Even from people that never lived in a communist state
edit: im 17 and i hate communism
why not? if you’d like a more capitalist experience you can always go to reddit. don’t forget to download their shitty app that no longer has competitors.
idek if I can be called communist but I’ve certainly noticed that unfettered capitalism seems to result in a LOT of monopolies…
As Marx predicted a hundred years ago
Lol you just provided the simplest counter to the most common capitalist argument.
“You don’t understand capitalism, bro. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s the regulation on capitalism. Under a true capitalist system, there can’t be monopolies because capitalism rewards competition.”
Ok so what happened to all the reddit apps
They don’t want reddit but want its liberal echo chamber lmao
Well, it was created by “communists.”
Why do you hate communism?
Nobody has ever actually done real communism on a national scale. The closest is probably the USSR, but that was a disaster because it was an authoritarian dictatorship that funneled money and power to the top. People only got token representation, the people were not actually in charge of anything, they got no real say in their leadership. Doesn’t matter that it was structured like communism says it should be, the reality of it was anything but communism.
Real communism would probably be pretty decent. There wouldn’t be too much to hate about it other than what you’d dislike in any government.
The problem is the humans running it. It’s a constant battle against power-hungry and self-serving people being in charge, just like any government, and no nation espousing communism has ever managed to prevent authoritarianism and basic kleptocratic people from settling in and running the show.
- I am not for communism or here to espouse any virtues it might have. The concept of communism certainly has appeal and presents many benefits, however the reality of implementation and human nature virtually guarantee it will never achieve its intended form.
I haven’t seen any communist propaganda at all but I’ve read many comments and posts like this… Are they just referring to leftwing content?
The first instance of Lemmy is lemmy.ml
The ML stands for Marxist-Leninists
I mean, its actually the country tld of Mali
And .af is Afghanistan, .tv is Tuvalu, and .ai is Anguilla.
But .af is used for “As fuck”, .tv is used for media, and .ai is used for sketchy startups jumping on a bandwagon after they didn’t get rich off of blockchain/crypto.
so every other domain except lemmy is also marxists leninist like most tv and ai domains are mainly related to tv and AI, dumbass?
Could be both.
Malian marxist leninists
Yeah, but that’s not why it’s being used by those instances.
It was used because it was cheap (possibly free?).
It was free until last year, but the “enlightened” people repeating whatever they feel like, to shit on someone else’s work isn’t something new.
Lemmy, the social network, started off as a leftist hangout spot.
From the perspective of “Open Source developers who are anti-Reddit pro-Fediverse”, it makes a lot of sense for Leftist/Communist and anti-corporation leaning people to hang out.
After all, the more extreme the viewpoint, the more driven to action (ie: write tens-of-thousands of lines of code and release for free) people get. In some regards, its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology. IE: Free Software is driven by ideology, not by money. So you get ideological people, especially when the software is small and niche.
The July 2023 Reddit Blackout was a big challenge for Lemmy’s old community and the new community, as the new community basically “invaded” a large scale leftist hangout spot. But hopefully we all learn to work together and the nature of our neighbors moving forward.
I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion. Which is enough of an alliance to keep us together, for now.
It does mean that we’ll have to keep up with the far-left old-timers on this network who wish to push their viewpoints. But they are the legacy and the start of Lemmy in some respects, even as the hypergrowth (starting in July 2023) has moderated the community pretty severely.
I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion.
I don’t particularly have any problem with Reddit beyond the fact that (a) I don’t like their “new” Web UI and (b) the fact that one of the moves that they made to monetize their service was to ban third-party clients, which is a tradeoff that I’m not willing to make.
I mean, I was expecting that at some point, Reddit was going to have to have to shift from growth to monetization. I just didn’t agree with the particular tradeoff that they chose to make.
Are you okay with the advertising? That’s another thing that I find unacceptable.
I don’t really know what ads they showed, as I used an ad-blocker. I’d believe that it’s probably annoying, but the same is true of most websites that show ads. Reddit Gold provided a commercial ad-free option, so it wasn’t a requirement even without blocked ads. And unlike most companies, it was possible to purchase Reddit Gold without linking to one’s financial data, since they provided purchase options bounced through cryptocurrency and such. As web services go, I suppose it was probably a fair bit better than the average.
