This is beside the point but also fuck Trotsky. Trotsky’s basic idea consisted of applying military methods in the economic field and of turning the entire population of Russia into a vast army of labour, destroying the trade unions and forcing the workforce into jobs they could not leave without the permission of high authorities. Any shirking of duty or unauthorized absence from work was to be punished on the same basis as desertion from the army. Fuck that guy.
But also fuck capitalism. It’s horrific.
You see, communism, in theory, is great. The biggest problem is that it requires a benevolent authority to determine what is provided based on what is needed and wanted.
This is a problem because usually communist countries are structured at authoritarian, where the head of state, a person, usually some guy, is in charge of such things, generally with the help of those in the government. Being human and innately flawed and selfish, all communist systems thus far, seem to follow the same trend of exploitation and indentured servitude for the majority of the populous, meanwhile the “upper class”, mainly the elite and the person’s that make up the government live in luxury. More for them and the bare minimum for everyone else.
If this human factor problem could be resolved, then communism would be a great system. Everyone shares in the wealth and success of their countrymen. But since people are the cornerstone of any government, the system will always be prone to exploitation of the people.
As for Stalin specifically, I don’t see him or his actions as notably different than any other communist dictator. They are all equally terrible people for very different human rights crimes.
I like the idea of communism, but I wouldn’t trust any single person to be in charge… I wouldn’t even trust a coalition of people to run it. It would need the involvement of enough people from the population from all different walks of life to essentially vote on policy changes constantly in order to ensure that no individual or group of individuals is unfairly benefiting from the situation, which, that, in and of itself, would be a nightmare to try to put together, manage, coordinate, and abide by.
Capitalism under democracy isn’t a picnic, but at least there’s enough responsibility imposed on the system by the population that is being governed, that any exploitation is generally slowed at least, or eliminated at best (often the former and not the latter).
I… have a lot to say and not enough energy left to say it.
I would suggest that you’re conflating communism with Marxism-Leninism, which is a common mistake, since the SovUnion spent a good 70 years trying to make them synonymous (and their capitalist enemies being more than happy to assist), and that you should look into non-ML systems.
I’ve been to Cuba. I’ve never seen such a shit show in my life. There were still wealthy and the large majority were dirt poor. Police everywhere. Military everywhere. Havana smelled horrible and there were massive food shortages.
That said the people were friendly. They talked how they wish they could go to America but they can’t.
It was sad. My polish friends described polish communism the same way and they were fairly high up in the party. As soon as they had the chance to defect they did.
Could we develop an AI to be our communist overlord?
I almost wish everyone hadn’t defederated from hexbear so that we had more stories of the mental gymnastics justifying continues support of Putin after he banned being gay.
Following a script is not mental gymnastics.
Defederating doesn’t serve anyone’s interest. If you don’t like a community or a server, block them. Let the rest of us decide for ourselves.
Some of us prefer the Fediverse to look a little less like 4chan and pigs shitting on their own balls, and a little more like literally anything else. It’s the same reason why that one alt-right instance was defederated by just about everyone.
Defederation is absolutely a valid tool to deal with spam instances. It’s less of a valid tool for dealing with voices and opinions you don’t like.
Unfortunately, sometimes it can be hard to differentiate between the two.
You can’t block entire instances as a user, at least not on Lemmy. You can block all communities (only since very recently) hosted on an instance, but you can’t block the community, that is the users, trolling around the wider fediverse.
I would also argue that having shitheads around and shitting up the comment sections encourages a site culture of shitheaddery. Like, well, 4chan.
Which puts fuckheads like me in a tough spot, since I want a classic “old internet” (read as: 4chan culture of shitheadery) feel to the place, but also don’t want to infringe on people like you’s ability to enjoy a relatively clean internet space.
Given everything, I think having “clean” servers that defederate from toxic ones is probably the way to go just to ensure new users can have a generally good time. Then let more advanced users (like me) go find the “never defederate” instances to sign up to get that old timely feel.
So…uh, yeah TL;DR: I think I’m on the other guy’s side, but also think you have the right of it.
Hey man, if you or your instance wants to take a dive into the deep end, I don’t mean to stop any of you. I would just prefer the parts of the Fediverse I deal with to be clean of pigs shitting on their balls and the people who spread it.
“Whatabout the US??? Critical support for Putin’s Ukrainian genocide!”
“Don’t call it genocide! He just wants Russian #landback”
Turns out tankies are actually just as pro-genocide of indigenous people as the far-right are, so long as it’s Russia or China doing it.
Which is, of course, doubly insane considering that Russia isn’t even run by the Russian Communist Party anymore.
The tankies problem is not that he’s misunderstood…it is that he’s understood
Did he even write theory? I mean, Lenin and Trotsky did but did Stalin?
Stalin did some writing, but depending on which tankie you ask, it’s either REVOLUTIONARY AND ASTOUNDING WORK THAT IS UNFAIRLY OVERLOOKED, or just verbose rehashing of Lenin with an (extra) dash of authoritarianism.
