Afaik this happened with every single instance of a communist country. Communism seems like a pretty good idea on the surface, but then why does it always become autocratic?
Because the Soviet Union was autocratic and communist/socialist countries had to choose between cosying up to them and being destroyed by the CIA.
Scratch a Bad and America bleeds
It’s been the most powerful country in the world since my grandparents were kids I don’t know what else you expect. Also I did say that the Soviet Union was autocratic.
Lots of reasons, but here’s one:
Because one of, if not the main purpose of money is to provide a decentralized way of transferring information about economic needs and capabilities. Without that mechanism in place, the only way of determining where goods can be created and where they need to go (a massive problem that it is a daily miracle we don’t generally have to deal with) is by an overbearing authoritarian state.
Spoken like someone that hasn’t paid attention to the supply chains of places like Walmart.
We already have command economies. They exist and are functional. The owners are simply siphoning away the surplus value.
As large as Walmart is, it is still absolute peanuts compared to the scale and (especially) dynamism of global production and consumption as a whole. Global supply chains have to change much faster and in arbitrary ways, compared to the centralized chains of something like Walmart, which in turn is also still subject to the external pressures of competition – even just hypothetical competition based on some hypothetical course of action is a powerful constraint.
So you’re saying you agree?
Walmart is absolutely a result of capitalism, those intricate supply chains are in place to make money. Maybe we could do it without a common way to track needs for a while, but would it adapt? Would the alternative resist corruption better? The invention of Money almost seems an inevitable consequence from one perspective.
I don’t think this answers the original question, but it’s an interesting side topic.
The invention of Money almost seems an inevitable consequence from one perspective.
That really depends on what you mean by money and how it’s used in the economy. David Graeber wrote a really great book covering this called “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” that I highly recommend.
They had no communist intentions to begin with. The benefits of communism are just an easy way to market any nefarious movement with anticommunist intentions
They had no communist intentions to begin with.
All (>30 countries) of them (1)?
Which ones aligned with the principles?
Attempts to implement communism at the scale of a nation state have always involved significant concentration of power. It may be impossible to do otherwise.
Power corrupts, and concentrations of power attract the corrupt.
So you’re saying with enough checks and balances that distribute power widely enough through legal offices and separations of power, some sort of democratic socialism would in theory be possible (assuming a peaceful transition via pre-deternend legislative changes were in place and ready to be followed)?
If you do the thing and you do it right and you don’t fuck it up. Then it might work.
For a real Marxist revolution to take place, the entire populace has to stand up at once and decide to make this change. This requires humanity to do some pretty broad and general evolution before we, as a race, are nearly ready. Checks and balances won’t fix the fundamental problem that humans are selfish and want more for themselves at the expense of others.
It’s odd that humans being selfish and wanting more for themselves is an argument for a system where stamping on people to make your share bigger and keeping others down is encouraged rather than trying to dampen those impulses.
Or on the flip side, maybe they seem so much of that philosophical/ethical black hole “Human Nature” in a system where they’re encouraged because our current economic mode strongly encourages them, rather than them being immutable fact?
Centralization of decision-making. It’s ironic actually. One of the main problems of capitalism that Marx described is the separation between labor and ownership. All the talk about “means of production”.
Communism actually makes it worse. In capitalism yes you have the owners who have all the control and reap all the benefits, but you have many capitalists competing, so the power is kinda distributed inside the capitalist class. The way communism was always implemented is through a communist party and state control of the economy.
You get an even smaller group of people controlling the means of production. It amplifies exactly the main problem of capitalism by creating a very hierarchical class society where the party leadership takes a role of what is almost “nobility”.
Iirc this is what Trade Syndicalism was meant to solve. After all the talk about the people’s rebellion it gets into balancing power by keeping it distributed among unions. So your political career would be to get elected in your union and then serve on the councils at different levels.
So we need to destroy the means of production, got it. Down with anything built after 1825, we living like its 1799!
Couldn’t we live like it’s 1825 if everything after that was destroyed?
Yeah, but I can’t sing that to the tune of Prince’s 1999
but you have many capitalists competing, so the power is kinda distributed inside the capitalist class.
This isn’t always true, and is arguably not the natural state of capitalism. Capitalism, without state intervention, will tend towards monopoly as economies of scale and market power push out any competition.