I’d have probably been willing to buy commercial Reddit service – I mean, I’ve subscribed to Usenet service, have commercial email hosting service, have commercial VPS service. I don’t have a problem with commercial service, as long as it’s something solid. The value-for-money was probably pretty good, given how much I used it. I just don’t want to be obliged to run their binary code on my systems and have data extracted from my system and be data-mined other than what they get from my web browser or open-source client.
They’re starting to roll ads into AI-generated comments, and are selling off user data. It really does suck.
In the beginning, I was okay with the ads on Reddit. But then, Reddit just kept making stupid decision after stupid decision on the official app’s UI, so I switched to a third party app, that happens to also have no Reddit ads. When Reddit killed the apps and continued making the official experience worse, I bailed Reddit and came here because I’m not supporting a greedy platform.
I don’t see the problem with people having communist views…capitalism isn’t great.
My problem with communist views is they’re unproven and have only lead to authoritarian governments when put into play.
Capitalism has regularly gone off the rails … but not to the degree communism has. Capitalism has been defending democracy for the last few centuries, not communism.
These are the nations that identify as communist:
- China (PRC)
- Cuba
- Laos
- North Korea (DPRK)
- Vietnam
These countries were previously communist and (of that has that) have pretty much only improved since transitioning to democracy with capitalist economic systems:
- Afghanistan
- Albania
- Angola
- Benin
- Bulgaria
- Congo
- Czechoslovakia
- Ethiopia
- Germany (GDR)
- Grenada
- Hungary
- Kampuchea
- Mongolia
- Mozambique
- Poland
- Romania
- Somalia
- Soviet Union
- Tuva
- Yemen (PDRY)
- Yugoslavia
That’s not to say that capitalism doesn’t have its problems, people here aren’t angry with it over nothing. However, if you really look at the problems it’s had, they all come down to voter manipulation and/or apathy “things are going good, why do I need to worry about politics?”.
We didn’t just wake up with weakened labor unions, weakened voter rights, weakened infrastructure, etc; we got their because of generations of apathy and frankly electing the wrong people. People that cut taxes, asked “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” (short term gain), allowed our unions to be broken up, allowed jobs to be exported over seas to communist China (which is now one of the greatest international threats), bought the cheapest products (from mom and dad at the store to the executives running major corporations) without asking why they’re cheap, etc.
The “common people” cast the votes that ultimately lead to corporations being people. The “middle class” cost votes that ultimately lead to the middle class shrinking.
I think it’s naive that communism somehow automatically makes those problems go away/means we’ll never end up with similar problems. Especially when communist countries are consistently doing worse/falling into authoritarian rule.
We need to expand our social programs, reign in our billionaires, and reign in our corporations and we’d be a lot better off. Capitalism works so long as you don’t let anyone or anything get “too big to fail.” Capitalism doesn’t have to be capitalism without limits. The reigns of power will always be challenged no matter what system we find ourselves under, only an educated vigilant population can stop that.
Capitalism “going off the rails” completely understates it. The history of the last 500 years is soaked in the blood of the capitalism. Voter apathy has nothing to do with it. Enthusiastic voters gave us genocide of indigenous peoples of North America, the nuclear bombing of Japan, and currently a 75 year genocide of Palestinians. Not to mention things that voters do not have even the semblance of a choice, such as CIA activities in the 20th century which led to bloody coups in Indonesia, Chile, and Iran, just to name 3.
You need to incorporate class analysis or else nothing makes sense. Why do American voters get shitty choices that reduce their power to the advantage of the wealthy oligarch class? Why are there oligarchs if capitalism doesn’t tend to monopoly? Does voting actually do anything? Why does the electoral college still exist? Why did Americans support the Iraq War? What role did the media serve?
I think it’s naive that communism somehow automatically makes those problems go away/means we’ll never end up with similar problems. Especially when communist countries are consistently doing worse/falling into authoritarian rule.
Communism doesn’t automatically make anything go away. The point is that the ruling class of capitalists are an obstacle to making things go away. I’m not sure what is your criteria for authoritarian rule. Capitalist countries are authoritarian too, it’s basically a meaningless signifier coming out of cold war propaganda that said communism = dictatorship and capitalism = muh freedom. The democratic processes in China and Cuba of example are lightyears ahead of what you can find in the US or European parliamentary so-called democracies.
