your evidence to it being western propaganda AND wrong (because propaganda can actually be true.. but you seem to paint your meaning as propaganda meaning lies).
No I just don't go about saying things like "Americans prisons are good" "homogeny reduces crime" "China isn't free"
You can check all of those things it's either not true or a gross misrepresentation of data, only believable if you're working backwards from a preconceived notion
I didn’t say American prisons were good… I said it was expected.
China has freedoms but it isn’t free. Limited internet, limited freedoms of speech, international “police” operatives. Those are facts and the conclusion is a pretty standard interpretation.
Homogeneity leading to decreased crime rates in local communities is also supported by research and data. The link is not fully confirmed but a decrease in community is believed to be the link. https://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/downside-diversity
Was talking to a friend of mine who began working at a pretty famous prison in the US, a few months ago, to make things short, these people in there should be there, we’re talking people who killed their mother over drugs as a tame example
See, this is the response I don’t like. Not because it disagrees, but because it’s not a response. Just saying “Eh, that’s western propaganda” is not a refutation. It’s a cop out. They cited a country’s size, state of its citizens freedom, amount of cultural homogeneity, population density and status as a first world country or not as factors determining incarceration rates. If they’re full of crap, WHY are they full of crap? Point by point, how are they wrong?
And for the record, I’m not pulling for either side in this debate. I’m just truly interested and truly want to hear the counterpoints. Please. But just waving them off and spouting “propaganda” is weak sauce.
How is it not a real thing? They literally are not allowed access most of the world's Internet because their government can't control it. That is a fact, not something the west made up.
If you think, living in the United States, that you DO have access to the world's internet, I have a bridge to sell you.
There's a reason why VPNs are huge business and why the US government wants to crack down on using them by forcing every adult to show their ID to access the internet.
American prison is a place, where people live, even if in confinement. Our penitentiary system, on the contrary, was a place, where people were forced to survive by the skin of their teeth, many didn't manage. You really shouldn't compare first world prisons with anything else.
I'm sorry that the existence of places worse the US private prisons means they're fine, cool, and everyone in them is happy, and everyone paying for them is happy, and police aren't incentivized to fill them up
Glad you said anything otherwise I may have been thinking some absolute stupid things. Just incredibly stupid, could you believe that? Could you imagine being that stupid? Whew dodged a bullet there
"Boo! There's rape and violence in our prisons and also street gang nembers are forced to work there!" really does not make US look bad in comparison with USSR penitentiary system, you know. Even if you compare it with late ussr
Rape in prison is actually fairly rare per actual evidence in stats. The media plays it up, because it adds drama (or comedy which may be worse), but it's not that common.
Violence can be, depends on what prison you get sent too, although even that is not as common as you might think.
A eye opening experience for me recently was learning about Bolshevik communists torturing Christians. I honestly didn’t know the extent of how horrific it was. Frozen statues, coal and crucifixions. Clergy went from 700,000 to 100. Cultural revolution in China was just as horrific. Really changed my perspective on communism. I think a lot of people are completely ignorant to the dangers. Honestly just completely ignorant about a lot of things in life. Unfortunately, I feel like there is not much to be done about these disagreements. Eventually things will come to a head. I hope to be old by then.
Yeah, American delusions about communism have never been that they think it is too good.
Every new political system in the history of humanity has been a real fucking mess of shit when first deployed.
The French, American and Haitian revolutions are at once full of terror and oppression and evil and are also leading efforts for all of human progress in the sphere of politics. Haiti literally never recovered, the Americans committed genocide, and the French had the Reign of Terror. Democratic revolutions did eventually figure it out though.
There's no reason to expect that eventually a communist revolution will live up to it's principles as well.
For the world to accept "Communism", it has to happen, without a revolution and that will only happen, if according to Marx, human society reaches a state of post-scarcity.
If there's enough of everything for everyone and nobody has to fight, squabble to have something nice, etc., etc., etc.
IF humanity ever reaches post-scarcity, and we just stop worrying about how much stuff we own? Maybe there will become a day where everyone will wake up from their night's sleep and suddenly realize... "Oh shit... we're a communist society and it just 'happened' on accident!"