There’s also just a fundamental problem with planned economies from a purely economic standpoint: they are much less efficient at actually providing the minimum set of goods and services required by a population, and they’re worse at achieving growth. See the most recent Nobel Prize in economics for a citation. Funnily enough, the same paper’s arguments apply equally to oligarchic economies and crony capitalist economies, which are semi-planned economies by a small group of the ultra wealthy.
More specifically to the OP, communist countries have planned economies, which by nature requires a strong authority to tightly control production. Hence why communist states always have very consolidated political power structures. And once the power is consolidated, all it takes is one bad actor to get that power and ruin everything.
If you think about it every company is a tiny planned economy with all the power held by a few people, too.
Some of them even make brainwashing propaganda for their employees to think that sacrificing themselves to the company is glorious.
Not every company. There’s plenty of free-lancers around. There’s oddities like valve.
But yes, the idea is a mix of companies, different shapes and sizes, coordinating through markets.
Géza Hofi was one of the greatest comedians in Hungarian history. He was active under and very outspoken about the failures of the ruling communist party. One of his most memorable performances was “How many pigs will be born?” (video, unfortunately without subtitles).
Party officials, wearing nice brown trench coats, visit old man Joe’s farm.
“Comrade Joseph, how many pigs will be born?”
“I don’t know.”
“Shut your mouth, peasant, and give me the number.”
“What’s the plan?”
“14.”
“Then it’ll be 14. Have you told the swine? Better that you talk to her, since you’re both on the same level.”(the story goes on, but I don’t want to translate the entire thing)
I think because true communism never existed. All the previous attempts were flawed, people got corrupted, misused their power and it’s difficult to overcome human nature. It might work in theory (or not). But so far the attempts weren’t that many and they were all flawed for different reasons.
weren’t that many
It’s a pretty long list (1)
Ideologically, Leninism supported vanguardism, a variation on Marxism that said that the Communist party was supposed to drag the early-20th-century proletariat into the revolution, instead of waiting for late capitalism where the proletariat would (according to Marx) naturally become revolutionary. This, and the notion of “false consciousness”, authorized Communist parties to go against the expressed (democratic) will of the proletariat, on the theory that the proletariat’s judgment was clouded by false consciousness, while still claiming to act in the interests of the proletariat.
Basically, “we (the party) know better than you (the people)” was ingrained into Leninism from the beginning, and the major communist revolutions either were or became Leninist. Maoism was a branch off of Leninism as well.
Keep in mind that it wasn’t even the proletariat that accomplished the Revolutions, it was the peasantry. Marx wasn’t against the idea but he would have been surprised.
Marx wasn’t against the idea but he would have been surprised
Towards the end, Marx actually expected Russia to go through a communist revolution, and that it may even be the start of the revolutionary wave in Europe. See the preface for the 1882 Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto for reference.
I love learning new things that had just never occurred to me before. It happens a lot more here than it ever did back on Reddit.
Equating all socialism with the authoritarian regimes of the 20th century oversimplifies a complex political tradition.
Dictatorial tendencies are not intrinsic to socialism but are contingent on specific historical and political contexts.
Russia: The Bolsheviks’ turn to authoritarianism was partly due to the civil war, external invasions, and a lack of democratic traditions. These circumstances led to the consolidation of power to preserve the revolution, not as an inevitable feature of socialist theory.
In other contexts, socialist movements (e.g., in Scandinavia) have successfully implemented social democratic policies without authoritarianism.
The role of individual leaders and political choices in shaping socialist experiments. Figures like Lenin and Stalin made decisions that prioritized centralized control, which deviated from the principles of worker self-management and democratic participation.
These deviations were not a necessary outcome of socialism but reflected the particular decisions and dynamics of those historical moments. So a small sample size of major socialist states and people cloud judgement.
External hostility often pushed socialist regimes toward authoritarian measures. For example, the USSR faced significant opposition from capitalist countries, which influenced its militarization and political centralization. This external pressure created a siege mentality that undermined the potential for democratic governance.
Democratic socialism has thrived in various countries, showing that socialism can coexist with democratic principles. Examples include the welfare states of Scandinavia, where socialism has enhanced equality and social welfare without undermining political freedoms.
GREAT answer!
External hostility often pushed socialist regimes toward authoritarian measures.
THIS. This is THE reason most Marxists give for the necessity of authoritarianism in the first stages of transition to a Communist society.