The history of the last 500 years is soaked in the blood of the capitalism.
That’s a pretty hot take to blame all the conflict that’s happened in the last 500 years on capitalism. I think it’s likely a significant oversimplification at best. For instance, you can argue many things caused (just) WW2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II
Voter apathy has nothing to do with it. Enthusiastic voters gave us genocide of indigenous peoples of North America, the nuclear bombing of Japan, and currently a 75 year genocide of Palestinians.
That’s provably wrong. The voter turn out as a percentage of population is abysmal historically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_presidential_elections#/media/File:USA_Presidential_Elections_Turnout_by_Share_of_Population.png
I also find some of your examples, e.g., the Native Americans similarly a red herring. The plight of the Native American peoples is far more complicated than “blame capitalism.”
Not to mention things that voters do not have even the semblance of a choice, such as CIA activities in the 20th century which led to bloody coups in Indonesia, Chile, and Iran, just to name 3.
Voters control who is elected. Those that are elected control whether or not the CIA exists. The CIA would disappear tomorrow if only folks that believed the CIA shouldn’t exist were in congress.
You need to incorporate class analysis or else nothing makes sense.
No you don’t, it makes plenty of sense without “class analysis.”
Why do American voters get shitty choices that reduce their power to the advantage of the wealthy oligarch class?
Because of the people who vote a fraction of them bother with primaries and because it’s hard to find good people to run for office that want to do the job (for a myriad of reasons)?
Why are there oligarchs if capitalism doesn’t tend to monopoly?
It’s not an objective thing that “there are oligarchs.”
Does voting actually do anything?
Yes, voting matters. See policies under Trump vs policies under Biden. See Net Neutrality. See Climate Change Policy. See EPA Policy.
It’s frankly anti-intellectual to claim that “voting doesn’t do anything” or even imply as much.
Why does the electoral college still exist?
Because people vote for representatives that don’t want to get rid of it?
Why did Americans support the Iraq War?
Because people vote for representatives that supported it? Because the general population was not adequately educated and engaged in politics to understand the facts of the situation and was mislead?
What role did the media serve?
What role didn’t the media serve? What role should it have served?
You’re asking leading questions to argue your point similar to a flat-earth or giant-ism conspiracy theorist. Like, these questions do have answers and those answers go far beyond people’s economic classes and dive into a number of cultural, period, regional, and global factors. There isn’t one answer, and the one answer certainly isn’t “because the rich people made us do it.”
I’m not sure what is your criteria for authoritarian rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism
Literally, the criteria for authoritarian rule.
Capitalist countries are authoritarian too
No, they are not. Some may be, but the vast majority of western capitalistic societies are nowhere near authoritarian rule. The US is creeping towards it and (as elections do matter) may creep closer this year; time will tell.
it’s basically a meaningless signifier coming out of cold war propaganda that said communism = dictatorship and capitalism = muh freedom
That is provably false. Look at the governance models of the countries above. They were not “communism = dictatorship” they were “communism and authoritarianism.” For some reason people can’t explain away, those two things go hand and hand.
My personal take is that when you take away ownership, ownership doesn’t disappear, it just means the state is the owner. So you go from “the rich people and the government officials own the means of production” to “the government officials (that are the rich people) own the means of production” (which is exactly what happened in China).
The democratic processes in China and Cuba of example are lightyears ahead of what you can find in the US or European parliamentary so-called democracies.
That’s straight up bull shit. A mono-party rule is not under any circumstance democratic.
Can you explain one thing about how the Chinese or Cuban elections work without looking it up?
Would it change any of your opinion if I did?
But yes, I can (for China), I can explain the important part … which is that the CCP required to rubber stamp any nomination to run for office. There is no democracy when your rule can not be meaningfully challenged.
This is furthered by the infringement of rights that is the great firewall.
EDIT: For anyone who actually is reading this and wants a source instead of “he (I) said, the other person said” here’s some information fairly well compiled: https://decodingchina.eu/democracy/
I mean, I don’t have much problem with people disagreeing with me. But I’m pretty openly pro-capitalist, though I’m not a dumbass libertarian.