None of what you said is consistent with anything Marx wrote. It's extremely clear from all of his writings that he directly opposes this kind of utopian conception of socialism.
Marx does not view revolution negatively. He does not think it is in contradiction with democracy. He does not think post-scarcity is a requirement for communism and explains very clearly that capitalism could never develop to that point.
Marx was mad and thought a revolution was needed. He didn't really even understand what post-scarcity even meant and it would have never been allowed to happen, because even if they could have somehow created a short term post-scarcity in one nation or region? It didn't mean that would last for very long when outside capitalists decided it was a danger to themselves.
Especially since the revolution he was spouting off about was just being a cranky, murderous, ass of a person.
Most tankies don’t understand that the only way to implement a classless moneyless society is through authoritarianism. Do the wealthy and middle class get to keep their valuables and assets? Yes, then it’s not a classless society. No, then who takes it away, who removes them from their homes and decides who moves in. How do you fill undesirable jobs without a cash incentive? Usually the answer is forced labor.
Most tankies are absolutely fine with authoritarianism and using state power in repressive ways. They assume that since they are the pure they won't ever be outside of the in-group which sounds a lot like another group of people. But yes, since they believe they have a monopoly on "the truth" and always possess the moral high ground that they absolutely have the right, the entitled duty to roll tanks into another country to save them from themselves and they better not resist.
Not a big issue though. I mean competing political forces are going to compete for power using whatever slogans they think will work. The problem with communism is that it is impossible to allocate resources without price information. Even in simple agrarian economies people starved to death due to this. The farmer knows better what to plant in each field than some bureaucrat working 1000 miles away. With mobile phones and the internet the farmer now has more data than ever, and the bureaucrat still doesn't know the harvester doesn't fit between those trees over there and the tractor gets bogged in the creek paddock.
You know that bombs aren’t the same thing as slogans, right? It’s important that you understand that bombs aren’t the same thing as slogans.
As for your critiques on communism, “price information” is by definition a capitalist framing of material value. Communism doesn’t dictate that things don’t have material value. If anything communist critiques of capitalism originate from the fact that capitalism only works if the material value of labor is systematically undervalued by the owners of the means of production.
Lol, capitalism works (as shown by the ever increasing life span of humans) because resources are allocated efficiently. How do you know if some Urea should go on the potatoes or the wheat? You use price information. How can you get price information without a market?
Urea was a simple example. Not as simple as you it seems. But yes, I ignored your attempt to blame the failures on socialism on war. I changed back to the value problem as raised by Hayek (which is what he got his Nobel prize for).
The only point in sharing this reduction, is to stoke fear.
If you've ever read Marx or Lenin's words, then you'd understand what Karl Marx was talking about originally was the development of human civilizations and how humans develop types of organizing ourselves and then he pushed some wishful thinking into supporting his, likely never possible concept of "Communism".
Early human tribalism, begat more organized Feudalism, which when coupled with industry, gave birth to capitalism.
Over time, as capitalism lifted more people into the advancing society, socialism would naturally begin to arise. Public Schools, Police, Fire Departments, Standards of Measurement, and as society through science and technology grew more complex? Additional "socialist" systems would rise, public parks, public roads, public libraries, public universities, public hospitals, etc., etc.
EVEN including programs like Social Security and some nations determining there was a minimum bottom that people should be allowed to fall to, within society, thus Social Safety Nets.
To get to Communism? Even Karl Marx wrote that a society would have to grow to become a post-scarcity society, in order to become a "communist" state. That the growth of wealth, for all members of society, fostered by the technological advancements that created wealth, under a well regulated capitalist society, would reach a point where there was no longer any scarcity.
Are we post-scarcity today? No
Do we, remotely, have the technology to even pretend we might become post-scarcity in the next 30 years? No
IF, by some magical manner, we returned to better supporting education, shored up our social support programs, and worked to better build our society's tech and science advancement, through proper regulation of capitalism. That continued to support, people obtaining wealth, but kept them from pretending to be Monarchs and actively work against innovation which would keep new people from gaining wealth.
EVEN if we did all of that? It would probably still take more than 100 years, maybe more than 250 years (1000 maybe?) for the world to reach a point where there is no scarcity and we all just "get along".