That makes pretty good sense to me, but what about China? They are no longer in the first stages correct? What’s their excuse?
deleted by creator
Not sure if /s
Note: all of this is steal manning dengism, I am not a tankie advocating for it
They are in the first stage. Classical Marxist theory divides development into two revolutions / stages:
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The first revolution is the bourgeoisie overthrowing the feudal order, eg. The American revolution, the English civil war, French revolution of 1830. After the bourgeoisie take over they will use the proletariat to industrialize and develop the means of production. This will eventually lead to a boom in efficiency and production, the peasants moving from the countryside to cities, and abundance of necessities. Eventually though everyone’s needs will be met and without an expanding market to profit from capitalist will be forced to produce more efficiently with less labor to get profits from there now limited market. This will lead to mass layoffs and unemployment which leads to
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The socialist revolution where the proletariat overthrow the bourgeoisie and sieze the productive forces. They will then distribute labor fairly so you have 8 people working 10 hours instead of 1 person working 80 and 7 others unemployed. This then leads to communism where people have control over production and use it to guarantee well being and leisure instead of profit.
In order to get to this communist phase though you need to industrialize and develop the means of production so you can provide people with basic needs with little labor. The problem is the two major countries where socialism took hold, Russia and China, were still largely agrarian feudal societies. So they had to develop the means of production, Russia, and maoist china did so with 5 year plans, which had some success and some catastrophic failure but was ultimately pretty inefficient. So after mao a new leader in China named deng Xiao ping took over and followed a policy of allowing capitalism into the country to develop the means of production and industrialize. This unleashed powerful forces in the country that needed to be tamed by an even more powerful state, otherwise they would take over like they did in other capitalist countries. Then all the bloodshed from the original Chinese revolution would be for not as they would have to do another revolution to remove the bourgeoisie again. So the state maintains tight control to avoid “regressing” into a capitalist democracy until they fully develop and industrialize. At which point they will use that powerful authoritarian state to disposses the capitalist class and usher in communism.
Thanks for that explanation!
So, arguably, a country like the US is a better place for such ideals to minimize the time spent in the first phase and hasten the transition to the second phase since we are already industrialized?
(Not, by the way, that I say this to suggest it is necessarily a fair tradeoff for the first phase. I’m not making a judgement there at all.)
Yes, marx always thought a socialist revolution would come in the late stages of industrial capitalism. Everyone thought it was going to be in Germany up until WWI. The problem is capital becomes entrenched and people become comfortable, especially if they benefit from imperialism and exploitation abroad or of a minority racialized underclass.
Another problem with skipping the first revolution and industrializing under socialism is it gets blamed for the the horrors of industrialization. The early stages of industrialization are always horrific with long hours, bad working conditions and slum living conditions. Combine that with general conservatism and desire to stick to a traditional life and you have to coerce the peasents into going into the cities to become industrial laborers. Capitalism did this through enclosure and farm consolidation, the soviets did it more blatantly, sometimes at gunpoint. Either way it builds an animosity with the system that robbed you of your traditional life.
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Post Qing/Early Republican China was an absolute mess of competing factions, and it’s here that the CCP - with strong Russian backing was born.
The 1920s and 30s saw the government of the Republic of China decide that defending itself from Japan was less important than crushing the Communists, and was embroiled in civil war (and a continuation of the warlord battles consolidating power post-Qing collapse) with both sides receiving foreign support.
In the end, the Japanese invasion became big enough Chaing Kai-shek was forced to work with/not actively fight against the CCP, which the Communists took as an advantage to resupply and restock and engage in guerilla war against Japan while letting the Republic’s forces waste manpower and supplies with the pitched battles, so the Communists were able to overwhelm the Chinese Government in the reopening of the civil war after the end of the Second World War.
Early Communist China spent its life on a war footing, expecting (quite validly as declassified US documents show) the Korean War to push into China itself if the UN forces weren’t held in the peninsula, or the Civil War to warm up again with Chiang trying to retake the mainland with US backing.
This led all led to, from during the Long March in the first part of the Chinese Civil War and into Mao’s rule of the PRC, the establishment of a strong authoritarian government ideology. And while after the failing of the Great Leap Forwards and the resulting famine, led to Mao’s politiking ending the push to a less centralised power body with the Cultural Revolution and his taking back centralised power over the country.
Mao’s legacy has lingered, and the '89 protests led to a decided nailing shut of the slow shift wider democratic rule in the PRC, at least until Xi is gone and his picked successor is deposed, as the CCP feel that remaining in power is more important than anything else.
