I can forgive imperial core boomers for this level of “brainwashing,” but most of the rabidly anti-“tankie” Lemmitors aren’t that old.
imperial core boomers for this level of “brainwashing
But why? They were actually around when USSR was alive and kicking. Unlike the youngsters you mentioned, who grew up in the world of unchallenged propaganda
Propaganda during the cold war was challenged even less, and there weren’t alternative sources of information outside of corporate mass media.
challenged even less
Gonna have to disagree with this part. Remember the 90’s? Early 00’s?
shudders Yeah, I do. Propaganda was so all-encompassing that they bragged about doing the coup d’etat of the USSR
My chud brother accused me of being indoctrinated before, and I’m like, my brother in
christactuality, we were raised by the same conservative parents, in the same conservative area, in many of the same conservative schools. I know what you believe backwards and forwards. You can’t tell the difference between my beliefs and Joe Biden’s. One of us thinks critically about our own beliefs and tries to understand other perspectives, and it sure as hell ain’t you.It’s just really funny on some level when they’re so set on reading the same talking points from their script and try to go off about privileged out-of-touch coastal elites who only believe things because they’re never exposed to outside ideas, with someone they literally grew up with.
They’re indoctrinated into calling us indoctrinated or saying we live in a bubble, and the irony is lost on them.
Shut up bubble boy!
- liberals, probably
Europeans too. But we’re basically Americans also, so.
a more pathetic and spineless version of americans. Especially germans.
Well I mean, at the moment at least it seems that European protests against the current regimes are burning down city halls while the Americans are busy dancing with cop-approved parameters and building human sculptures that say “vote”. But then again, until either of these areas goes through a communist revolution I’ll call neither less pathetic or spineless population than the other.
the french really know how to protest. Their neighbours to the right not so much, though.
Albanians seem to be burning more than French atm. Given enough time capitalism will drive us all up a wall, into war and to concentration camps. It’s only natural.
spineless
I would not call what france people are doing “spineless” and even the (IMO) the most spineless of europe (Italians) burned down at least 1 building and are protesting, sud italian farmers even refused to work and are blocking roads with some mayors supporting 'em
I didn’t mean to generalize to all of europes population. Mainly its governments. And mainly germans. But also most of german citizens. We REALLY like to follow orders. It’s like a fetish. So what’s happening in france would never happen here. Especially not with that severity. Maybe to an extend localized in some areas like berlin and maybe parts of hamburg. Overall the sentiment here is that most people are appalled by the violence and feel sad for that beautiful building that was burned down. And that’s about it.
We’re about as American as we are African like the South African colonial settlers who tried to appropriate the term African to refer to themselves but failed.
I’d say we as Europeans live in a culture that is Usianized to the extent of being unrecognizable from the original. Our leaders do what the Usians tell them to do, our institutions serve Usian interests, our militaries use Usian weapons. Our populations watch Usian movies and serials, read Usian books, follow Usian zeitgeists. We use Usian social media platforms, where Usian algorithms serve us Usian propaganda. We learn to speak American English in school, where they teach us the history of the world that is approved by Usians.
propagandized against communism? 100%
vassals of the US? same.
But “we’re basically Americans” is an insult I won’t take.oh no!
at least some still have a fighting spirit.
and tasteI gotta hand you guys that, it does seem like there’s a limit to how much bullshit you’ll tolerate. We have yet to find that limit in the states.
Glad you acknowledge it.
Plenty here get real defensive for pointing that out.I guess we are slightly less indoctrinated into bootlicking the authoritarian state.
We don’t thank our regime troops for their service, our cops don’t get free stuff in shops, etc…
No comically large flags or killer jet fly overs at sports games either.
well yeah, it seems the usians prefer to dance and vote. i’d rather celebrate local cultures on their own terms, not under US hegemony.
Then we need to kick these bootlicker EU ‘leaders’ or nato removeds like Rutte out with the US invaders.
we’d also need a way to fight against homegrown fascism after that, but a good first step. tear down nato and the eu
The most rabbid anti communist I know is French
@cowbee sparked a liberal massacre here. I’ve never seen so many bans.
Haha, they do it to themselves.
what even happened? Did they all get scratched and spew racist and homophobic shit or something?
Someone who claimed China was better off as a semi-feudal semi-colony and had family there, someone bringing up the Black Book of Communism as a source on China Bad, someone who referenced the Wikipedia page title “People’s Democratic Dictatorship” to claim China has a sole dictator, etc.
Oh I see, the typical reactionary liberal.
Yep.
Haha no it’s mods modding to your benefit, mods did it.
removing reactionary racist shit is to the benefit of marginalized people, not to the benefit of white people
Do you think that if the mods did not ban people, that I would not still be more supported than not? Why do you think it’s to my personal benefit?
Not just to his benefit, but to the benefit of workers across the globe.
When reactionaries spit anticommunist propaganda, shutting them down is a service to womankind.
I would need to see their comments before celebrating because nah nah, naaaaaaaaaaaaaah, we’re not just going to celebrate mods mass-banning opinions they don’t like.
Unless it was actually hateful or filthy in some way. “Communism is good actually” does not count as hateful.
Just go look at the modlog
The worst part is that in USA
Socialism = Communism
🤦♂️
Socialism is a transitional mode of production and distribution towards communism, so in a way they are a part of the same process of communist construction.
I guess to be more precise in what they are likely referring to, Americans have associated communism with the specific characteristics, real or made up, of previous or existing socialist states.
So when someone not educated in Marxist theory tries to make the distinction between “socialism” and “communism,” they’re basically saying “No, we’re not like those scary Russians and Chinese. We want to be like the civilized social democracies in Europe.” In the process they simultaneously:
- Misunderstand what socialism and communism are.
- Play into the right wing narrative that these countries, and therefore any attempt at communism, would just mean authoritarianism even, not realizing that it is neither a critical part of communism in the abstract nor something Western “democracies” are free of.
Not necessarily maliciously. This is a product of the propaganda we’ve all been exposed to for so long.
That’s fair! Understood.
Even the word “propaganda” itself has been manipulated by us into a meaningless pejorative over the last 100 years, originally a benign “spreading of ideas”.
The thing is: has Communism ever produced a good example in any country or historical period? Most religions are also based on some very good principles, but I can’t think of a country where a theocracy produced a good place for people to live. So, I don’t know… there might be a fundamental disconnect between how good the principles are and how badly they adapt to human nature? Not a critique, please believe me. I really want to be educated on this.
Capitalism has destroyed our planet, becoming an existential threat to the human species and all other complex life on Earth.
But yeah, cumyouism bad…mmmkay👍🤤
I’m not saying Capitalism=good and I’m even open to accept Communism as the ethically superior alternative. It’s just that, while I see Communism as a good balance to unchecked neoliberalism in a democracy, when either side completely takes over, countries seem to drift toward two opposite (but also so similar) types of dictatorship.
I do see how “pure free market” is becoming a threat, as you write, and I would like to see a bit more socialism added to the democratic mix again.
The dictatorships capitalism and socialism drift towards are not dictatorships in the popular imagination, of a single individual, but instead of classes. Capitalism is the dictatorship of capitalists, who collectively decide the course of society. Socialism is the dictatorship of the workers, who also collectively decide the course of society. In both cases, there is democracy for one class and dictatorship for the rest, the primary difference is that in socialism it is the great majority of people, the ones that actually create value for society, that finally control it.
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The “dictatorship” you fear is the dictatorship of the proletariat. It’s called democracy, something that’s incompatible with capitalism.
You’re seriously saying with a straight face that you’re concerned for the right of .01% of Americans to be idle parasites sucking our blood dry? You can fuck right off, and keep fucking off.
Everywhere communists have taken power has seen dramatic, rapid improvements for the lives of the working classes. Every single time socialism has been solidified, it has worked out for the majority of society.
The thing is: has Communism ever produced a good example in any country or historical period?
Depends on what you consider “good.” You can define good so strictly that no country has ever qualified. You can also define it based on the standards of historically wealthy countries with high standards of living built off of slavery and colonialism. If you do either of those, the answer is probably no.
Otherwise, if you look at socialist systems in comparison to 1) what they had before, and 2) what other options were realistically open to them, the answer is yes.
- China had a life expectancy in the 30’s that remained there through the Qing, the warlord period, and the nationalists. As soon as the communists came to power and redistributed the land to the people, life expectancy skyrocketed, doubling within a generation. In spite of those improvements, in 1980 over 90% of the population was still living in extreme poverty, which has now been entirely eradicated.