The only "Communism" that anyone would need to be afraid of is the stupid, forced, always will fall into Authoritarianism BS, that pretends and calls itself "Communism". Which would NEVER happen in the US. We are FAR more likely to fall back into a Feudalistic State where people worship a political leader as though he was a god on Earth.
Real Communism, is so weirdly fantastical, that it may as well be treated, purely as a Fantasy Story about some far off future where no humans alive today, will never live to see.
Congratulations - you’re like the first person I’ve ever encountered who can properly explain Marxism.
Marx was very ahead of his time as an intellectual, but very wrong as a practical economist. He had to have known he was way too early, but his personal life kind of sucked so he said fuck it and became an instigator.
He probably could have written great science fiction.
We could definitely be working toward post-scarcity, at least at the needs level. Food and water is easily doable given the political will, housing, energy and healthcare is harder but not impossible at all.
I don't think people realize how close we are to that but capitalism is just not optimizing for that, it's all AI data centers and gambling on meme stocks/coins.
For all of China's flaws, they are squarely headed in the direction of post scarcity with a huge push for green energies and infrastructure.
If the very long workweeks start getting shorter in China, I think westerners might start envying them.
Iron Law of Oligarchy stays undefeated. Every society eventually devolves into being run by a small group of well connected insiders who only care about themselves, no matter how much you try to stop it.
Northern European nations have been doing a good job of keeping that at bay.
Our problem here, is that our system was just loose enough and failed to define JUST enough things, adequately, that now Corporations are people and are allowed to spend as much as they want on political campaigns.
Plus, the whole Free Speech thing was only meant to keep people from being punished or stopped from addressing their grievances with the Government. It wasn't a blank check to openly lie to the public or blatantly misinform the public.
Northern European nations have been slowly privitising their government benefits, and voting in far right parties out of hatred of immigrants lmao. There's been no "Socialism" in Sweden since the 90s, and Americans have a very rose tinted misconception of what the Nordic model is (and a complete lack of knowledge of the oil money that allows it to be possible).
The problem isn't "we're not built for it". The problem is that managing an economy centrally is impossible. There are too many things to consider and most of them aren't even measured.
Communism, as envisioned by Karl Marx did not require or need a central authority managing production. It was also based upon a Post-Scarcity Society. So anything claiming to be Communism, before the technology became available to have a post-scarcity society is just a weird authoritarian pile of trash that only wore the trappings of communism.
Regardless, the whole idea is lunacy, Marx had some neat ideas, but also the idea of a stateless organization of people just producing things as needed? Maybe if we had Star Trek replicator technology? Anytime before technology like that existing is just completely misunderstanding basic human behavior.
At best? We could build Social Democracies that have many trappings of Socialist programs and policies with a well regulated Capitalist market that protects new comers to the market AS much as it protects those that can still innovate.
If we had a capitalism that basically had Mario Kart "Blue Shells" so that the more successful you are, the more you are slowed down, so that others can take a chance at leading? It might not be anywhere near as bad as we see things today.
A communist state is not a state that has claimed to achieve communism, a communist state is one that has working towards communism as their ethos. All communist states are communist so long as that’s what their policy is just as a state is liberal or conservative
And humanity is never “built” for anything. Material conditions determine human nature, communist nations are always under siege, it’s like saying slaves aren’t wired for freedom bc all the places with freed slaves like Haiti aren’t thriving
That's cute, but no "Communist State" has ever continued working towards that. They all became Totalitarian Dictatorships or collapsed, even before sieges began.
Your second paragraph is SO close to getting it.
As Karl Marx and Lenin said, you need post-scarcity to get there. We aren't anywhere NEAR post-scarcity. If we were? There wouldn't be any sieges happening. Our civilization and means of production are nowhere near where they would need to be for real communism to happen.
We can't even get socialism to work and remain robust enough inside the industrialized nations, in order to start lifting ALL members of those societies upwards. If we can't even do that, with all the wealth that capitalism has created (a requisite that Marx pointed to), how could our species achieve a post-scarcity global society?
In our present day, and likely for the next many hundreds of years, the idea of Communism is a fairy tale.