I recognize the need for the “capitalist edge cases” (externalities, monopolies, etc. etc.) that must be regulated and fixed for the system to work. I also recognize that we’ve failed to regulate externalities (ex: CO2 emissions), and failed to regulate monopolies / anticompetitive behavior (see Google).
So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
Overall, I accept that the commies / tankies were here first, and the history of Lemmy makes it clear why that happened.
So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
Right there with you.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
We also HAVE to teach the kids how to protect it better than people did 100 years ago. Most of our problems today stem from people voting to remove “useless red tape” (that was put there for damn good reasons).
The Marxist answer to why the red tape is removed is not because people directly vote for it, but that the State serves the bourgeoisie.
A leftist world view is the correct world view in my book. What I can stand are people who defend Russia and China.
In my experience in lemmy these same people have a very big problem with you not sharing their communist views
Yeah, the problem is that you have instances like Hexbear and Lemmy.ml that tread more into tankie territory, where if you argue anything less than the complete annihilation of the West and hail China, you’re likely to get harassed. I think rational people can agree that there’s a pretty gap between “The current system is corrupt” and "anyone who thinks differently than me should die,’ but I’ve seen plenty of irrational leftists.
I don’t agree with that crowd at all politically, but I don’t agree with everyone on all Web forums out there, all subreddits, all Usenet groups, or such either. We can share an Internet without it being a problem, I think. Just means that I tend to avoid a couple of instances and communities.
l’d be more worried about influence attempts, astroturfing, than people who openly take a position. Having a hexbear or lemmygrad home instance is being pretty open about one’s positions.
Just to point out, Lemmy.ml isn’t really like that. Before the big influx of Reddit refugees, it used to be the default Lemmy instance, and so has quite a few non-politcal communities.
It’s Lemmygrad.ml that’s the super tanky echo chamber.
I mean, I’m currently getting a ton of downvotes in .ml for suggesting the radical idea of voting for local leftist politicians over destabilizing all of Western civilization.
I’m even outwardly for the destabilization of all civilization, but apparently “actually trying to enact meaningful change” isn’t what they’re interested in, unless it involves someone else dying in their revolution.
You can’t just say “in .ml”, is my point. Which specific community?
If you’re talking about like say, worldnews@lemmy.ml, then I totally understand, but my point is that if we are talking about instances as a whole, then Lemmy.ml is quite mild in its “tankiness”.
Came here to make this point.
The CCP’s version of “communism” is almost a textbook example to me of how an interesting system that can work beautifully on the local level can be completely betrayed and turned in to something much more like an oligarchy.I don’t understand how someone of reasonable knowledge and judgement could possibly be a tankie in 2024.
Even if you adopt hardline Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as an ideology, the modern state of China has applied so much pro-capitalist revisionism to it that it’s a shell of its former self. Today, Maoist parties are suppressed in China.
I’m not a Maoist by a long shot, but I can at least appreciate the fact that the ones shouting “revisionism!” the most are the ones who have most bastardized their own texts.
it’s a shell of its former self.
And from my reading, its former self was little more than a dictatorship with ‘communist trappings,’ anyway. Mao was a monster, and nobody to be emulated from what I’ve learned.
He killed more people than almost anyone else in history. Maybe the most.
Eh, if by tankie you only mean literal communist tankies, that’s just a single aspect of human nature.
There’s absolutists, extremists, and (frankly) sociopaths in every political/ideological grouping. The more you get towards an extreme, the more you run into militant examples of the group. Tankies are just the communist bloc of the crazies.
But, there’s folks like me that are all for revolution, but draw the line at unlimited killing to achieve it, or the eradication of groups in the name of the cause. I’m an extremist by most peoples’ standards, but they’ve never been exposed to the real crazies of any extremist bloc.
You run into the bonkers adherents of communism, anarchism, nationalism, or religious extremists, and they’re essentially the same mentality because it’s a human failing that some of us are willing to kill indiscriminately for a belief. We’re just lucky that that degree of extremism is split up, keeping them from being a serious, constant threat rather than the intermittent threat that they are.