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Vietnam was ruled by a brutal colonial oppressor and fought against a corrupt far-right puppet regime, the communists won and established autonomy, raised standards of living and developed the country, and put down Pol Pot, stopping the Cambodian genocide.
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Russia under the tsar was drafting hordes of people to be thrown into the pointless meat grinder of WWI, rather than focusing on domestic development and industrialization. Even when there were reforms, the “moderates” were still insistent on staying in the war and reclaiming lost territory. Once Lenin came to power, he took the L to get out of the war and refocused on domestic development and industrialization. Standards of living rose, and the USSR rapidly transformed from a feudal backwater into a global superpower, even with bearing the brunt of the costs of WWII (which they were only able to do because of that development).
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Cuba had a corrupt gangster state that was a puppet of the US. Once the communists took over, they conducted a very successful literacy campaign and trained so many doctors that they’ve not only provided medical care to their own people, but also sent them abroad to help with humanitarian crises. They have, however, suffered a lot because of the US blockade (which has been condemned by the UN 165-7). In the past, they could have relied on the USSR for assistance, but without it many countries have had to stand on their own against US imperialism, without another option to turn to.
Sure. I’ll try to answer the best I can, but I’ll start by saying this is a very complex topic and it’s really worth reading some other materials on it depending on what you’re interested in specifically.
I’ll start with the most important point which is: Socialism isn’t just one static thing. It is essentially a belief in radical democracy. That the majority of people, the people actually doing the work in society, ought to be the ones who get to control their economic and political lives. This is hindered by the means of production, the tools and materials needed to make stuff, being owned by a handful of people who don’t work and have incentives which are in direct opposition to those of the workers. How exactly create this transition and then manage society in the future is in our hands, but it’s not a set path. It’s on us to analyze our situation and make decisions accordingly. We can make the wrong decisions, but at least we got to make them. There is no inevitable outcome of a socialist project because we’re the ones responsible for making it happen.
By contrast, capitalism is a system that is mostly controlled by market forces. Even in the idealized version of capitalism, nobody is in the driver’s seat. The world we see today was not the deliberate result of any intentional action by a person or group, but by essentially an evolutionary process by which competition filters out less profitable businesses and elevates more profitable ones. Of course, capitalist economists would say that this is a good thing and a reason for it’s “success.” They’d say, among other things, that humans cannot make decisions that are as good as the results of this “natural” process and therefore, we should let that process go in order to produce the best results for society. What a Marxist economist points out is that these forces actually result in some inherent contradictions which lead to social problems which this system cannot naturally overcome. I’d also have you ask the question: WHO has capitalism helped? Progress isn’t even. What helps some people may not help, or may even hurt others. What metric for progress can we realistically use to account for the fortunes of a capitalist, the deaths and injuries of people in sweatshops, homeless people, people in other countries exploited by imperialism, etc.?
Basically, I can tell you why capitalism will inevitably end up acting in a certain way because we know how it works. It’s almost like a math question. Socialism isn’t bound by any specific thing other than our own creativity, ingenuity, and will. Past and present socialist societies don’t represent a fixed end goal, they are history we can learn from, good and bad.
As far as those specific societies go, there’s so much reading to do on this to fully understand the topic and it’s not like I’m even an expert, but I’d push back on the idea that “socialism” has failed to create good outcomes for people. Each of these countries has their own particular history and material conditions and we should analyze them with those in mind.
-
Russia was an agrarian feudal society that was way behind the west in industrial development. It also took a lot of the brunt of damage from WWII. Despite this and having to fend off antagonism by the US, they managed to develop society into a modern industrialized economy.
-
China was an agrarian feudal society in it’s death throes beset by exploitation by European colonialists carving out economic spheres of influence. It fought off Imperial Japan in WWII with massive loss of life. Immediately following this, they were abandoned by their supposed allies in the west who then helped rebuild their former enemy. Despite this, they have evolved into a modern economy that rivals and in some ways surpasses the US economy. You might say that this is due to their market reforms, but the key part of those market reforms is that the state retained control over key sectors of the economy and were able to deliberately make use of foreign capital towards their own developmental ends. It’s yet to be seen if in the long term this is going to work out or if the rise of a capitalist class in China will lead to their eventual political dominance.
-
Vietnam was a colony which had to fight off it’s owners, then the US along with the dictator they propped up. This was a pretty viscous war that killed many and ruined what infrastructure they had. On top of that, the use of Agent Orange has had long lasting effects. There are STILL children being born today with birth defects due to Agent Orange. After the war they were the subject of US sanctions for some time. And yet, again they became a rapidly developing economy that while not quite at the level of China or the US, has made some massive strides towards becoming a modern nation.
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Korea also dealt with the horrors of Imperial Japan during WWII followed up by a dictator and then a war by the US which absolutely leveled their infrastructure. While the US assisted the south in rebuilding, they isolated the North. They definitely haven’t had the success of countries like China, but the fact that they’ve had any progress under such harsh conditions should be considered a miracle.
-
Cuba used to be a playground for foreign capitalists who owned plantations, casinos, etc. Their revolution was immediately followed by the US isolating them and repeatedly trying to sabotage them. Again, it’s hard to make much progress when you have no access to trade with the rest of the world and have to be constantly on guard against a superpower at your doorstep, but even then, they’ve managed quite a bit. Cuba has had so much success with their healthcare system that they’ve been able to send doctors around the world on humanitarian missions as one example.
Were all of these societies perfect? No of course not. People are people and they will struggle and sometimes stumble, but were/are they complete failures owing to the inherent properties of socialism? No. But again, this is all a very cursory overview of the topic. I would highly encourage you to learn more for yourself on whatever part of this interests you most.
EDIT: Also, taking this back to capitalism, it has been responsible for tons of deaths and human suffering over the course of it’s history, but people don’t really consider that suffering in the same way as they do any suffering that happened during the history of various socialist societies. This isn’t whataboutism, it’s highlighting a flaw in the way we think about these issues. A famine caused by natural conditions in a country that has had famines for all of it’s history? The failures of communism. Capitalism failing to feed large amounts of people while it produces more than enough food to do so? Apparently that’s not a problem.
-
The thing is: has Communism ever produced a good example in any country or historical period?
Yes
Essentially, communism is socialism within a classless society. Star Trek is communist.
Can you define the word ‘communism’?
Commulism
VerbDepicting minorities in video games or movies
What about when woman but no booba?
Woman with no booba is like M&M when no boots: communism?
I would respond here, but anything meaningful would be removed.
Nothing you could be hinting at would actually be meaningful anyways or something not debunked a million times. Go ahead. holodomor, purges, North Korea, CCP / Uyghur / Social Credit / Tiananmen Square, Pol Pot, … Which is it? Cmon it’s okay!
Pol Pot? the guy who was widely condemed by both China and the Soviet Union as a fascist masquerading as a comunist and completely ruined his country? That’s a new level for yall
Nobody is supporting Pol Pot here, the point is that anti-communists love using him against communists.
Always love knowing I can drop a comment with minimal context and I got shooters out here that will pick up on the context for others. I couldn’t have explained this better myself, though I didn’t expect the pol pot one to be the bait. I should have put Che / Cuba or Sankara / Burkina Faso but the intention of my comment remains the same. You are absolutely correct.
Thanks, and happy to help!
So you admit he wasn’t a communist!!! Checkmate!!!
Mentioning his name means we support him? Wtf? OK, everyone make sure we never mention Adolf Hitler.
Wait, shit, I said his name right there! Fuck!
I guess you support He-who-shall-not-be-named, since you said his name after all. What a goofy comment lmao.
Wow can’t believe you would mention him. Guess that means you love him. Go marry him.
I could not have predicted that is what you took from my comment. But yes. That Pol Pot. Congratulations on the reading comprehension part of the test, you still fail.
widely condemed by both China and the Soviet Union as a fascist masquerading as a comunist
I don’t think China did that, the MFA usually has a strict “non-interference in internal affairs” as per the five principles of peaceful coexistence. Deng met with Pol Pot multiple times in the 80s. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia in Dec 1978, China did a retaliatory 28 day invasion of Vietnam in Feb 1979. Kim Il Sung even had the Changsuwon palace ready for Prince Sihanouk to stay in during the coalition government insurgency against Vietnam.
To my knowledge: China, Korea, and most of ASEAN at the time supported Pol Pot and the coalition government, while the the Warsaw pact countries (except Romania), Albania, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and the current Hun Sen government condemed Pol Pot. Romania and Yugoslavia stayed neutral. It was a fairly even split on the issue for communist countries.