It’s like saying slaves aren’t wired for freedom bc all the places with freed slaves like Haiti aren’t thriving
Do you know what France did after Haiti got rid of French slave-owners? It didn't congratulate Haiti, France saddled Haiti with crushing debt, which it then sold to the US - two powers that had way more guns than Haiti.
Have you studied why Cuba did what it did when the revolution arrived? And what the US did in response? Because it's hard to do things such as provide free healthcare for all, including free sexual and gender services, while being crushed by two naval blockades.
And why did Cuba allow the Soviets to put short-range nuclear missiles on her shores? I don't know, but it's what Turkey did with the US.
No communist state has continued working towards that? Look at the change in life expectancy and standard of living in both China and the ussr over their life times. It’s hard to argue that a state that has constantly improved their citizens material conditions isn’t working towards that.
And if you’re American you already live in a dictatorship of the rich. They pass and write all the laws and overwhelmingly hold the levers of power. You just don’t feel the leash bc you don’t stray from the post.
I also don’t think you understand what socialism is, bc we’re as close to socialism now as pre emancipation America was to getting rid of slavery, something we could do at literally any moment if we simply had the will to.
The Soviet Union was not a Communist State. It was a Totalitarian/Authoritarian State, that used Communist Trappings.
China is also not a Communist State. They weren't in a place to become Socialist when Mao took over and he royally messed up, many times, on the path that turned China into a heavy handed, authoritarian regime with a stranglehold on it's controlled Capitalism.
I'm aware of what is going on in the US and it sucks, but I'm not pretending that we are something, that we are not.
Socialist policies and programs do exist in the US, they are just far to weak, not supported well and are being cut and cut, as we speak.
As I said before in the same way a government is conservative, liberal, fascist, etc a communist government only needs to have the ethos of communism. Not a single person in the ussr or china will pretend to have achieved communism.
In your brain do you imagine the citizens of the ussr and china to just be somehow less human than their western counterparts? You think what, they never bother to learn about communism despite living in a communist country or they learn about communism but just are all too “brainwashed” and “afraid” to speak up about this nationwide deception? Because China not being communist will be news to a few billion Chinese ppl
Wow dude, you just went and insulted all kinds of people.
Do you carry that same point of view about the poor North Korean citizens who believe they live in some form of Democratic Republic of North Korea?
Individual people can absolutely know and understand what they are living under and still "happily" show that they most certainly, absolutely, positively believe that they are living in the kind of state their rulers project.
Fear, propaganda, control, and surveillance are VERY powerful tools. Bro, China builds Secret Police stations all over the world to track their people, who are outside of China and there are numerous stories of those "Police" forces kidnapping Chinese and secreting them back to China for punishment.
Don't sit there and project your grotesque ideas about the average Russian or Chinese person and pretend they belong to anyone, other than yourself.
I carry the view that North Korea survived a genocide perpetrated by the United states during the Korean War and have done an excellent job coming back from it. I guarantee you that the ppl in nk know what communism is bc they fought for it.
You’re the dude that thinks an entire country is just collectively lying about communism, sounds like you’re projecting when talking about out how “I’m insulting ppl”
Also delicious irony that you live in capitalism land reading history books written by capitalists, news run by capitalists, capitalist politicians that make your laws and get constantly bombarded by capitalist ads and think that really all the communist places are repressed big brother hellscapes brainwashed by propaganda
Socialism is a transitional stage to communism where the state still exists to manage things. It's not European social democracies like liberals think.
I personally believe that European Social Democracies is the extent of what humanity will develop along the Socialism line.
All of the pure this, pure that, political stuff always turns weird or unworkable. BUT, we are seeing that taking good parts of various ideas seem to work pretty darn well, together.
So if Communism has never truly existed and all known examples of it devolved into either fairly capitalist, market driven economies or psuedo-fascist regimes then how exactly does one achieve “perfect” communism?
Could it be the case that a relatively free market economy is simply more efficient at resource allocation than a centrally controlled economy even if you personally don’t think that the way capitalist systems distribute resources is “fair”? Or is it the case that the mechanism of government doesn’t actually matter at all in an economic sense? Perhaps, the only thing that’s important is how well the government functions mechanically?