There is some truth to this but it overlooks the fact that the Bolsheviks were distinct from other socialist parties from the very beginning by their top-down, authoritarian party structure, with Lenin in control. As soon as they gained power, they immediately worked to impose this type of management on the entirety of Russian society by crushing first the Duma, then the Soviets, and finally eliminating any autonomy exercised by their own supporters, the labor unions. They also immediately began engaging in electoral chicanery and postponing or rigging elections in their favor. By destroying or subsuming every other institution in society, the party structure became the primary structure of governance, and Russia became a totalitarian state. Most of this took place even before the civil war and was arguably a major contributor to it.
So why did Russia become a dictatorship? Because the Bolsheviks decided it was desirable based on their understanding and development of socialist theory, and other forces failed to stop them for various reasons. It’s pretty much that simple. The civil war and foreign pressures probably strengthened this tendency but I don’t believe it was the primary cause.
And of course, almost every other socialist revolution since that time was inspired by the Bolsheviks since they “succeeded”. So they largely sought to impose dictatorships as well.
Ultimately it all goes back to Marx and his idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat which is one of the crucial flaws of Marxism in my view.
The dictatorship of the proletariat was supposed to describe the will of a fully conscious proletariat majority being executed by and with the consent of that class. In other words a democracy unclouded by bourgeois interest and false consciousness.
The problem was that at the time of the Russian revolution the proletariat weren’t the majority, the peasants were, and what proletariat there were lacked full class consciousness. So Lenin used the vanguard party to emulate what a dictatorship of the proletariat would do, but that wasn’t an actual one as Marxist would’ve described.
There has been some debate about exactly what Marx intended by this phrase but regardless his intentions, in my view it was always doomed to be abused in this way. This was pointed out forcefully by Bakunin and other contemporaries of Marx in the socialist movement, and it came to pass exactly as they predicted. Who decides what constitutes “bourgeois interest” or “false consciousness”? The party of course, and who controls the party? The party leadership, or in other words, Lenin, Stalin, or whoever else manages to connive their way onto the throne. This is far from a proletarian democracy, and if that’s what Marx wanted, he ought to have chosen his words far more carefully.
This also dovetails with another key flaw in Marxism which is its class reductionism. Political leaders can and do have distinct interests from the proletariat, even when they may have once belonged to that class. We see this tension clearly in every supposed proletarian government in history, and many others besides. So in addition to the problems of top-down hierarchy, the decision to have Bolshevik leaders be full-time revolutionaries was also a large contributor to their alienation from the people whose interests they claimed to pursue, and the horrific violence they soon inflicted in on them.
External hostility often pushed socialist regimes toward authoritarian measures. For example, the USSR faced significant opposition from capitalist countries, which influenced its militarization and political centralization. This external pressure created a siege mentality that undermined the potential for democratic governance.
This is something that I wish more people who talked about this would acknowledge and engage with. I get it, authoritarianism isn’t good. It’s not like we want that. It’s not the goal. But it’s really easy to sit on the sidelines from a relatively cushy life in the imperial core and judge all the people out there who are dealing with the historical reality of colonialism and feudalism and the current reality of imperialism. They are actively engaged in the practical task of liberating themselves from forces, both external and internal (old power structures/privileges) that seek to violently return them to a condition of servitude. The decisions they made have to be viewed through the lens of that context.
That doesn’t mean we can’t discuss and criticize them, but it’s worth engaging in the nuance of the history rather than out of hand dismissing their attempts as inherently illegitimate, evil, and/or misguided. What were the conditions they were operating under? What dangers did they face? Were their actions the best strategy for achieving the future they wanted? Was what they gave up too great? Did they have the capability to take a more open path? Have/had their decisions irreparably led them astray or were/are they still on the path to that eventual communist society on some time scale?
If you think they’re wrong for what they did, you still have to be able to answer the question of how you protect your revolution from forces that will spy on you, sabotage your industry, fund right wing militias to terrorize people, sanction and blockade you, or even invade you? Or if you think the path wasn’t even violent revolution in the first place, what is your answer to how you get to where you want to be when the power structure that would need to allow this is also invested in not allowing this? It’s a bit harder to see how this is made difficult or even impossible in liberal “democracies,” but it should be uncontroversial to acknowledge that some kind of force was necessary to escape from illiberal systems like Feudalism in Russia/China or from colonial regimes like in Vietnam.