Seriously, if you ever spend time around people that are working towards a goal like a change towards socialist thought, you’ll run into the batshit ones on the edges. You hang around the wrong places, you’ll run into right wing militants as well. They, none of them, are avoid knowledge, judgement, or reason. They’re zealots, and they’d be the same no matter what ism infected them because it’s about the fire, the anger, not the actual thing they’re using as their obsession.
Fuck, I’ve met a couple of people involved in pacifist movements seriously express the idea that “we” should just rise up and kill until all the warmongers are gone. People, humans, are always going to have zealots like that, no matter what.
Because they’re paid shills using communism as a facade to spread Kremlin and CCP propaganda.
Those places are basically just The_Donald for people who think they’re more clever than to fall for the typical bullshit that was found in The_Donald.
They’re not.
What are you on about? “its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology”? Aside from your first sentence, this is just baseless word salad.
I mean just that.
Open source developers are not paid in money. One of the other major motivators is ideology, so that becomes a major motivator in practice.
All I can say is that you clearly have no familiarity with open source development or the active contributors within it.
im 17
me too
i hate communism
I don’t care about this type of stuff on Lemmy. I love Cat, Linux, FOSS and Game. Lemmy have all of them.
If you want capitalist propaganda you can go back to reddit lol
This has to be the greatest troll I’ve ever seen or else I’m a filthy commie.
It is a communist platform, you will find communists
Especially people who never lived in a communist state
Sure I’ll just go in my alt-history time travel machine and be born in a communist state. Sorry for suggesting we improve things somewhat?
Or just go to north korea or cuba and see how they live
You should go into your alt history time machine and realize how shitty it is living under communism. Why do you think every country bordering Russia hates them so much?
Must really suck to have guaranteed housing and income lol
If you think that’s how it worked, then I have news for you.
That is where I’m from, and yes we all hate russia and their stupidity
Yeah, same. It’s sad that people who don’t really know what it was like are romanticizing communism as the “solution to everything” and repeating what is essentially populist nonsense.
You don’t even need to travel in time to feel the communist spirit, just go to any post-soviet country and see the reality for yoursef.
You mean the capitalist ex-Soviet states? Lmao.
Part of the problem is capitalist regimes keep sending assassins to murder leaders of communist movements, such as FBI killing the Black Panther leaders.
Law enforcement in the US is harassing mutual aid organizations. Maybe they’re afraid we’ll repair the park fences a d deny some business a choice government contract?
While you’re not wrong, it’s important to retain a global perspective. There are “communist” leaders that were total pieces of shit and while they did have help, that help wasn’t always capitalist. Stalin is an example here.
And then there’s pieces of shit who were supported by external forces, but not by capitalist regimes seeking to undermine them. I’m not 100% confident in this history, and there’s no way I’m going to spell his name right, but, the Romanian piece if shit, Caucescu (???) came to power riding a wave of support from the Nazis. Hitler didn’t do it to destabilize Romania, but because he was like, “there’s some good old fashioned fascist genociders down there, let’s give them more guns.” And those fascist genociders were technically communists.
What I’m getting at is that the enemies of a worker-ruled communist state are many, and many of those enemies are within their own systems. Communism, like every other system, suffers from the fact that there are humans involved. Just because a communism exists doesn’t mean it’s going to be utopia.
But that also doesn’t mean that communism can’t be good, or at least better.
As a note, fascism is a tool of industrialist plutocrats to extend the life of their power as worker class quality of life deteriorates. While Hoover was in power during the Great Depression, US industrialists were looking to Hitler and Mussolini while laborers were looking to the Soviet Union.
As per the Christian nationalist movement / transnational white power movement in the US, our dependence on capitalism has driven us to the verge of civil war, and a push by the Republican party to single-party autocracy and purges of undesirable demographics, including the impoverished and homeless.
I can’t speak to Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu except to say autocracy always tends to go badly, with power consolidated until abuse and corruption is inevitable.
The whole idea behind communism is to imagine what a functional public serving state would look like, and then how to get there from here. Marx speculates on steps that might work to get to a starting point, but much like the framers of the Constitution of the United States, he didn’t know everything and couldn’t predict how it all plays out in given circumstances.