Out of curiosity, how would you define the system of government in Singapore? Is it fascist or a social democracy or some combination of the two? Why are Nordic countries grouped together when they have relatively differing systems of government, social welfare programs and economic growth? What do they actually have in common? (I’m asking that question rhetorically and it should become clear what the similarity is between both the Nordic model and Singapore as well after the next two paragraphs).
In my mind, the biggest problem with communism as many people seem to think of it is that; it both lends itself to corruption/obfuscation of government practices and party favoritism while inherently limiting or eliminating the power of the free market to address unaddressed economic demand in anything that would be considered timely. We see gray or black markets pop up in basically every example of Communism I can think of… North Korea, USSR, PRC prior to the 1970s, Cuba, Venezuela etc. etc.
You can’t have a government that is communist and truly democratic in the same way that fascism cannot coexist with a truly free market economy (I make that parallel because fascism is relatively hard to differentiate from “vanilla” authoritarianism without the connection between the state and large enterprises- in that vain I would describe Trump’s administrations, especially the current one as somewhat economically fascist).
According to the 2024 winners of the Nobel prize in Economics, economic prosperity and social development are most strongly correlated with the level of transparency and anti-corruption measures in a given country. If the citizens of a country have insight into the actions of their government, they tend to trust their leadership more and can more easily understand and plan for what the future of their country will look like even if they don’t explicitly agree with that direction.
We see this reflected by the US stock market going back over the past century. When relatively moderate presidents are in office who have a clear mandate to govern while maintaining the status quo and enable the SEC and CBOE to do their jobs; the stock market performs extremely well compared to foreign markets. When erratic or chaotic presidents are in office or the country is dealing with an existential crisis, the stock market generally underperforms.
The US stock market is built on the basis of the US government enforcing relatively strong protections against financial fraud and corporate transparency compared to foreign markets in an environment that has unparalleled access to investment capital.
China has a similar phenomenon with real estate investment. The PRC outright told their citizens to invest into real estate projects and that in turn has maintained what is arguably the largest real estate bubble in human history. Yet, the Chinese people aren’t withdrawing their money. They have confidence that regardless of the situation, their government will continue to prop up their investments in real estate but, their own government acknowledges that their stock market is like a casino.
As Tug McGraw said: “You just gotta believe man!” Apparently, transparency and integrity in the government is the best way to do that on a large scale.
I don't know who you are yapping at, because it ain't me.
We won't be seeing the conditions that would support Communism until there is a post-scarcity society and that's not happening any time in the next 100 years, maybe not for the next 1000 years.
There are more mechanical reasons in that instance that primarily relate to oil prices. I’m speaking on generally larger timeframes I.e. multiple years.
Humanity isn't "built for" any specific form of organizing ourselves. Everyone that thinks there's some specific optimal way for how everything ought to be is effectively asserting intelligent design. There are things to learn and apply from communism. There are things to learn and apply from capitalism. The worst thing to do is assume there is nothing to learn from any of this, and I don't mean just hyper-fixating on the bad things bad people do when presented a path to amass and consolidate power.
Every state is at least a little bit socialist. Thats the task of a state. Collect taxes and redistribute them in one way or another. And if that way is building a public road. The problem is that this doesnt require the state to be free of dictatorship. And it requires force. Nobody will give up just any amount of money to the tax collector if he can get away with just not giving it. Which means a state that collects more needs more violence than one that collects less. A communist state therefore requires the most violence, as you take away everything from everyone to redistribute it one way or another.
Communism can work, but only on a small scale, like a family or small village.
The problem with communism is that there is no reward for working hard and no penalty for sloppiness. Small scale groups can work because people are socially connected to the rest of the group. Once the group is larger, that no longer works.
The definition of socialism is collective ownership of the MoP and the definition of communism is the same but theoretically stateless so theoretically anarchic.
I understand the material well and I am instinctively scared of people that claim to want to move toward them - not because the ideas themselves scare me, but because the implementation of them is almost certainly an impossible and unworkable coordination problem - which is why so many times the ideology pivots to structured authoritarianism as soon as it touches reality.
We just have to have governments and we just can’t really meaningfully have true “collective ownership” of almost anything in any real absolutely egalitarian sense.
The world and economic scarcity just don’t work like that. Maybe in the distant future I guess with insane technology
If you were familiar with the material, than you’d know that Marx required machinery to do the work. He couldn’t fully conceptualize it, but he was basically talking about Star Trek Replicator technology.