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do you understand what the word ‘or’ means? The commentor was clearly just listing common talking points anti-communists use. You are purposefully misconstruing their words because you can’t engage in substantive conversation about an issue that your total amassed education on probably amounts to the literal meme above.
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It’s okay to be honest and admit you have nothing meaningful to contribute. No need to be condescending.
“I have a totally compelling and reality-based argument that you definitely haven’t heard two thousand times before, but it goes to a different school.”
My argument would totally destroy yours but you’d just refuse to engage so I won’t bother
It’s not your average user’s fault for not knowing, but some moderators definitely over-reach with removing and banning.
Last week I caught a ban for being a “troll” from the Memes community here for saying that liberals generally like Khrushchevkas (AKA Soviet Bloc apartments) and cite them as one of the things the USSR did right.
You don’t see the bans and removals because the people and their posts are gone.
I’m willing to believe that there’s a grain of truth in this at face value, but from what I’ve seen, most communities will ban people for inflammatory disagreement. A lot of people here approach such discussions from other instances in bad faith (even I did above), but those outside of the instance are generally the ones more likely to be banned for it. These discussions will start somewhat heated, eventually degrade when one or both parties get frustrated, bans are issued, and then people will recall this discussion later as being ‘banned for having a different opinion’. I’m sure it happens but it’s not as common as people claim imo.
I’m glad you’ve had a much more pleasant experience with this instance than I have, but even the mountain of downvotes and people shitting on me for speaking my truth should paint a pretty clear picture about how non-.ml people are treated on .ml.
Feel free to thoroughly dig through my moderation history to see that I’ve never been anywhere near inflammatory in the incidents I’m talking about.
Unless you’re taking the stance of “I’ve seen otherwise in other instances, so I’m not going to believe you or check to see if you’re telling the truth,” of course.
What is this .world?
Worse
Nah I catch waaaaay more bans from .world communities lol. They hate when you tell them cold hard facts, like Biden killed more Palestinians than trump.
It seems most of your removals/bans from lemmy.world come from calling people “shit for brains terrorists,” drugged, and saying they should be skinned alive, actually:
https://lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=28703556
I calls em like I sees em. Plus that’s a different account.
You can’t simultaneously pretend honesty is a core value of yours but also lie about why you get banned.
Well - you can - but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
I’m not? One of my ban reasons was literally “banned until after the election” on a large politics community on .world.
One of them was posting stats and graphs and I was banned for “garbage troll comments”.
Y’all are a very delicate bunch.
Waow
“Death to America” = “advocating violence” is the dumbest shit I ever read.
Not the first time I was banned for that either, despite explicitly saying America is a country, not a person, and needs to be sanctioned out of existence and balkanized.
Thank you for context I was too lazy to give lol.
That’s 2/ … 50 or so?
1/2 of them could absolutely be about Biden, depending on context.
The other is obviously not.
Why comment at all, then?
Funny, I only ever see bad faith trolls, who call anyone who disagrees with them bots, get removed. That and crazy racists or obvious misinformation. As opposed to .world where I see well-sourced posts get removed for “incivility”.
Now I am a moderate and I know there’s two sides to every coin and not everything is black and white, so I guess the truth lies somewhere in the middle, so only some racists get caught on .ml and only some well-researched comments get removed from .world.
It’s almost as though you don’t have anything worthwhile to say.
Maybe you could link to your argument. If it’s so interesting I would like to read it.
The Global North is irredeemable. The vassals are as smart as the suzerain which is not at all.
I’m gonna just drop the truth nuke here so that I can get closer to my “banned from .ml award” quicker:
the media and the wast majority in general just don’t know the difference between stalinism, communism in general, anarcho-communism and anything else that mentions “communism”/“communistic”. They see bad examples set by, ahem, China and such to then apply it to basically the entire left. EDIT: forgot to mention socialism
That’s not quite correct. The west refers to socialist states run by Marxist-Leninist or similar parties as “communist,” because those are the most geopolitically relevant representations of communism historically and presently. “Stalinism” isn’t a thing, the ideology is called Marxism-Leninism and Stalin’s contributions are minor compared to Marx and Lenin. The reason anarcho-communism isn’t mentioned is because it doesn’t exist anywhere that would require the news to report on it.
Westerners see rising socialist success stories like China, and the news apparatus does its best to either discredit China or pin all of its successes purely on the marketized sector, rather than the cohesive socialist system that marketizes underdeveloped industry and socially owns the commanding heights of the economy. Their goal isn’t to discredit the left by associating them with China, their goal is to dissuade the left from following its example.
But isn’t China state-captialism or party-state capitalism? They make immense profits but those aren’t distributed to the population, state enterprises or non-state firms have them. I don’t see how that is socialism…
CPC say themselves that they are in the ‘primary stage of socialism’ so they haven’t reached that. And that stage to me doesn’t look like socialism at all…
Socialism is a transitional mode of production and distribution between capitalism and communism, characterized by social ownership as the principal aspect, ie rising and dominant, aspect of the economy and the working class as in control of the state. Both apply to China right now. The path of socialist construction in China utilizes a Marxist understanding of economics that sees the material basis of markets as decentralized and underdeveloped production, and the material basis of planned economy as highly developed and centralized production.
China maintains social ownership of the commanding heights of the economy which have already reached monopoly scale, and employs controlled marketization to accelerate the development of underdeveloped industry to create the basis for social ownership through development. The CPC stands at the top, a working class party with a strong basis in Marxism-Leninism with Xi Jinping Thought, and uses this dominance of the state to restrict the capitalists from forming a politically unified and coherent class that could undermine this socialist construction and derail it.
Here’s a diagram of that “stages of socialism” part you mentioned:
They are currently developing towards the intermediate stage, with plans to reach it by 2049. That means they are already socialist, just developing towards higher stages of socialism.
Cool chart, what book is that from?
Thanks! I first came across it on Prolewiki, but it’s originally from Cheng Enfu’s On the Three Stages in the Development of Socialism. I’ve been reading more of his work to understand contemporary Chinese Marxist thought.
Even if so, it’s pointless if the average worker can’t see the effect. It’s malicious compliance.
The average workers are seeing the effect of socialism. Within living memory, workers have gone from foot binding and mass famine on a regular basis to a modernized socialist society. Real wages dramatically improve year over year:
Extreme poverty and homelessness have been eradicated. Home ownership is among the highest in the world, and every day technology is made to benefit the people over corporate profits.
I think you have a caricature of China that exists in your head, but it isn’t the China that exists in reality. Had China adhered to your moralist stance on socialism, that private property is a sin, then the average worker would not have the same levels of dramatic improvements year over year. This is dogmatism, not Marxism.
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No, and I find the implication that I must be Chinese and/or paid to talk about socialism seriously to be a pointless rhetorical dodge at best, and chauvanist at worst. If you cannot meaningfully engage with the discussion and would rather insult users while adding nothing of value, then I don’t see why you don’t have a better use of your own time elsewhere.
Are you from China? Let’s see your work contract.
Jumping straight to chauvinistic racism I see
![Wikimedia Commons: survivorship bias (CC-SA 4.0 International; bandwidth stolen))(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Survivorship-bias.svg)
How on earth is that connected to the eradication of extreme poverty in China?
You can read BBC talking about it here, and see the actual process in what does it mean to eradicate absolute poverty? Alleging “survivorship bias” in response to demonstrable poverty eradication without doing any legwork to support your assertion is just naked “China bad.”
Your argument against the average citizen in China being unable to feel a massive decline in poverty is… A vague gesture towards survivorship bias? I swear to god you people just throw shit at the wall and type out whatever sticks as your argument
But isn’t China state-captialism or party-state capitalism?
https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#is-china-state-capitalist
CCP
It’s the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Wow genius you preload your comment with “banned from .ml” and then insert the “akshually we don’t get brainwashed against Coommunisim we see extremely realistic depictions of reality about China and definitely not selectively cherry picked examples or even fully made up Western propaganda”.
Try doing the mental exercise of replacing the word Communism in the comic with China
How would I know you aren’t the one cherry picking?
Maybe look at the brazen Zionist propaganda your media is pushing and ask yourself if there’s a possibility they are doing the same on other subjects.
truth nuke
My banned from .ml award
Ew
Are you trying to vaguely suggest this is language originated in right wing communities which is your reason for disgust? If so, that would imply you are mad for me using it to promote left(er) wing ideas to make it (further) unusable as dogwhistle.