(US constitutional framers never did democracy before. They favored landowners. They assumed common homesteaders would be driven to understand and vote for their own best interests. And they got broadsided by the industrial revolution. Also, FPTP elections and two-party systems suck.)
We know civil wars tend to lead to serial dictatorships and foreign influencers looking to exploit economic vulnerability. We also grassroots mutual aid movements take generations and are prone to disruption by time and circumstances, particularly raiders and police forces. So we’re still trying to chart the geography between here and utopia.
Especially people who never lived in a communist state
That’s a rather impossible requirement, considering that all “communist states” to date have been oligarchic autocracies that were just as much about communism as they were democratic.
Real communism is market ownership by the people, and not some elite cabal of politicians or capitalists. And a top-down planned economy is pretty much anti-communism, as it violates the very fundamentals of communism as being worker-driven.
considering that all “communist states” to date have been oligarchic autocracies
And you think that is a coincidence?
Considering how America is moving towards that same state, with it’s Republicans?
No, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Oligarchic autocracies can occur under any circumstances where a power-hungry elite manage to wrest control by using the masses as “useful idiots”. The Conservative leadership, in general, have learned this trick very well.
I don’t spend a lot of time promoting communism, but I do talk a lot of shit about capitalism - I’ve lived in it. Of course when I criticise capitalism people accuse me of promoting communism and having never lived in it.
I think you should read Marx. State planning is definitely in line with Communism, the state is of the Workers and not a separate entity in Socialism and Communism.
Because there’s nothing wrong with being communist, and yet most of western civilization publicly demonizes communism and anyone who espouses communist views. Given the freedom to share an idea without fearing ad hominem attacks, ideas are judged on their merits alone.
See also: Satanism, Atheism, Socialism.
There’s nothing wrong with communism or being communist, correct. But what we know for fact is that the human species is incompatible with communism, moreso as the population is increased. There is, by nature, traits within that are antagonistic with communism. Communism has failed every time. Our best efforts so far are embracing some communist ideals whilst pandering around with others.
Will we get there? Probably.
Within this era? Hell no. We’ve only just started evolving an adaption to a shrinking planet and working with neighbours. However, as you know we’re still very divided, tribalistic, and prone to take whatever advantages we can get.
This is the realisation most people have during year 3 or 4 of the college communist phase. You accept the reality of Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm, that human nature is why we can’t have nice things…yet. I reckon around 2100–2150, after we’ve been through some more shit together and wanked another world war out of our system.
But what we know for fact is that the human species is incompatible with communism
Sorry what? How on earth would such a thing even be established as fact? This is a very bold claim.
Communism has failed every time.
I’m always really interested in what people mean when they say this. Is it that no organisation that has tried has managed to realise the utopia Marx predicted? Is it that they tend to lose wars with the USA? Is it that great suffering has occurred?
What is a system that has not failed? Like it’s pretty apparent whatever we’re doing now isn’t working. We’re in a mass extinction, the climate is destabilising, homelessness and sickness exist alongside people that personally own jet aircraft.
Genuinely I would love to know what specifically you mean because I see this a lot and it confuses the hell out of me.
Hopeful aside btw. Lord of the flies basically happened once except the kids all banded together and helped each other because humans are actually extremely pro social. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
Sorry what? How on earth would such a thing even be established as fact? This is a very bold claim.
I don’t want to sound patronising, but you have access to the entirety of our species’ history. It’s more about going through it to try find a time where it has worked. Beyond the exception of small communities, in every case I know of it has failed before maturing to a complete enough state—this actually includes some of those small communities too. Unless you’re confusing socialism with communism because of all it’s socialist traits.
So there’s a very big difference between X hasn’t happened yet and X is factually impossible. Imagine standing there in 1750s and saying “we know for a fact that the human species is fundamentally incompatible with flight”. Very shortly you would look like the complete arse that making that statement made you.
I don’t dispute nobody has achieved the utopia Marx hypothesised, that is trivial to demonstrate, I’m asking how on earth you would establish fundamental incompatibility.
Actually the current prevailing theory is that primitive communism was the state humans lived in before the founding of the first proto states, so if anything your stance should be that evidence suggests humans are fundamentally compatible with communism, unless you mean to argue we have undergone some shift in our fundamental nature in which case I would again ask where your evidence is.