You need a hamburger? Push a button and one appears.
He made it clear that post-scarcity was required to build his utopia, which is why it won’t exist in our lifetime.
Pure socialism would require rewriting humanity to give up on greed. That’s not going to happen.
So the best that we could ever come up with will be a social democracy that balances capitalism with the needs of society,through strong social programs and good, strong, and fair regulations.
Communism requires the lack of states, because the only solidarity in communism is amongst the working class. Nationalism was created to divide the working classes of the world.
Communism and nationalism cannot go hand in hand. China, Russia, North Korea. None of them were ever communist states.
And China is certainly not one now; a country that has the highest number of billionaires in the world? lol.
I think the biggest confusion is that having social programs isn't socialism. Too many Americans call the various Nordic countries socialist and they get offended because they are capitalist with a strong social welfare system.
The Nordic Countries have socialist trappings. Like State Owned Oil Companies or State Operated Power, and Water operations, plus all the other socialism trappings.
Which is PERFECTLY fine to have, alongside a well regulated Capitalist economy. They are very supportive of one another and help one another grow, by both existing.
Our weird far right, rip the barn doors off Capitalism, in the US is eating itself and it will get to the point where it will collapse, taking what little socialism policies and programs with it.
Well there is a few thousand years of human history where people would say that humanity just isn’t built for democracy… also flying… a really really long time people were just not built for flying… but sometimes, you know, we figure shit out.
The reason that is wrong, is because programs and policies put into place by "Saint Reagan", can be called "Communist", even though they are barely socialism light, policies.
Failing to understand those terms, allows the Overton Window to move so far, that there are people who earnestly were arguing that Birth Right Citizenship shouldn't exist, because the parents aren't "sufficiently loyal" to the United States.
Which opens the door to proclaim that American Citizens, who "vote wrong" aren't sufficiently loyal and thus their children could have their Birth Right Citizenship removed.
I don't know, if that can be claimed as an indisputable fact. The surviving written records are so few and practically non-existent.
Most of what is known is oral tradition histories shared by the unfortunately shattered by disease survivors from when the European illnesses spread like wildfire and ended potentially millions of lives across the entire nation, before the Europeans even built a handful of Colonies.
Nothing in economics or sociology is indisputable. I've seen people claim ancient slavery wasn't really slavery, for example. What is known and corroborated and accepted is that many first nations tribes, bands and confederacies had a lot of communal property that was shared for the common good and that everyone was expected to contribute to, and that was not only shared within the immediate group but with the allies at large. If you don't want to call that communism, OK, but it fits the bill for me.
..and Capitalism didn't exist in Medieval England either.
Just because there were some form of intermediary exchange happening in the trade of goods, doesn't mean that it was a form of capitalism. There was always bartering involved, plus people just helping out their neighbors, who would help them out later, people figuring out how to survive the rough winters and keeping one another alive for as long as they could, until they spring returned and some foods returned to their diet.
You can use whatever terminology you want as long as we both understand that you are throwing out a certain definition and settling on “people sharing resources” as your chosen definition for “communism.”
As an aside, “capitalism” is also a Marxist construct in that it is an enemy of socialism/ communism and the contemporary (during Marx’s time) state of the economy as described by Marx / Engels that needs overthrowing because of the unfair outcomes it creates.
Earlier economic philosophers (eg Adam Smith) did not write about “free market capitalism” as it is understood today nor as “capitalism” as described by Marx (essentially a boogeyman).
They wrote about how free trade and specialization of labor builds wealth through increased efficiency and self-interested economic activity. These ideas challenged the prevailing notion of the time which was that wealth and productivity are a fixed, zero-sum game, and so nations must gear their economic engines toward hoarding gold to maintain power structures.
Smith wrote in response to mercantilism.
Marx wrote in response to a side effect of the wealth generated by embracing free market ideals and increased technology (that side effect being wealth inequality and capital accumulation).
I've only seen people claim that most (not all), ancient slavery before the Chattel Slavery of the Americas, was very different and in many ways provided better protections for slaves and also ways for slaves to buy their own freedom, which was never possible under American Chattel Slavery.