I just want you to act normal. Actually talk to people like they’re people and not props for your own self-aggrandizement. Seek to understand instead of making a big performance out of pre-emptively climbing up on the cross.
You say that like acting normal but dissenting won’t get you banned for “imperialist apologia.”
You’re doing the thing. You’re opening the interaction pre-aggrieved and from a self-imposed prone position, awaiting the boot. Just relax, man. Most groups of people, anywhere in the world, are very chill if you don’t approach them aggressively, or in this case passive-aggresively.
If you’d been spanked every time you’ve been polite in/around/to a community, you’d start to grow a chip on your shoulder too.
your negative experiences here are from your deliberate prodding, cherrypicking and trolling by ignoring everything said to you.
It won’t, you haven’t been banned yet. What gets you banned is either acting like an asshole or doubling down on spreading misinformation when corrected
Who talks like that?
Look at your outfit in the mirror and take off one verbal flourish before you click post
Okay, so you think the capitalist owned media would like anarcho-communism if they only knew the difference? Or that they’d like general communism better than “stalinism” (a fictional anti-communist propaganda term, not something that has ever existed in the real world).
Well, go on then, just try telling everyone about how great (anarcho)-communism is. But get in touch with some comrades first and let them know, so they can come to literally bail you out when state repression inevitably hits you hard.
Okay, so you think the capitalist owned media would like anarcho-communism if they only knew the difference?
No? The writers may or may not know the difference, the people setting policies don’t. If you look around, you may find media coverage of lots of anarchist-adjacent events, most in an excessive “allegedly” “according to them” NPOV style that avoids explicitly saying anything positive, regardless if the event itself portrays them as “bad” or “good”. Although I am sure someone may say something positive if there’s a money incentive. In fact, I vaguely recall reading an article somewhere about the mostly-anarchist “resistance committee” in Ukraine’s army, it was mostly good things, probably since the topic of Ukraine became uncontroversial enough that even the investors would want it to be positive (I support Ukraine in the situation and am myself there btw).
“stalinism” (a fictional anti-communist propaganda term, not something that has ever existed in the real world)
Lots of people are tired of explaining this to .mls, but here’s the third sentence into the English Wikipedia article “Marxism-Leninism”:
It was developed in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin
Here’s a quote from RationalWiki:
Marxism-Leninism is the communist ideology created by Joseph Stalin, according to his own interpretation of Marxism and Leninism. Marxism-Leninism advocates for a centrally planned economy with a one-party socialist state and brutal repression of anything deemed “bourgeois” or “counter-revolutionary”, which, for virtually all Marxist-Leninist leaders, includes anyone or anything they don’t like.
Meanwhile, the first sentence into the English Wikipedia article “Stalinism”:
Stalinism (Russian: сталинизм) is the totalitarian[1][2][3] means of governing and Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1927 to 1953 by General Secretary of The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin and in Soviet satellite states between 1944 and 1953.
So, in dumbed down terms, one is what is proposed (in doublespeak) and the other is the de-facto result. You may consider them the same, you may consider one “other than what is usually portrayed” or whatever, but saying it doesn’t exist by definition makes no sense.
{…} just try telling everyone about how great (anarcho)-communism is. But get in touch with some comrades first and let them know, so they can come to literally bail you out when state repression inevitably hits you hard.
Well, didn’t I already mention where I am from and organizations like the Resistance Committee? Short story is that my government is siding with the lib-left for the time being (and wise versa). And my opsec is unbelievably, irreversibly fucked, which is a separate, personal issue; not currently relevant. Also, there’s another example of such co-existence that goes directly against your argument, which is Freetown Christiania making tourist money for Denmark.
Everyone Marxist-Leninist knows Marxism-Leninism was synthesized by Stalin. The point being made that “Stalinism does not exist” is that Stalin’s contributions to Marxism-Leninism are minor compared to the work of Marx and Lenin. Referring to the real ideology of Marxism-Leninism as “Stalinism” is meant to make the former seem scary by associating it with the popular bourgeois mythos surrounding the figure of Stalin himself, what Losurdo calls his “black legend.”
Let’s break down Rationalwiki’s explanation:
Marxism-Leninism is the communist ideology created by Joseph Stalin, according to his own interpretation of Marxism and Leninism.
This is correct. The implication here is that Stalin may have doctored Marxism and/or Leninism if we are being uncharitable or may have misinterpreted if we are being charitable, but the basic fact is that Marxism-Leninism is the synthesis of Marxism and Leninism as created by Stalin, with little input from himself in the matter comparatively.
Marxism-Leninism advocates for a centrally planned economy
This is basic Marxism, not an invention of Stalin.
with a one-party socialist state
This is basic Leninism, not an invention of Stalin.
and brutal repression of anything deemed “bourgeois” or “counter-revolutionary”,
This is basic Marxism and basic Leninism, doctored in scary words. From the time of Marx it was understood that the proletariat must use its own dictatorship against the bourgeoisie and their collaborators to cement the gains of socialism and eradicate class society, as is their historical role. This is not an invention of Stalin.
which, for virtually all Marxist-Leninist leaders, includes anyone or anything they don’t like.
This is nonsense, and notably not backed up at all by example but instead relies on the gut reaction of anti-communism in the reader to fill in the blanks with their own imagination. It’s intellectual dishonesty, and relies on that same black legend from before.
Wikipedia at least tries to pretend “Stalinism” refers to the actual policies of Stalin during his era of leadership, which I can at least accept, but it also similarly doctors it up in scary words like “totalitarian,” without identifying anything about that.
Wikipedia {…} also similarly doctors it up in scary words like “totalitarian,” without identifying anything about that.
Okay… While I don’t always agree with Wikipedia ('s policies), go ahead, try editing that out and seeing what the community says about that.
Since “Totalitarianism” is a word with deeply emotional baggage, let’s see how Wikipedia defines it, and measure it up against Marxism-Leninism and “Stalinism.”
In short, any socialist system that has a unitary form of government, no matter how democratic, is “totalitarian.” The additional baggage of propaganda and the use of the word “dictator” are also there to beef this up in scary terms, but at face value any socialist system with a unitary form of government would be totalitarian by this. We will investigate the term dictator later, for now let’s continue:
Two versions of the World War II U.S. propaganda poster “Your Lot in a Totalitarian State” depicting a process of compulsory sham election which took place in totalitarian states, the flags of which – Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy[a] and the Soviet Union – are presented below. In the version on the right, produced after Operation Barbarossa, the flag of the Soviet Union (Allied member) is replaced with that of the Empire of Japan[b] (Axis member), which is not always regarded as totalitarian by Western scholars.[1] In regards to the USSR, the label has also received some criticism.[2][3]
Interesting! Wikipedia even acknowledges that labeling the USSR as “totalitarian” is criticized! Let’s continue a bit further, for the final paragraphs:
A totalitarian government uses ideology to control most aspects of human life, such as the political economy of the country, the system of education, the arts and sciences, and the private morality of its citizens.[5] In the exercise of power, the difference between a totalitarian government and an authoritarian government is one of degree. Whereas totalitarianism features a charismatic dictator and a fixed worldview, authoritarianism only features a dictator who holds power for the sake of holding power. The authoritarian dictator is supported, either jointly or individually, by a military junta and by the socio-economic elites who are the ruling class of the country.[6]
So, a socialist society with a unified ideology like Marxism-Leninism, and the working class as the rulers of society, is “totalitarian.” It’s doctored with scary language, but easily applies to any socialist state with a cohesive worldview. Continuing:
The word totalitarian was first used in the early 1920s to describe the Italian Fascist government.[7][8] The term totalitarianism gained wider usage in politics of the interwar period; in the early years of the Cold War, it arose from comparison of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin to Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler as a theoretical concept of Western political science. The term achieved hegemony in explaining the nature of Fascist and Communist states, and later entered the Western historiography of Communism, the Soviet Union and the Russian Revolution; in the 21st century, it became applied to Islamist movements and their governments. The concept of totalitarianism has been challenged and criticized by some historians of Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR. While the two states are defined as exemplary cases of totalitarianism, these historians argue that the main characteristics of the concept – total control over society, total mobilization of the masses, and a monolithic centralized character of the government – were never achieved by the dictatorships called totalitarian. To support this claim, the historians argue that the political structures of these states were disorganized and chaotic, and that despite the supposed external similarities between Nazism and Stalinism, their internal logic and structure were substantially different. The applicability of the concept to Islamism has also been criticized.[7][9][10]
Now we get to the juice! The word “Totalitarianism” arose to equate the Nazis and the Communists as “twin evils” with “twin devils!” The word itself arose to discredit communism during the cold war! The truth is that the communists uplifted the working class and oppressed the bourgeoisie, while the Nazis uplifted the capitalist class and oppressed the working classes. Superficial similarities are used to equate the entire systems with foundational opposition! This is a part of Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization. Onto how Wikipedia identifies dictators, to complete this foray:
Considering that Wikipedia considers unitary socialist governments, no matter how democratic, to be “totalitarian,” they therefore use this to determine the leaders must be “dictators,” no matter the democratic process of selection. Moving on:
20th-century leaders typically described as dictators (from left to right and top to bottom): Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union; Adolf Hitler of Germany; Augusto Pinochet of Chile; Mao Zedong of China; Benito Mussolini of Italy; and Kim Il Sung of North Korea
If it wasn’t obvious before, we again return to the “twin evils, twin devils” comparisons meant to directly equate fascism with communism! It cannot be more clear, this is an attempt to equate any existing socialism with fascism. Continuing:
Dictatorships are often characterised by some of the following: suspension of elections and civil liberties; proclamation of a state of emergency; rule by decree; repression of political opponents; not abiding by the procedures of the rule of law; and the existence of a cult of personality centered on the leader. Dictatorships are often one-party or dominant-party states.[4][5] A wide variety of leaders throughout history have been described as dictators.[6]
More baggage and fearmongering onto the word. Given the careful, liberal construction of definitions, it’s clear that the only purpose on the Wikipedia entry for “Stalinism” is to contribute to the blanket equating of communism with fascism as twin evils, and liberalism as synonymous with democracy, even though socialist societies with communist governments have been more democratic than liberal democracies, and liberal democracies have far more in common with fascism than fascism with communism.