The one thing I’d push back on from your comment is about the welfare states of Europe. That’s not really what socialism is about. They’ve made life better for people in their own country, yes, but it’s on the backs of those exploited in the third world. That’s why communism is inherently internationalist. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” You need to be able to build a movement that can work to lift everyone up with you, or at least not drag them down for your own benefit. I’d be interested to have more of a discussion on this, but that’s the standpoint I’d start from.
democratic socialism has thrived in in imperial states
Someone please correct me if I am misunderstaning or mischaracterizing this ideology:
From my limited understanding (because enthusiastic support for mass executions of anti-communists caused me to totally abandon it as a viable ideology) Lenin posited that it was necessary to violently rid the world of capitalist tendencies by force in order to protect the slow transition to the collectivist utopia he envisioned. This is my biggest problem with Marxism…or perhaps the brand of Marxism that has been adopted.
My background: I consider myself a libertarian socialist at the moment. I wholeheartedly agree that capitalism will kill our planet but I am not willing to support an autoritarian regime that promises to execute or imprison its critics for life. From my limited understanding, Marx didn’t start there but was “radicalized” into firmly believing that the only way to get capitalists to go along with his plan is to eliminate them from society.
If I am wrong, the people on hexbear have also misunderstood it. They believe that the only way to the utopia they want is through China’s authoritarian methods. Their support for China is about as pervasive there as lemmy.world’s support for neoliberal globalism.
I consider myself a libertarian socialist at the moment.
I believe you mean anarchist when you say “libertarian socialist.”
There are some important distinctions in my own ideology that prevent me from characterizing myself as an outright anarchist. For one, I do believe in the rule of law (to a certain extent in that I can scarcely imagine a fully anarchist society where murder and robberies are not rampant).
I also believe in state-funded fire departments, educational systems (with controls built in to prevent ideological brainwashing), roads, utilities, etc. So, I stop short of calling myself a Democratic Socialist because I think that that ideology is fraught with capitalist apologia (and actual sheepdogging for the capitalist class as perpetrated by AOC and Bernie as of late). But I am certainly not an Anarchist in the traditional sense of that word.
Yeah, if you still want a state you’re not an anarchist. And also if you believe a state either prevents violence or that people can’t behave themselves without one.
I don’t think it’s a belief that a state prevents violence so much as it is a belief that you cannot address violence when it occurs without some form of state.
Let’s say someone is raped in an anarchist society. What are your options of redress, short of simply lynching the perpetrator?
Any form of court, law, jail, etc all have “the state” as a prerequisite.
In either system the violence happens regardless. There is no preventing it. The question is, is “the state” a requirement to properly address that violence when it occurs?
Hold on, if the state can’t prevent violence then what is the point of addressing it? Just trying to get your thinking straight, seems a bit paradoxical to me.
I think on a small scale, communities are self-governing and anarchism can work well.
I have seen evidence of this.In my current understanding of this admittedly SUPER complex topic, the problem perhaps lies in the overpopulation by way of capitalist expansion.
It feels (if you won’t shame for attempting to take a stab in the dark at a reason) like at the scale of modern society, community policing can lead to an uptick in crime.
I have seen it in VT, CA, OR, and other places where this transition to a less punitive society is taking place. Ideologically, I actually wish for a society like that…but then I go to Brattleboro VT and get robbed at gunpoint by some guy who has been released from jail 2 times this month. I agree that ACAB. But then, I also want peace and I don’t want to have to fear for my safety when what we asked for is given to us.
I wish I had an answer…frankly, I have a hard time coming to terms with the real-world implementations of some of my ideas like this one. I want to eliminate the disgusting white supremacist police…but I also want to prevent Proud Boys from murdering me.
Where was communism adopted?
Countries with a strong history of authoritarian leadership, which continued under communism but with a fig leaf of public support. Kind of like how the US was formed as a democracy, but only for male white land owners who were already the ruling class.
The governmental structure has an impact on culture, but it doesn’t magically override existing social connections and norms. The people really did elect Putin before he consolidated power and turned it into completely sham elections. The communist party in China was originally what the people wanted before being turned into an authoritarian regime.
It isn’t like this is that unique to the countries that adopted communism. Many large countries, including western democracies, end up leaning into authoritarian tendencies over time because central leadership structures tend to encourage the leadership styles of ‘strong men’. If the culture isn’t there to hold those that abuse their power accountable, that country will slide into authoritarianism over time.