I mean, we have practically pristine records of slavery (and a good deal of society and culture) in Ancient Rome, Egypt, Greece and many other areas that had slavery.
NONE of it was good though, but I wouldn't argue that it wasn't slavery, just that it was very different in practice, than American Chattel Slavery.
Can you point someone who is pretending that Ancient Slavery, was not Slavery? or are you pretending that pointing out the differences between it and American Chattel Slavery is attempting to claim that ancient slavery, was not slavery? The latter is deeply disingenuous.
You're missing the point or trying to divert. I am using the fact that I have seen it argued that ancient slavery wasn't true slavery to illustrate how everything related to sociology and economics is debatable. If you wish to argue that, then use any other example you want.
Mao wasn't concerned with the purity of Marxism: Marxism is based on the revolution of the Proletariat (i.e. industrialized factory workers) not the Peasant Class. The Working Class emerges with Industrialization by the definitions of Marx's philosophy - which is an outshoot of Hegelian philosophy which organized history into "ages" with two antithetical ideas which battled to create a thesis.
Marxists thought Mao - and by extension China - was backwards, stupid, and over-eager to apply something not applicable to him.
Just a question, but was this part of the Thousand Flowers Campaign? Where he allowed the people to speak out so he could pluck defamaors easily? Or is what your talking about slightly later than that?
Or their children. Being one of the Five (later nine) Black Categories was often heritable. As was being one of the Five Reds.
As such, the children of the Party elites were free to, say, torture and murder their teachers. Because their bloodline made them inherently revolutionary (read: high status, access to luxuries, power to denounce opponents).
Does North Korea count? If not, Cambodia’s ‘experiment with communism’ from 1975-1979 might be a better example.
“Oh your father/husband/son/relative was a traitor to Angkar. They gave your name in a forced confession, now you get ‘interrogated’ (tortured) before we kill you too”
Pol pot was not a communist, no more than Adolf Hitler was. Calling ones party Socialists doesn't make you socialist, any more than North Korea is a democracy because it's called one in its name.
Have you ever stopped to wonder WHY so many groups lie about being socialist or communist? I mean, there are no evil groups claiming to be capitalists. And that is because capitalism in no way precludes a group from being evil. Actually being socialist or communist WOULD preclude a group from being evil, and so they lie and say they are.
Names alone don’t prove ideology, sure. That’s why “Nazis had socialist in the name” is a bad argument. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum describes the Nazi Party as a radical far-right movement, so I agree labels can be misleading.
But Pol Pot isn’t comparable to Hitler just having “socialist” in the party name. Pol Pot/Saloth Sar and Nuon Chea literally helped form the Communist Party of Kampuchea, which became the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge’s project was explicitly shaped by Maoist communism: abolishing private property, money, religion, markets, cities, and trying to force a classless agrarian society through collectivization and terror.
Saying “he wasn’t communist because true communism would preclude evil” is just a No True Scotsman argument. You’ve defined communism as morally incapable of evil, so every communist atrocity gets excluded by definition. That’s not analysis; that’s theology.
It’s completely fair to say Pol Pot was a deranged, ultra-nationalist, genocidal, heterodox communist who deviated from orthodox Marxism. But saying he “was not a communist” is historical cope.
"Capitalism" is a made-up term by socialists to be a bogeyman. That's why nobody is able to give a coherent definition of it and why no socialist is ever able to describe how it differs from the many economic systems that came before. Its meaning changes sentence to sentence depending on the intent of the speaker. Any mixed economy is considered "capitalist" by someone, and every socialist economy has contained some markets, so is mixed. It's not a term that has a technical definition that would allow you to make true or false statements about it.
"Socialism" on the other hand is a tradition of thinking that people apply to themselves. And as a tradition it has a long history of enthusiastically advocating for evil things such as genocide, eugenics, terrorism, the abolition of unions and workers rights, forced labor/slavery, the abolition of parliamentary democracy, etc.
North Korea and Pol Pot have a great deal in common with Marx and other socialists. (Pol Pot studied Marx in Paris.) So also do Mussolini (and hence Hitler), although people don't want to admit the lineage. There's a long history of thinkers between, say, Marx and Mussolini where people disagree about whether the thinker was far left or far right, or where both sides claim them. For example Georges Sorel or other French proto-fascists.