Wikipedia uses Zbigniew Brzezinski as a neutral source on communism.
They’ll say all the same things we hear from the most clueless capitalist subjects, day in, day out. They will firehose their recieved propagands into the gap.
Freetown Christiania??? You’re fucking kidding me, right? The bourgeois suburb full of PMC types that work closely together with Copenhagens police in order to scare away the last vestiges of their squatter history so they can gentrify yet another tourist-trap shopping street? There is nothing anarchist about Christiania and if there was then that would be a massive indictment of anarchism. It’s a glorified HOA that, due to its history, did not pay property taxes for a good while. When a bunch of squatters tried to pull the same stunt with Søminen that was pulled in Christiania, then that place was shut down due to complaints from… The bougie fucks at Christiania. Same goes for the pirate harbor.
The only thing Christiania is a good example of is how the western lefts lack of a disciplined ideological guiding line led to a bourgeois class that clothes itself in the aesthetics of revolution.
Christiania sux
Sorry, that may or may not be true, but my argument was that the media and bougie may, in fact, allow hired journalists to promote anarcho-communism at least to some extent when there’s a money incentive. Which has nothing to do with what they think of it (not much positive), if they know the difference (no), or if the people consuming the media may.
Right and my argument is that there is nothing anarcho-communist about Christiania, which I also wrote out quite explicitly. “The media” or “hired journalists” likewise do not promote anything anarcho-communist about Christiania. That is such a vague and pointless statement however, and even if the opposite were true then that would be in the interest of the bourgoisie since “Christiania sux” and it is thus not something to copy. Promoting it as some cool neat little ancom thing would in fact be detrimental to any leftist movement, since it is not something one should seek to replicate.
So you do agree that question was bullshit from the start? The media one. As for oppression, the borgies will always find a way to either monetize something and/or fight it, my point was, and I am in only the former right now.
EDIT: before anyone even replies, the ideological passive monetizing of mine is in what I believe to be the lesser evil anyway right now, in the fight of two borgies. There’s no way forward to the left around here while they are having fun in this way.
No it seems like a pretty fair question and one you failed to answer
Hahahah wow ok
true
I mean… Compare the outccomes of west and east germany… History isn’t in communism’s favor, at all…
Comparing west and east Germany, eastern Germans enjoyed more secure lives with better safety nets, and were strapped for luxuries because the Soviet Union sought reparations for World War II. The western side was not de-Nazified like the eastern side was, and was flooded with cash and NATO armaments from the US Empire to serve as a foothold against the socialist bloc.
Lmao what a dumbass statement.
- East Germany was not communist, there has never been a nation even claiming to be communist. East Germany was socialist
- Among the people who lived in the GDR there is general agreement life was better back then
- You have plenty of examples of succesful socialist nations, like China, Cuba, Vietnam and more
- East Germanys downfall came with the Union of the two nations when capitalists made up a bunch of non-existent debt in order to buy state infrastructure for cheap
- Read “Stasi state or socialist paradise” instead of hallucinating more half-remembered propaganda from your childhood indoctrination.
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China and Vietnam are democratic countries that elect delegates from councils to represent their constituents.
America arms over 80% of dictatorship globally, so it would seem we are objectively the least democratic nation in the world.
“Democracy” to us has always been a selective privilege enjoyed on the backs of the oppressed. It’s only a cudgel we weaponize to steal natural resources.
And this didn’t start with Trump.
You’re just making shit up now. Well, you were before as well, but you’re also doing it now.
China and Vietnam are both democracies. Even if they did not have elections, which they do, they would not be dictatorships, since power is not consolidated with one individual. The executive in China is in fact far less powerful than the executive in the US, for example. I don’t know much about the political institutions of the rest of SEA, but I doubt you do either.
I would love to live in China. Would be nice to experience competent governance and institutions that actually exist to serve the people.
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Try reading the pages you’re linking. The dictatorship of the proletariat means democracy for workers, no democracy for capitalists. It means the class of the proletariat makes up the dictator of society, not an individual dictator. Wikipedia literally states this in the first paragraph:
People’s democratic dictatorship is a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) term to describe the state system of the People’s Republic of China. The premise of the people’s democratic dictatorship is that it is led by the working class, based on the alliance of workers and peasants, and the system exercises democracy over the people who constitute the vast majority of the national population, while perceived hostile elements are subject to dictatorship.[1] The CCP and state represent and act on behalf of the people, but in the preservation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and possess and may use coercive powers against perceived reactionary forces.[2]
As for Xinjiang, see Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation.
Damn I seem to have triggered all the Chinese fanboys with this
Me when I say something wrong and people try to educate me: lol trigurd tha libruls
They literally define themselves as a dictatorship of the proletariat, idk what to tell y’all
Holy shit lmao, this might be the funniest thing a halfwit like you could write. What a massive tell. I could not imagine ever showing my ass like this, that might be the dumbest thing Ive ever seen. I can’t even think of an analogy that would help you understand how fucking stupid the thing you wrote is. Please do some basic reading on marxism before you open your mouth on the subject next time. By your own logic literally every country is a dictatorship https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dictatorship_of_the_bourgeoisie
Go back to reddit.
What’s the problem? I literally just shared sources? Or am I not allowed to partake in this specific echo chamber?
you have done what every shitlib has done every time; linking to wikipedia articles without any specification.
You didn’t even read the articles, you just googled this shit and called it a day.
Read the articles you shared you immense oaf
No, it’s because you’re stupid and clearly lack most kinds of comprehension. Tell me, do you hold your breath when you type?
That’s what my middle school history teacher said, who was also my gym coach. 🤡
Why should it matter which political philosophy a policy comes from? If a policy optimizes the HDI, GDP PPP, and environmental impact then we should implement it. If it fails to provide better outcomes then why continue to implement it?
You have to understand how to view the world and how it works to figure these things out effectively and in a timely manner.
There’s 8+ billion people and these governments are decades to millenia old. We definitely have the ability to test and see if we wanted. Most of the time though we let society run on pure unadulterated emotions without any care for outcomes.
That’s myopic. China, for example, takes a scientific approach to development through a Marxist-Leninist framework.
The question will always be if policies from a different political philosophy or one not yet invented or otherwise canonized are more optimal. We shouldn’t be enslaved by a particular way of thinking aka it is / isn’t in this political philosophy therefore it will / will not work / be better
Nobody is saying all answers have been discovered, you’re confusing political philosophy as a world outlook with a particular formula and set of definite conditions. These aren’t the same thing at all, Marxism-Leninism argues against set formula.