Tribalism is compatible with communism. Kind of where the idea comes from. Unfortunately that’s not how society is these days. Whether communism, capitalism, or any other ism, control needs to be in place to ensure everyone is in line with it, since it’s impossible for 100% of a population to be, especially as that population goes into the millions.
With an authority or controlling wealth, everything results in an elite of some form to try keep a system in place, and that’s the start of failure.
If a village of 100 has just 1 asshole, things can be ruined. Scale up to global populations and you’ve got your answer. No ism can keep the psychopathic, narcissistic, or competitive nature of these people from ruining whatever ism it is you’d like to have.
Sorry, could you be a little more explicit in terms of how you’re answering my questions? I don’t really want to get drawn in to some aimless rambling bullshit.
I haven’t mentioned tribalism, I don’t even know what you’re referring to or why you’re bringing it up.
I don’t know what you mean by how society is these days. Are you saying society has changed fundamental human nature? what is the relevance please?
With an authority or controlling wealth, everything results in an elite of some form to try keep a system in place, and that’s the start of failure.
you’re talking to an anarchist so I have no disagreement there. I do wonder if you’ve ever read Marx though. Could you please honestly answer with what publications of his you’ve actually read? if none, what publications about Marxism have you read? if that list is exhaustive the three most recent?
If a village of 100 has just 1 asshole, things can be ruined. Scale up to global populations and you’ve got your answer. No ism can keep the psychopathic, narcissistic, or competitive nature of these people from ruining whatever ism it is you’d like to have.
???
Sorry, could you be a little more explicit in terms of how you’re answering my questions? I don’t really want to get drawn in to some aimless rambling bullshit.
Yeah, sure. The feeling’s mutual.
The topic of conversation is the scale of success of communism. If an original comment gets dissected poorly and barrels down a tangents of off-topic rabble, I re-read it and ignore stuff off-topic or unrelated, since that’s for a different conversation at a different time.
The points provided are my perspective of this topic and why I have that perspective. It is things I’ve experienced and know, not belief to plug narrative.
I haven’t mentioned tribalism, I don’t even know what you’re referring to or why you’re bringing it up.
Some things you have raised are loosely associated with our tribalism or post-tribalism era. However, tribalism is still relevant in modern society with political parties, sports teams, socioeconimcal ideologies, etc. It reaches back to our nature of belonging in a camp or community.
I don’t know what you mean by how society is these days. Are you saying society has changed fundamental human nature? what is the relevance please?
Quite the opposite. Society is a new thing. The more we attempt to progress it forward, we see more incompatibilities between our ideals and our nature. We will eventually evolve our nature into those ideals, but it cannot be entirely the other way around. As an anarchist, you’d understand your stance is predominantly the result of ideologies conflicting with human nature.
Could you please honestly answer with what publications of his you’ve actually read?
The manifesto, obv. However also a series of works and citations while studying. I don’t see any purpose in listing anything. Though I’d like to point out I was reading a lot on other modern social/political/economical ideologies so as to prevent any bias. This resulted in my conclusion that none of them work and a fool tribes themself to one. For communism especially, this is an ironic position to take, but seems to be the most popular for thee average “communist” these days. It is quite literally impossible to have communism without acceptance of conflicting ideologies or nature.
I don’t want to sound patronising, but you have access to the entirety of our species’ history
I mean, do you? You think early man was a rugged individualist who pulled himself up by his boot straps?
Homosapiens survived hundreds of thousands of years as a result of collectivism and sharing resources, which are the central tenets of communism. From a historical perspective, the ideas that underpin capitalism - private ownership, the elite controlling the means of production, individuals acting in their own self-interest - came about only very, very recently.
That’s naive. I think because you’re taking a rather shallow capitalism vs communism stance, not understanding all the capitalist traits your homo sapiens with communist traits had.
None-the-less, you’ve deviated far from the main point and referring to known prehistoric eras before the concept of the topic was conceived is not where I thought this could even go.
You’re also referring to negative byproducts of capitalism as “ideas” of it. There are few social or economical isms that have byproducts holding true to the ideas and intent. That’s my point. Human nature often ruins great ideas and why communism has yet to show any success. We have many great ideas on paper, but they don’t factor human nature.