Personally, I don’t see communism ever scaling well above maybe a few hundred people because the more people that someone doesn’t know is involved the harder it is for the whole to feel like a community. Democracy has a similar scaling problem, but it doesn’t lean into authoritarianism as fast. yeah,
Regimes tend to change with violent revolution, as it’s rare for a person to willingly give up their own power. Revolutions have leaders, and those leaders are the ones responsible for distributing the power to the masses. But it’s rare for a person to willingly give up their own power.
Even in the rare instance where a person does give up their power, all you need is for one person to take advantage of the system. Communism rewards people for their labours, but someone will need to judge how much people should be rewarded. One corrupt judge slips in, and the system corrupts with them.
OP how much of today’s markets and politics are definited by Oligarchs and the rich? Can you really say that a plutocracy isn’t it’s own kind of dictatorship?
Even more so, many westerners have been fooled by culture to think this is natural, inevitable, and good.
In terms of per capita rates, the Irish Catholic Church was incarcerating more of Irelands population than Stalin did during his reign.
Just two companies; The British East India company and the Belgian Rubber plantations of the Congo killed more people than Stalin or Mao (especially if you factor out the deaths from Lysenkoism, which wasn’t a part of communism).
So early Capitalism and Colonialism killed far more than Communist dictatorships have…
And finally there is this to say - Communism is an economic system designed to interrupt plutocratic rule. It’s not a governmental system of elections and checls and balances…
…and if we are to be the most up tp date with this: China amd Vietnam have Socialist Oriented Market Economies. The one in Vietnam, has almost eliminated homelessness entirely. Is that a dictatorship compared to the woes of the west’s housing crisises?
Early systems from both economic models - Capitalism/Colonialism and Communism - both had events of mass killings. Both have seen dictatorships… You only focus on these things in the Communist model, because of your background. Likewise, someone from China pr North Korea might hear more about the famines, deaths and genocides of the Capitalist and Colonial corporations I’ve mentioned above.
The road to autocracy is paved with people who meet every criticism of the system with, “But look at how bad this other system is!”
It’s really not. It’s mostly nepotism and reproducing the an untouchable ruling class that creates an autocracy. Put simply; when one system goes too far into autocracy, you should entertain the values of another system.
Condemning that is approving of the current autocrats. But perhaps you’re a particular fan of Trump/Musk.
It’s really not.
It really is.
It’s mostly nepotism and reproducing the an untouchable ruling class that creates an autocracy.
And all along the way, people protecting the budding autocracy from criticism by diverting attention to the faults of some other system in some other place and/or time.
Put simply; when one system goes too far into autocracy, you should entertain the values of another system.
Um… sure. But that’s neither what you were doing nor what I was criticizing, so it’s not relevant.
Condemning that is approving of the current autocrats.
So… condemning people trying to shift attention away from the current autocrats by bitching about some totally different aurocrats is protecting the current autocrats?
Are you even trying to make sense any more, or are you just desperately stringing together random claims?
But perhaps you’re a particular fan of Trump/Musk.
Just desperately stringing together random claims. Got it.
Authoritarians everywhere: “You need my boot on your neck, because the other guy’s boot will be even worse!”
True, but when one system becomes sufficiently crushing, it’s best to popularize an alternative so the guy in the boot has to focus on other things for a moment.
If the boot changes colour and doctrine, and becomes crushing again, I’ll happily advocate for a free market system to distract him again…
Or perhaps some third system such as a mix of communitarianism, distributism, and Georgism. I’m not going to be particularly ideological in this.
…and the Truth is we’re speeding towards a techno-feudalism (it’s no longer Capitalism when places like Amazon dictate prices and promotions to both producers/sellers and consumers/buyers, that’s not Capitalism anymore), so unless you like licking that particular boot, your noted point may not actually serve anything than a heavier foot.
I think it’s more helpful to identify that the issue is boots on our neck, not who is wearing them. What’s the point of fighting for a new government that’s hardly better than the last?
Even if there’s no clear alternative focused on human liberation today, it’s better to build consciousness so that one can be created than tug of war back and forth between tyrants with different colored flags.
Lysenkoism, which wasn’t a part of communism
How so? Lysenkoism was wholely a result of the political ideology (environment determines wholely a crops’ yield), supressing scientific results (genetic differences exist).
No where in Communism does it say to fake one’s scientific results in order to simulate higher crop yields. That’s not part of the doctrine. That’s why it became known as Lysenkoism, because it came down to one con man.