That is the basis of marxism in a nutshell. It is a scientific framework to observe society and derive conclusions. it is not a set in stone fixed ideology. All real existing socialist projects were and are quite different in practice. And there is a ton of disagreements among leftists about the details. The fundamental common idea is just to create a society that works in the interest of the 99% instead of being controlled by a small capitalist class. How to go about this in detail must change over time since society and the world around us changes all the time. But policies must always be derived from empirical data and the scientific process.
Right now most policies in capitalist countries are created through a very chaotic and mostly unguided process involving competing capitalist interests and the occasional opposing social movements.
Can you link to any primary materials ideally from Marx outlining the use of the scientific method for political means? There’s all sorts of a minority controlling a majority that aren’t capitalistic, monarchy being the classic alongside dictatorships and oligarchies with varying economic structures.
Engels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is enormously helpful for this.
You know how some physics experiments are difficult because of shit like particles having indeterminacy, behaving differently when observed and interference from other particles making them interact in unpredictable ways? Well, people are even worse.
That said, geopolitics is a giant live experiment, you need only pay attention and analyse. If you come up with a good enough model of undertanding, you can predict what is the likely the best course of action before taking them.
It’s a live experiment. We’re always going to be doing something and we will at least have data for that. Like Portugal’s decriminalization of drugs has shown to be far more effective than the US war on drugs in decreasing drug use.
Exactly. But knowing what worked for Portugal is just one clue. It’s also important to have an understanding of why it worked, identifying other factors that could have contributed, ways the policy can be improved, how effective it would be if implemented in vastly different countries ways to adapt policies to those countries, and even expand the concept beyond drugs.
Imagine a country is going through terrible times and decides to implement some radical austerity measures, sell public companies, defund public services, do all the stuff the IMF loves. Or maybe the opposite, the country nationalizes everything and expels all foreign companies. Let’s say a decade or two later the country starts really prospering. It would be unwise to assume this is just universal without proper understanding the mechanics of what happened.
why I can’t see the current iteration of Democracy to be of value for the future. Humans value knee jerk responses too much even if iys to the dentriment of the ir foot flying off.
An educated society is just too improbable when the IQ of the average person is on a range tather than a fixed variable.__
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Life expectancy doubled in China under Mao. Footbinding was ended, industrialization rapidly expanded, and famine was permanently ended. China was a semi-feudal backwater before the communists took charge and began restoring the sovereignty of China.
For anyone curious, they are, according to themselves, a Taiwanese capitalist:
I didn’t know what I wanted to do until I was well in my 30s. Prior to that, I worked at a very big retail bank and worked from a teller to a regional manager with over 220 stores under me.
You know what. I fucking hated every moment of that job.
I quit after my mom passed and they gave me 2 weeks off and then I was back into the grind.
I took 1 year off and decided to go into tech. The one place I enjoyed doing on my spare time.
I got my first tech job at 36. And since then have owned my own company and worked for big corporate companies.
You sorta have to try things and hate things before you know what you want.
It makes perfect, logical sense for OP whose background is in finance and has owned a business to despise socialism. This is their bias.
Well, then it’s settled!
Communism killed a few members of your family, while capitalism kills half a million people every year (lowest possible estimate).
Clearly capitalism is the best we’ve got.
Oh no did somebody take away your egg monopoly?
Yeah? And I’m the Queen of Spain. Anything is possible when you just make shit up.
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Even Wikipedia, which is biased towards western liberalism, disagrees with you:
Deaths by famine
The exact number of deaths by famine is difficult to determine, and estimates range from 15 million to 55 million people.[4][93][94] Because of the uncertainties which are involved in estimating the number of deaths which were caused by the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the ensuing famine and because of the uncertainties which are involved in estimating the numbers of deaths which were caused by other famines, it is difficult to compare the severity of different famines. If an estimate of 30 million deaths is accepted, the failure of the Great Leap Forward caused the deadliest famine in the history of China, and it also caused the deadliest famine in human history.[95][96] This extremely high loss of human lives was partially caused by China’s large population. To put things into absolute and relative numerical perspective: in the Great Irish Famine, approximately 1 million people[97] out of a total population of 8 million people died, or 12.5% of Ireland’s entire population. If approximately 23 million people out of a total population of 650 million people died during the Great Chinese Famine, the percentage would be 3.5%.[4] Hence, the famine during the Great Leap Forward had the highest absolute death toll, though not the highest relative (percentage) one.
40-70 million
15-55 million
This actually corroborates john_save_america’s comment, because the ranges overlap.
The ranges overlap, but no scholar actually believes the 70 million number, and actual evidence backs numbers closer to 15 million. The history of famines in China is heavily politicized in the west to discredit socialism.
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Margolin is one of the crank historians caught making up numbers in the Black Book of Communism, which famously included non-births as deaths, as well as Nazis killed during World War II as “victims of communism.” Liberalism only cares about the freedom of private property and the capitalist class, workers be damned and enslaved.
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Your author is a propagandist with bad data, that’s the point. You referenced a contributor caught lying.
What the fuck does that have to do with my source? I didn’t cite the Black Book of Communism.
Because your source was caught making up claims in it?
China wasn’t Communist
China has been socialist since 1949.
how come it has billionaires then
Because it has private property in the marketized sectors of the economy. The CPC takes a Marxist view of economics that sees markets as progressive with respect to decentralized, underdeveloped production, and regressive with respect to large scale production. The commanding heights of the economy are overwhelmingly socially owned, while developing sectors are marketized to accelerate the process of socialization, which speeds up the effective rate of collectivization.
its just the “for progress” excuse.
You don’t need billionaires or exploitation of workers for progress
You don’t need them for progress, sure, but marketizing underdeveloped sectors sure benefits workers more than dogmatically treating planned economy as the most effective in all cases at all levels of development. China already tried your approach under the Gang of Four, and this was seen as a misstep.
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Accusing communists of not reading books is very funny. We’re like the only ones that read books.
The last time I pressed a lib on recommending theory, they just said, “a text book” lmao.
Does Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners count, or is it too commie?
Definitely too commie for them. But the question isn’t whether lib theory exists, but whether they actually read it.
The vast majority of liberals get their ideas passively, from cultural hegemony. They don’t read books on politics because they think they already have all the answers, that it’s all simple and obvious. Just support “freedom” and oppose “authoritarianism,” and there’s no need to actually deconstruct and examine those concepts, because it’s “obvious” what they mean.
It’s like, hell, I’ve even read shit by Giovanni Gentile, who laid out the ideological foundations of fascism, in the hope of finding a coherent formation of that ideology for the sake of knowing the enemy. But I did so knowing that actual fascists would never read that nerd shit. What they actually engage with are conspiracy theories, rage bait, incoherent rants, shit like that. It’s the same way, we can seek out liberal theory to try to grasp some insight of the latent assumptions liberals are operating under, but it’s only so useful when they themselves don’t read it, when they aren’t even consciously aware of those assumptions.
If you try to ask them something that exposes a hole in their ideology, they’ll just ignore it, refuse to answer, or change the subject. They never step back and actually think about what they believe. It’s not something they’re interested in. Instead, they’re immersed in the soup of current events, just reacting to the current thing, and their opinions are formed around a combination of ideas absorbed from cultural hegemony, and what the news tells them to think about them.
Oh fully agreed! Common sense is just ruling class ideology, and this applies to capitalism and socialism alike.
I’ve read quite a few books on communist history, and China is a particular area of interest for me given that they are the biggest currently-standing socialist country with the longest history of socialism. Do you have any recommendations? For what it’s worth, equating communists to the Nazis is a form of Holocaust trivialization, and is a core component of Double Genocide Theory. I’m not sure I put much stake in the views of someone that lets their hatred of communism trivialize the Holocaust, but I’m always interested in exploring dissenting views, if only to reinforce or sharpen my own existing views.
Sorry, I like to look at empirical evidence instead of random anecdotes shat out online. Empirically:
- The Chinese government has one of the highest approval ratings worldwide
- The Chinese people have immense trust in their democracy
- The CPC has overseen massive improvements in QoL, life expectancy, literacy, and basically all measures of development
- The CPC has overseen the uplifting of hundreds of millions out of poverty
Of course you will never engage with these facts because they conflict with the propaganda that has indoctrinated you from birth. You will never read a book or jump through hoops to do any research on your own, you will instead gladly believe every tale told to you about the horrible orient. You are no better than a nazi who fervently bays for another holocaust.
yeah ok man not like Denmark has a history of reprehensible shit like repressing the inuit on Greenland with sterilization and kidnapping children. A lot of Danish people get really possessive with Greenland whenever the locals want independence and it’s gross.
