There were no actual efforts to establish communism in eastern europe. Only autocratic regimes backed by soviet russia.
And here comes the guy who thinks he can do it better, this time without mass killings.
Implying capitalism does not regularly do mass killings.
I’m no too learned in the subject but what would “true” communism even look like on the large scale like a country? Would it even be feasible?
True communism in a country is impossible.
You can have socialism, or anarchy, which we’ve seen before, but communism cannot function in one country alone, unless said country is completely and absolutely self reliant.
A major part of communism is internationalism, which is why socialist countries had the Comintern. (Communist International). Besides a political/social system, communism has a strong basis as an economic system. You can’t apply communist economic system principles to the capitalist market.
To my knowledge, no existing country is self reliant to the point that they can completely cut off trade with the rest of the world. USSR didn’t do it, China didn’t do it and they were the two biggest countries at the time.
That, of course is all a very surface level ELI5, and if you want to ask something more specific or in depth, feel free to.
The US political spectrum is leaning so far to the right. A US left is a France center or moderate right. So what Americans consider communism is merely what French consider moderate leftist.
- I’m French living in the US
McCarthy propaganda go brrrr
counterpoint and some reading material for capitalism stans on here https://ia800309.us.archive.org/26/items/fp_Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum/Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum.pdf
Based comrade
To be honest, I’ve been using Lemmy for a week now, and I’m kind of concerned with all the communism stuff around here.
comment section frustratingly filled with McCarthy-brained liberals who have never critically examined their preconceptions about communism
I guess I just really don’t understand the draw. Communism is a nice thought, until actual people are involved. People are corruptible, which is why communism is seen as utopian. It’s an ideal that only works under perfect circumstances.
I guess I just really don’t understand the draw.
CommunismCapitalism is a nice thought, until actual people are involved. People are corruptible, which is whycommunismcapitalism is seen as utopian. It’s an ideal that only works under perfect circumstances.Bullshit take. Show me one instance of communism implemented in a democracy and I’ll agree to your point, but you can’t because there isn’t one.
Pretty sure I explicitly struck out all references to communism so I don’t know what you’re talking about. My comment was about the fanciful idealism required to justify capitalism. Show me one instance of capitalism implemented in democracy (which didn’t devolve into cronyism).
Switzerland? Netherlands? Hell, even France, Germany?
Invoking cronyism as a downside in itself is silly. It’s not what matters, what matters is the quality of life. And just because US and a few other capitalist countries have drank from the neoliberal fountain and are unable to stop, it doesn’t mean that that is the only way. In fact social democracies, of which there are quite a few examples around the world, are pretty much still capitalist democracies whit none of the crap neoliberal ideas lead to.
Yes, I don’t disagree, except far more people benefit from our form of capitalism, and you don’t see the death numbers you do from the absolute rule that communism demands.
This isn’t to say there isn’t any death due to capitalism. Or any strife, just certainly not on the same scale. I would say out biggest death toll comes at the hands of our military-industrial-complex being capitolistic.
The problem is, there’s nothing better yet.
Add up chattel slavery, Trail of Tears, proxy wars, not-so-proxy wars, the general condition of the M-I-C you’ve mentioned, the general plight of the Global South, etc etc etc, and get back to me. I’m not sure the advantage is so definitive as you assert. “Externalities”, the economists call them.
It 100% does not even come close. Not saying those deaths weren’t terrible or unavoidable, absolutely not.
But also, you can’t blame a capitolistic society for trail of tears or any other mass genocide that came before that. We didn’t become capitolistic until 10 years after Trail of Tears ended.
Edit to add: granted, that doesn’t say much about how Native Americans were treated post TOT. Though, it’s certainly through capitalism that Indian casinos have become so successful. 245 tribes own casinos today, all of which rake in the funds.
Firstly, I know you’re not going to justify genocide by saying the survivors of that genocide get to have casinos. That’s so outrageously, ghoulishly evil that you can’t possibly have meant that and I must have misunderstood.
Secondly, where do you get the idea that capitalism started in America in 1860?
Thirdly, you ignored everything else I asked you to add up. You made no mention of slavery, or the Global South.
Fourthly, what’s fundamentally different between the colonial exploitations of mercantilism and private exploitations of capitalism?
I call your arithmetical integrity, or more laughably your ability, into question.
Lol. You definitely misunderstood. I didn’t say in my comment that TOT was okay because now they have cassinos. I’m not sure how you could possibly get that out of what I wrote. The claim I’m arguing against is that capitalism has caused more deaths than communism, which isn’t the case. Especially since capitalism wasn’t America’s economic governing factor until - yup - the 1860. Capitalism wasn’t the cause of the TOT, but it was the cause of the survivors ability to create wealth for their tribes.