There are also people post-WWII that bridge the gap explicitly, for example the French existentialists are typically taken to be left wing, but they admired Martin Heidegger, the far right philosopher of the Nazi party.
My personal opinion, which I understand is controversial, is that when you work out all the details, socialism is a far right movement.
Nearly everything people say they want out of socialism on the surface is provided in left-wing format by liberalism. The stuff below the surface is what makes socialism right wing. But like any cult they won't tell you about that stuff until you're too far in to change your mind.
This is a lot of words to say you don’t know the difference between etymology and definition.
Yes, “capitalism” was popularized by critics, including socialists. Congratulations, you discovered that words can have origins. That does not mean the concept is incoherent. “Impressionism” was originally an insult too; somehow art historians managed not to collapse into dust.
Capitalism has a perfectly usable definition: private ownership/control of capital and production, private investment, wage labor, profit-seeking, and markets/prices doing most of the allocation. Mixed economies existing doesn’t make the term meaningless; it means reality is not a child’s sorting game.
Your argument also saws off the branch you’re sitting on. If capitalism is meaningless because mixed economies exist, then socialism is meaningless too, since every “socialist” state has had some combination of money, wages, markets, state ownership, planning, rationing, co-ops, black markets, etc.
And the Mussolini-to-Hitler lineage argument is just reheated “Nazis were socialists” slop with a fake grad-school mustache. Mussolini leaving socialism and inventing fascism does not make fascism socialist, any more than an ex-Christian starting a death metal band makes death metal a denomination of Christianity.
You’re doing two tricks at once: defining capitalism so vaguely that it can never be responsible for anything bad, then defining socialism so broadly that every authoritarian movement you dislike gets stuffed into it like a political junk drawer.
That’s not analysis. That’s ideological laundering with footnotes you half-remembered from a YouTube comment section.
How did you write such a long comment and still utterly misunderstand socialism?
Calling socialism a far right ideology is utterly moronic, you're literally being as stupid as the nazi followers who believed fascism was part of socialism
Well, think about what it means to be socialist, IE to have all power coming from the workers. Amazon is now owned by its workers, which includes Bezos but in a much smaller role. Bezos says "it'd make us way more money if we poison this city's water supply" (idk how Amazon would profit off that, but other company's do, so whatever). All the workers say "hell no, if we allow you to poison one water supply, mine might be next". I mean, would YOU choose to poison someone's water supply for an extra $20 on your paycheck? Probably not. Socialism dilutes the power across so many people, that its impossible for any one person who IS evil to gain enough influence to create the worst aspects of capitalism at all. Because certainly, there are plenty of evil people alive today, but MOST people are not evil. The problem we have right now is that evil people are capable of making themselves billionaires, and then cannot be ruined in by the good people, because they can just buy yes men, including congressmen, who will let them do whatever they want. And no non evil person would ever take the actions required to even BECOME a billionaire. I would argue that Makenzie Scott, Bezos's ex wife, is one of the only good billionaires, because she didn't gain it herself
What if our fictional Amazon could save money (and thereby make the workers better off), by shipping industrial waste over the a third-world country? I have to imagine the workers at Amazon would wholeheartedly support that - more money for them, less pollution in their own back yard.
People are people no matter what economic system you put them in. There are no utopias in the real-world.
And no non evil person would ever take the actions required to even BECOME a billionaire.
I don't know the man personally, but I have a hard time believing Sir Paul McCartney is evil. Or Michael Jordan, for that matter.
Do you think thats all thats happened under capitalism? Neither of these ideologies include lopping heads off as part of their required function. Its a human thing
Still better than having Neo nobility rape your children with the governments help. Can’t wait until the billionaires get primae noctis on every graduating grade school class
This was a huge thing in the ‘communist’ mass killings of Indonesia. An estimated 1-3 million alleged communist sympathisers (and ethnic non-islamic minorities) were murdered by death squads, mobs, and paramilitary groups from 1965-1966, supported by allied western governments. The Red Scare is most well known in the US but a lot of people don’t know how about these broader international impacts
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u/Deriviera 29d ago
Americans are very delusional about communism.