Not to mention how Denmark is a big supporter of “Israel” and love being a spy network against other European countries for the CIA.
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The truth is that life expectancy doubled in China under Mao. Anyone saying life was made worse by the communists is either extremely ignorant, or purely looking at it from the perspective of the former ruling class.
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Margolin is one of the crank historians caught making up numbers in the Black Book of Communism, which famously included non-births as deaths, as well as Nazis killed during World War II as “victims of communism.” The benefits of socialism are immediately obvious when looking at the numbers:
Life expectancy from birth doubled under Mao, and the country was turned from a semi-feudal backwater ex-colony into a rising power.
its funny that all the life expectancies shot up in the 1940s, as thats when penicillin went into mass production and was widely implemented
Not evenly. China was emerging from civil war and semi-feudalism in 1949, it had no way to get mass amounts of insulin nor produce them until later. Addressing economic problems improved access to necessities for the majority of society.
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Then why didn’t life expectancy increase under the ROC?
Yes, any country can reap large benefits from industrialization and modern medicine, regardless of the economic system. But communists were the only major faction in China pushing for those things. Communists always push for those things when they aren’t present, while for capitalists the record is much more spotty.
It was the communists that saw life expectancy dramatically rise as to what came before. You seem to have pivoted from the question of whether or not socialism is good to whether or not the same benefits could have been made without socialism, or in other words you have conceded that socialism was a positive.
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Depends on what you mean by communism, if you mean single party rule with a near totalitarian dictator at the helm then that is bad, but if you mean socialist policies that put workers well being at the forefront of government policy then that is good.
Basically, marx good, lenin badNo part of Leninism, in theory or practice, supports the idea of a single, near-totalitarian dictator. The term “dictatorship of the proletariat” originates in the era of Marx, and refers not to any individual dictator, but the working class itself as the rulers, makers, and dictators of society. The heads of state in socialist countries have all been selected with democratic processes, be they approval votes, votes based on elected delegates, etc. The heads of state have not had absolute power either, but instead often have less power than, say, the US head of state.
The necessity of a single party is because socialism is, in effect, a unitary system meant to represent a single class, the working class. Democratic centralism does not mean the absence of democracy, but the absence of organized factionalism and opposition within the socialist system. The necessity of a single system was already present with Marx, the advance of the vanguard path to socialism by Lenin was made based on Marxist understandings of class and the state.
If you believe Lenin is bad, then thinking Marx was good is hypocritical. Your issues with Lenin are based on a combination of sanitizing the views of Marx and accepting bourgeois misdirection about existing socialism as fact. If you truly believe Lenin was bad, then Marxism itself should also be seen as bad.
Ok, then marx bad too, single party rule is a horrible idea that consolidates power in a new class if elites.
Your’e just trading capitalist robber barrons for party leaders, it’s the same thing, different name.
Rule of law should derive from mandate from he masses, not a small group of party officials or powerful politically aspiring billionaires.
Single party rule is bad, two party rule is bad, the people should be represented by an amalgam of many varying policy views and have the ability to quickly remove politicians who fail to represent the people effectively.
That’s not how class works, or the state. Class is not merely a level of power, but a social relationship, to ownership of the means of production and distribution. In any given class society, this distributes society into two broad classes, with various subcategories. The state is a result of this class struggle, and represents the ruling class of society, based on which class owns the commanding heights of the economy.
In socialism, the commanding heights are socially owned. Administrators do not have unique relations of ownership, but instead occupy socially necessary roles for the continuation of advancing production and distribution. In such a unified system, competing political parties do not at all prevent corruption, they enable it and accelerate it. The idea that decentralized competition in the political sphere is made to support a collectivized system is a bourgeois worldview of politics that sees the mechanisms of capitalism as eternal, rather than specific.
Contrasting with capitalism, the competition in the political sphere is the competition of the ruling class, which does not seek collectivization but instead a bigger individual slice of the pie. Where socialist administrators seek further collectivization and unification, capitalist administrators represent this or that wing of the capitalist class, which all fights in unity to preserve private property, and against each other for a bigger slice of the pie.
Socialist political parties are organizations of the most advanced of the working class politically. The most active, the most trained, the most developed. This does not make them a distinct class, this is a bourgeois view of class. Instead, it makes them occupy the social role of “proletarian intellectual” to borrow from Gramsci, which isn’t a statement on intelligence at scale, but the social role they play in determining and shaping the thought of the entire proletariat as a class.
How do you envision socialism, with multiple political parties, not devolving into factionalism and breaking-up of society in a manner that allows the bourgeoisie to resurge?
giving one group of people a different level of power to influence policy than another creates a class, to pretend like there wasn’t nepotism or quid pro quo in the soviet union is to ignore the reality of human behavior and history.
as we see with systems with one political ideology, including the american capitalist system, a positive feedback loop commonly occurs that accelerates suffering, see the great famine in China, and the american healthcare system today. these systems appear because the ruling class ingrains itself into power and controls cultural ideas through propaganda. for example, the american anti-communist/anti-socialist propaganda that this meme references. communism and socialism are not the boogey-men that the capitalist politicians and billionaires want the american people to think they are. if we had a substantial communist party and socialist party in congress, this propaganda would be seen as ridiculous by most americans, because they would see that good that these political ideas do because they would have examples of it on the daily.
I would propose a lottery: firstly, a mandatory, standardized civics course for all citizens that teaches varying political theories and views and their historical contexts.
all voting age citizens who have passed their civics curriculum would be eligible to hold office in the city/county/district/state they live in. a percentage (for sake of argument let’s say 1% of the constituency) of individuals would be selected, once selected they would present their policy platform. a ranked choice vote is held, the selected individuals are ranked by the voting age citizens and one is elected to office (run-offs would be held like any ranked choice election) the officer would serve a term of (for sake of argument let’s say one year), at the end of which a vote-to-keep is held where their constituency would have one checkbox per office again, a checked box is a vote-to-keep their officer in their seat. if they do not receive a number of votes (lets say for purpose of argument 50%) they are removed and can never hold office again and a new lottery is held to select a new officer from the pool of eligible individuals.
a vote-of-no-confidence would also be available to the people to remove officers at anytime that a petition for such passes (for sake of argument lets say the petition requires 25% of the constituency) (for sake of argument let’s say 50% passes)
to account for competency, officers who have retained their office would be granted another ballet in the hat so-to-speak to increase their odds of attaining higher office and increasing overall competency in the electorate.
benefits: this would create a more accurate representative government as the lottery effectively selects a sample of the electorate to hold office, meaning class divisions and personal backgrounds within the population are equally represented in the halls of government. this puts the people directly in the hands of power, the lottery nearly removes any form of nepotism as people are selected at random, not based on who they know or how much money they have. (nepotism within the halls of government would still happen as officers work together in quid pro quo dealings but officers who fail to improve the lives of their constituency would be easily removed thanks to the vote-of-no-confidence) and as the system of democracy is based on coalitions and compromises, this is expected behavior.
this system nearly removes party politics from everyday people’s lives. no more months long political campaigns with misinformation, no more special interested packing races with money. this would greatly increase the prevalence of new political ideas as more people from more varying backgrounds would have access to power, as increasing the amount of legislation designed to directly improve the lives of the largest demographics in the country.
what if someone doesn’t want to do the job? they can elect to avoid the lottery for any reason, we are selecting from a pool of nearly the entire population of the country, we have plenty of willing participants. this is also why a vote-of-no-confidence can work, plenty of competition for the job.
the vote-to-keep, or dead-man election as I like to call it creates a system where an officer can only maintain power by voter enthusiasm, you as a voter have to feel empowered to go and vote for your representative, a corrupt politician who is doing nothing for his constituents would not last long under a dead-man election system.
the shear size of the electable, the vote-of-no-confidence, and the simplicity of the vote-to-keep creates real political consequences for officers who do a bad job, unlike the single party or two party system, officers in my system will never hold office again if they are removed from power. this would not eliminate corruption, but it would greatly deter it and any corruption that exists would not last long.
why the lottery? to more accurately reflect the demography of the electorate and to select individuals who might otherwise never hold office to put more political ideas and lived experiences in the halls of government particularly those of backgrounds we rarely see in government today. and to create an expectation that governing power is all of our responsibility and it has real consequences for our daily lives.
Right off the bat, you are already ignoring what I said. I never said nepotism and corrpution did not exist in the USSR. I said that power is not class, class is a social relation to ownership of the means of production. Managerial workers are not their own class, just like plumbers are not their own class. You are confusing a type of labor for a relation to ownership, and thus conflate the two into class.