Again, because you somehow twisted what I wrote into saying it’s okay that all those people died because casinos, the TOT was horrific. It shouldn’t have happened. Nothing can make up for that, even the wealth made by their survivors. But it wasn’t caused by capitalism, which is the original claim.
And no, I wasn’t ignoring everything else you pointed to in terms of deaths under capitalism, because slavery and other horrors certainly were due to capitalism here in America. Though, it has nothing against rhe numbers stacked under communist rule.
I also want to point out that there are going to be deaths under every form of economic governance, because that’s just human nature. There will always be people that kill other people, for a variety of reasons. The goal, then, is to find the one governance that kills the least amount of people in total.
I’ll also point out that it’s not like capitalism was absent one day in America, and then suddenly it was governing the country. Capitalism, like most forms of economic rulings, was a slow creep. It happened in small stages until the 1860s, when it became the dominating force in America.
There is no such thing as pure capitalism.
Meanwhile, Eastern Europeans:
Meanwhile in the real world
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Redditors try not to froth and post anticommunism for 120 seconds challenge (impossible!!!)
Educated people in general have to say on politics the same things that I said earlier, but they are very nostalgic over less criminalized popular culture, better technical education and rules being followed. So am I to some extent actually.
In Moscow? You’re not being fair. Educated people in the soviet union from Moscow lived extremely well and have very positive views. Engineers, scientists, etc will all say positive things. You know as well as I do that hundreds of video interviews will confirm this. Be fairer, claiming that everyone that supports the ussr among the over 60s is just uneducated is definitely untrue. This particular video series is in Moscow and this lady is exactly what I am talking about.
You can’t live in Moscow and say this is untrue. You’re being unfair.
No recollection at all, I’m 1996, but since transition from USSR to modern Russia didn’t happen in an instance, in various institutions and organizations you can still see in some ways how it was. More in my childhood than now, but still.
Brought up in shock therapy then.
if you weren’t in denial.
I’m not in denial. I’m asking you to be fairer. The data does not support your position. You know as well as I do that 75% of the country consider the soviet era to be when the country was at its greatest (and that this is easily verifiable from many sources), and you know damn well that 75% of the country aren’t all uneducated people. You are not being fair.
Educated people in general have to say on politics the same things that I said earlier, but they are very nostalgic over less criminalized popular culture, better technical education and rules being followed. So am I to some extent actually.
In Moscow? You’re not being fair. Educated people in the soviet union from Moscow lived extremely well and have very positive views. Engineers, scientists, etc will all say positive things. You know as well as I do that hundreds of video interviews will confirm this. Be fairer, claiming that everyone that supports the ussr among the over 60s is just uneducated is definitely untrue. This particular video series is in Moscow and this lady is exactly what I am talking about.
You can’t live in Moscow and say this is untrue. You’re being unfair.
No recollection at all, I’m 1996, but since transition from USSR to modern Russia didn’t happen in an instance, in various institutions and organizations you can still see in some ways how it was. More in my childhood than now, but still.
Brought up in shock therapy then.
if you weren’t in denial.
I’m not in denial. I’m asking you to be fairer. The data does not support your position. You know as well as I do that 75% of the country consider the soviet era to be when the country was at its greatest (and that this is easily verifiable from many sources), and you know damn well that 75% of the country aren’t all uneducated people. You are not being fair.
Making this meme took longer than opening a book to understand what communism actually is.
What everyone points to as “communism” shares more in common with capitalism than anything else. They had authoritarian rulers and a small wealthy class that lords over the rest of the populace.
There is nothing “worker owned” about these examples and it only serves to spread FUD about moving away from capitalism towards a more human centric economy
The Red Scare is still working it’s magic I see. I don’t think many people think that communism is the perfect system. Even the ones who support it. It’s just that after living in a capitalist hellhole our whole lives and watching the world burn, some of those ideas start to look like they are worth trying.
Star Trek is a good example of what the endgame of communism is supposed to look like. It’s just the process of getting there that is hard to figure out.
Star Trek is an example of a post scarcity society. I worry about persisting military rank instead of a horizontal power structure.
No communism, but socialism yes.
And yes, I am from east Europe
Didn’t the USSR just do state capitalism, and not actual communism or socialism? And weren’t they also totalitarian & also not a democracy? Are people actually asking for what was happening in astern Europe or something else?
Yup. Also shot the anarchists, that worked with them and wanted democracy, in the back of the head during a meeting, The USSR then also did imperialism in their neighboring countries, deported a ton of people from those countries to death camps in siberia and allied with the nazies dividing Europe in their treaty