Had the same man been born into the position under a different system, a similar result could emerge. If he were a UN director for farming undee Capitalism a similar result could occur.
Was it an inevitable byproduct of Communist doctrine that would have occurred no matter who Stalin picked? No. Did it happen in Vietnam and Cuba because of the doctrines there? No. So whilst Stalin chose him because he was told he was a good working class lad, doesn’t make Lysenko’s deceptions part of communism. They’re not written into it anywhere.
That’s why it became known as Lysenkoism, because it came down to one con man.
It happens all the time. Take Theranos as an example.
The famine and millions of death are a consequence of the communist doctrine of not having different ideas compete, and have market forces reward the better ideas. Instead they took Lysenko’s ideas as true, implemented it nationwide, forbidding competing ideas, because it was politically agreeable. That is communist doctrine.
I’d argue it always takes ignoring reality, favouring faulty wishfull and selective thinking, to be communist.
No, you’re measuring perceived deficits of “Communism” based on what you think about Stalinism (which is not the same thing). Technically Communism or “Scientific Socialism” would have used science to test various techniques of growing crops than selected the best (roughly what happened in Vietnamese Communism).
But Stalinism is called Stalinism because it’s not exactly faithful to Communism as a philosophy.
But yes there are plenty example of profit driven systems of Capitalism creating starvation famines ect. Whether it be the East India Company, or the leveraged loans of the World Banks in Africa, or the effects of Climate change, when combined they have a far greater death toll than Communism.
…and you had/have genocides and gulag style systems of punishment in Capitalism as well, whether it’s the workhouses of Ireland in the past century (with their mass graves of Children), Prison Labour in the US, or the blood mining and rare minerals in Africa… Hell Capitalism has set machine guns on workers before in South Africa. Even America has things like the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Ludowlow worker massacre in its history (where mine security had a license to r*pe the wives of workers).
You’re just not taught about these things. I can provide you references for any fact I give you here. Just ask.
So whilst you think I’m ignoring the ills of Communism (or it’s Stalinist incarnation), which I’m not. I think you’re being totally blind of the fact Capitalism has a far greater death toll, and other detriments to the world you’re purposefully overlooking, or just ignorant of.
PFAs, Bisphenol A, micro plastics in fetuses, thalidomide, the military industrial complex, the wars of the banana Republics (placing them under corporate tyranny), Pinochet, the list is infinite because it’s ongoing.
… and here there I’ll make this point: Atleast Communism refines its practice and goals, it has progressively become less brutal as it refined its understanding of agriculture and to be VERY CLEAR that’s where the greatest number of deaths associated it come from, not as an intended or desire outcome but by accident.
The same cannot be said for the stagnation and purposeful creation of sufferings under Capitalism, from the minor wage slaveries and wage theft, to union busting (CokeCola even going as far as to kill union organizers in Latin America), to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire (where as with many factory fires, workers were locked in so their pockets could be checked for stolen sewing equipment), to more major things like mining strikes, or the awareness Exxon had around climate change in the 1960s, or Phillip Morris had about causing addiction, cancer, and fatalities.
Sorry, but in reality Capitalism has caused more suffering, in a more substantial and intentional way, that’s more connected to the Capitalist doctrine of profit making and wage minimization, than Communism ever has.
Even today America essentially has had its democracy usurped by Capitalist Oligarchs (Musk, Thiel, Andresseen).
You’d have to be absolutely blind to ignore all this history, all this connectedness to the doctrine, the purposes of profit and hence exploitation, and all that continues to this very day.
Without a doubt Capitalism is responsible for everything I’ve spoken about here, and it has within it no means, or even the suggestion of being a reformist system. Communism does and has made meaningful reforms and strides in the short periods it exists in. Which is why places like China, and Vietnam have made the strides they have, and why Americans visit Cuba for healthcare.
What I’ve said here, you cannot deny. Like I say, I can provide sources for all of it.
P.S Just to clarify China and Vietnam have Socialist Oriented Market Economies, Vietnam is probably the closest to a Marxist Socialism as its internal tension are mediated through giant Social Union movements that go far beyond just representing workers, there is a national union just for women, one for disabled people, one for students ect. They all have a voice/power capable of directing how the party forms policies and directs resources.
VERY CLEAR that’s where the greatest number of deaths associated it come from, not as an intended or desire outcome but by accident.
If it was an accident, the accident repeated several times. Even engineers got murdered for correctly saying you shouldn’t overload trains (1).