Your next example is again, confusing the nature of the state. Socialism and communism cannot be brought about by a socialist party winning electorally and replacing the state bit by bit into a socialist one via policy. There is no generic “state,” there are capitalist states, socialist states, etc, and one state is broken and a new one takes its place through revolution alone.
As for replacing socialist democracy and scientific, planned organization with random lottery, this is a recipe for disaster. A truly democratic society is one where the working class as a whole is organized and capable of electing the best among themselves to higher organs, that can prove themselves through practice to their constituents. This can be organized via a single political party, that being the organization of the most politically developed of the working class.
You are explicitly rejecting a competency-based, democratic selection process with one that results in chaos and an easy-to-manipulate state that the bourgeoisie can overturn incredibly easily. This chaos is the foundation by which the bourgeoisie can bring about their own persistence.
In any case, you are getting into the weeds about a specific form of electoral democracy, while entirely ignoring the nature of class and the state. By your own definitions, you would be creating what you believe to be a ruling class. This is why it’s important to actually understand the theory and history you are trying to critique, because all you have done thus far is wax poetic about lottery-based elections while vulgarizing class and the nature of the state.
your’e the one saying ‘power is not class’ I disagree, I say dividing people by the power they have inherently creates classes, which is why I suggest a lottery to divide that power equally among the demographic makeup of a nation. how are plumbers not a class if they control the means that create and maintain the plumbing industry? its all still a class. I propose a system that puts a percentage of plumbers into the halls of government equal to their percentage in the population. same with scientists, and psychologists, and doctors, and electricians, and mechanics, and fry cooks, and teachers, and cashiers, etc. the
government should be made up of people. I reject the idea that certain groups of people among us are more fit to govern, particularly when that system removes demographics of largely under-represented groups and replaces it with more affluent individuals.
revolutions are a last resort, the people deserve a means to change their government without violence.
there is no generic state? only socialist and capitalist? have you heard of mixed economies?
“A truly democratic society is one where the working class as a whole is organized and capable of electing the best among themselves to higher organs,”
- who decides who is the best among you? the party leaders already in power according to single party rule. that is why I propose a ranked choice vote of those individuals selected from the lottery based on their policy proposals.
“You are explicitly rejecting a competency-based”
- no, I am explicitly rejecting the idea that the party in power is selecting the most competent. rather they are picking their friends and family or who ever can pay more in money or quid pro quo.
my electoral process removes money and nepotism from the equation by selecting individuals first from the general population, then allowing them to come up with policy proposals then allowing their constituents to elect them in a ranked choice vote. no campaigns means no campaign finance, no special interested counter funding candidates, no political parties platforming their insiders.
persons selected from the lottery will post their policy proposals on the same election website as every other candidate, debates will be organized by the election office and all candidates would be present.
" This can be organized via a single political party, that being the organization of the most politically developed of the working class."
- who decides who is the most politically developed of the working class? the party, thus nepotism, not a mandate of the masses
The reason I am telling you that classes are not simply any way we can categorize people but instead have specific relations to ownership of the means of production and distribution is because I am explicitly agreeing with Marx that the history of class society is the history of successive societies of 2 broad classes in conflict, defined by their relationship to ownership of the means of production and distribution.
Plumbers are not a class. Managers are not a class. Both are workers, and share the same relation to ownership of the means of production. Power is not the enemy, the system that divides us based on ownership is.
The rest of your comment is a ridiculous strawman of a party that is unaccountable and that dominates all. Nowhere in socialist history has this happened in practice or in theory. The working class as a whole decides who should be in the party and government. The party is a subset of the working class, with the same social relations to the means of production and distribution. You are arguing against a caricature.
As for revolution, it’s the only way to change a state historically.
As for “mixed economies,” all economies are “mixed” today. What separates them is their principal aspect, and the class in control of the state.
I propose a system that puts a percentage of plumbers into the halls of government equal to their percentage in the population. same with scientists, and psychologists, and doctors, and electricians, and mechanics, and fry cooks, and teachers, and cashiers, etc.
How do elections work in Vietnam?
What you describe of people from every profession being involved in government is essentially how the Vietnam Fatherland Front works. It’s composed of 44 member organizations, primarily unions, a broad cross section of society that anyone can easily be a part of, and they conduct oversight over Vietnam’s elections. The actual administration of the government is done by elected officials, who do not have to be members of the Communist Party, or the Fatherland Front. It’s similar to what you proposed, except more democratic, since the cross section of society that makes up the Fatherland Front only oversees the elections, while policy is decided through the elections themselves. Even if you claim that the Fatherland Front secretly manipulates the outcomes, the system you’re proposing seems to be one where something like the Fatherland Front would rule outright. The only thing missing is the element of randomness, which only makes the people making decisions less accountable and leaves the possibility of someone who’s views don’t represent what the people want getting into power.
Maybe you could think about it like that: capitalists are the class that, in order to exist, is forced to continuously take capital and invest it to make profit or they are outcompeted by other capitalists. It’s not that they are all evil or “corrupted by power”, they are not just incentiveized, but forced to act in destructive ways: steal surplus value from workers, increase exploitation above what people can take, chase profits on an exponentially expanding mass of capital in a finite world destroying the planet, cause a crisis about every seven years, cannibalize their own state and infrastructure that they rely on for short term profit, etc.
They inevitably run into these contradictions due to living on a finite planet and having to put individual interests above all else while the modern economies distribution of work and global value chains absolutely require working together.
What you are worried about is real too in a way, but it’s not a class. In a socialist state, a managerial part of the working class is not forced by competition to continuously pursue personal gain, but some of them still might become corrupt and do so anyway. At that point, they have betrayed the working class and they might even do so in favor of real capitalists domestic or abroad who haven’t yet completely disappeared as a class. It’s a possible problem, but other than the class conflict between workers and capital, it’s not inevitably the dominating principle of society.
Rather than worrying about a hypothetical future betrayal of fellow workers in thriving and prospering China, we should focus on how many western workers have already often betrayed the rest of the global working class and continue to do so by supporting terrible imperialist wars, mostly in turn for cheap goods at Walmart.
Republicans* in a nutshell.
And also other liberals.
Old Guard/corporate liberals, maybe.
Otherwise known as the big, historic players in the DNC.
“Liberal” is a pretty wide net that includes some people that fit your description and some people that do not.
Can you name one pro-communism liberal?
EDIT: I will respond with one of either “that’s not a liberal” or “they’re not in favor of communism”
What flavor of “communism?” I’ve been told various definitions.
For starters, are you the type to say communism and socialism are synonyms? If so, then I’d point to AOC/Bernie/etc. of the DSA.
Neither Bernie nor AOC are pro-communism.
Also communism is not socialism.
So you’re just going to side-step the question?
I guess I’ll continue to soap-box for those who are still reading and not hostile (none, by the looks of the votes) then:
I used to think “communism” was not the same as “socialism” until I was told by a communist (I think on lemmy.ml? Maybe it was Twitch?) that Karl Marx and other communist or socialist academics technically never made an academic distinction between the two.
My perception before that date was that “socialism” is kinda like a direction on a continuum (the opposite direction from “capitalism,” more or less, but more strictly speaking the opposite of “individualism” or “selfishness”), while “communism” was the destination, typically explained as an anarchist/stateless society resembling ancient societies who had literally no form of measuring trade discrepancies (e.g. currency), and would just give what extra goods they produced freely to those they believed needed it and vice versa, i.e. the Marxian mantra of “from those based on their ability, to those based on their need.”
That’s just paraphrasing off the cuff of my former understanding until I was told otherwise by someone who very much seemed to be much more educated on the topic, and you’re free to correct me/them at any point.
… or you could just dodge the discussion again.
Marx made the distinction between “lower-stage” and “higher-stage” communism. Marxists since Marx have clarified this lower stage to be socialism, and that this stage itself has stages. Here’s a diagram by Cheng Enfu:
Communism in the Marxist conception and anarchism are in essense polar opposites, communism is a fully collectivized global system while anarchism is a fully communalized decentralized system. Through a scientifically planned economy with advanced productive forces, everyone’s needs are met in communism.
I don’t know what “flavor” you’re looking for. Apparently you have some kind of set of related but different ideas that in your head form the notion of communism. And apparently this notion leads you to think that Bernie or AOC are in favor of communism. But neither of them is in favor of anything that even remotely resembles any commonly accepted definition of communism.