But then again, it wasn’t real communism, right. DDR, not real communism. Albania, not real communism. China, not real communism. Romania, not real communism. Etc. Etc.
I think you’re being totally blind of the fact Capitalism has a far greater death toll, and other detriments to the world you’re purposefully overlooking, or just ignorant of.
That’s because real capitalism hasn’t been tried yet. All the capitalist systems still had subsidies, governments beyond enforcing property law, …
Without a doubt Capitalism is responsible for everything I’ve spoken about here
No, because that was not real capitalism.
If it was an accident, the accident repeated several times. Even engineers got murdered for correctly saying you shouldn’t overload trains (1).
Wow, you mean Authoritarian Communism is still Authoritarian? Yeah no shit (and as you can read from earlier I’ve already mentioned many such things happening under conditions of Capitalism, directly from the doctrines practices of cost cutting and wage theft or brutalization, but fine, “I’ll see your engineers there and raise you the British Bopal disaster” that killed and deformed generations of Indians in their home village and is still causing health effects today).
As you’ve dropped in I’m going to assume you saw me mention that Stalinism was not Communism in its ideal form, but was a Stalinist form.
Your point is thus not about Communism, but about Communism under Authoritarian leaders… And I have already shown that Capitalism is capable of mass killings and atrocities under all sorts of conditions as part of the philosophy (ingrained to it). Where as Stalin’s actions here aren’t specifically connected to Communist doctrine. I’ve already covered this point several times with the previous respondant.
That there is a written philosophy - that of Marxism, that of the Communes and the Commons, is why I can say these things. It has a primary set of writings. But we can say that about Capitalism too…
That’s because real capitalism hasn’t been tried yet. All the capitalist systems still had subsidies, governments beyond enforcing property law, …
…because Marx was ALSO the person who first defined and wrote about CapitalISM, in his work DAS KAPITAL 1867.
You can look and find commentaries about other concepts in different languages and different sounding words that aren’t Capitalism, such as Merchantilism, or in The Hollantse, or you can find the word Capital here and there and claim it relates, or instance around the time of Marx’s first treatise on the subject, but none are systematic, focused on the right topic using the ism repeatedly and providing a widely agreed in definition of it.
Like all concepts it has these forerunners that are related but NOT it. So you have tried to be clever here without realizing that when we discuss Capitalism in the way I have - we are talking about Marx’s original definition of it. Which was the phenomena of using an unearned accumulation of KAPITAL in order to purchase, own, and exploit workers for the purposes of profiting from exploiting their now alienated Labor.
No, because that was not real capitalism.
Oh yes, as you can read above, it very much is. It is in its original description as found in the criticism by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, in 1867. A description so accurate that it’s widely agreed with - even among the Capitalists. He was the first and primary text on what the doctrine of “real Capitalism” is. Capitalists hitherto didn’t want what they were doing to be known so openly, and intimately and for good reason. Just as any abuser doesn’t want what they’re doing to be described. It comes naturally to them, and that is no excuse for it, doesn’t make it more moral or acceptable. Only once it’s pointed out accurately described does the argument start, only then can the behaviours meet reforms. Which is why in Marx’s writings we also find advocacy for labor rights.
Sorry my friend, but what I’ve spoken about is indeed, Real Capitalism™ - down to the origin of the term.
P.S there’s also Proudhon: the capitalist’s employee was “subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience” - so not much better. People of the era were writing things as they saw them emerge. It’s still the problem of the abuser as described above.
Oh yes, as you can read above, it very much is. It is in its original description as found in the criticism by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, in 1867.
It isn’t according to the earlier definition of capitalism. Real capitalism hasn’t been tried yet. Show me an example of a real capitalist country? What’s Marx’s opinion on capitalism worth, as he hasn’t ever experienced a real capitalist country?
In Russia it’s because of the cult of personality, or populism, that developed around Lenin and Stalin. Mao in China, pretty similar. You should appreciate how a country falls into chaos and madness when a populist takes power and ignores all legal and cultural norms and gets away with doing whatever they want.
Thank goodness that would never happen in the enlightened, democratic West.
To simplify, two main reasons. First when done via revolutions it often causes economic and societal shock in which autocrates take the power away from the people. And second, when done peacefull, foreign intervention of secret agencies which again try to put autocrates in powerful positions.
Ultimately, it’s because the foundational ideas of communism don’t scale.