Well, if we look at humans as a species then obviously the greater part of that is prehistorical. Clearly our “nature” is not incompatible with collectivism when looking at small communities and groups.
However, I think you have a point when it comes to more complex societies with increasingly larger populations, which, as a rule, have tended to form hierarchical class systems that are antithetical to collectivist ideals.
So we could say that humans have historically been fine with communism up to a certain point. It’s when they start to form nation states and larger communities that societies have generally gravitated towards hierarchy and plutocracy, for whatever reason.
Exactly that. And as I said, it’s not just for communism, this goes for most ideologies that influence society.
I think greed and power are the biggest kickers. These two seem to come as a way to ensure survivability in a large population. But it’s of no benefit in a small community where everyone’s acknowledged.
Homosapiens survived hundreds of thousands of years as a result of collectivism and sharing resources
Voluntarily sharing resources.
Unironically “why didn’t Marx think of human nature lol”
Actually read a book and stop trying to sound like a smartass asserting stuff on the basis of “it feels true”.
Must be the lizard people then, huh? I mean, if human nature has had nothing to do with the outcome of Marxism’s lack of uptake in global societies and cultures- Oh wait, I’m doing it again. Just because that “feels true” is might not be so. I’m learning…
So, since that’s all a lie and I’m clearly unaware that Maxism is actually wildly successful across the globe, please, recommend a book so I can keep riding the Revelation Train.
I would like to know why people keep bringing up Karl on a comment about communism. Maybe he has works you know about which explains how they are synonymous. Any literature with that would help since everything I’ve read clearly disassociated and outlines the two, including Karl’s own writings.
I didn’t know “human nature” was shorthand for “current capitalist states”.
It’s not. That would be very inefficient shorthand.
Marxism lack of global uptake on a map:
States that had communist governments in red, states that the Soviet Union believed at one point to be moving toward socialism in orange and other socialist states in yellow. Not all of the bright red states remained Soviet allies.
These aren’t Maxist states. Those that do have Marxist traits are (mostly) Stalin’s Maxism-Leninism which obviously has some very different views to Marxism, especially on social matters and rejection of the left.
You’re even commecting the Soviets in, so I can only assume you’re referring to the Stalinisation and De-Stalinisation periods, which this map seems to be just that.
But the map and commentary is still interesting.
Marxism isn’t a rigid doctrine, it adapts to the material conditions of the world around it, as it was designed to do.
That doesn’t mean anything to the point I’m raising. But it is correct and why it has hybridised with other ideologies. It is another part of human nature to pick and choose what suits best. Also why capitalism is as bad as it is.
The issue that every “communist” when pushed will take position on atrocities committed by various communists regimes… they gonna do that thing that “fascists” do: “well he really did not do it but if he did, they clearly deserved it”
Tell that to east Asians or Europeans to their face… everyone is deff hard online tho.
I find that liberals are much more dismissive of US atrocities. Most communists I speak to know a wealth of details about the failings of mao and stalin.
Ask a US conservative about our 20th and 21st century atrocities - torture, massacres, coups, support for genocidal regimes and ecocidal companies, etc. - and they’ll proudly defend our brutality. Ask a liberal and they’ll hedge, deny and justify like an internet tankie who’s never opened a history book.
Boomers are deff in denial but younger gen seems less likely to straight up deny it. It would be coached as “lesser of two evils” lol
Social media has a lot of bad faith actors who polarize every discussion so top comments will generally be extreme with an inflammatory shit show under.
That hasn’t been my experience at all. Sure, there are nationalists who will defend their own favorite Communist^™ Regime, but an ideological believer in communism is just that.
every “communist” when pushed will take position on atrocities committed by various communists regimes… they gonna do that thing that “fascists” do: “well he really did not do it but if he did, they clearly deserved it”
I have never encountered that argument. Is that something Tankies say?
What I have seen is the often mocked argument, that these regimes were not communist in the first place.
Actual communism has never existed and probably never will.
There are however plenty of communists that will openly denounce stalinism. That is the entire premise of Animal Farm, btw.
I don’t think its possible to be on social media of any kind without encountering propaganda of some kind. what frustrating about news nowadays is more the stuff that is not an outright lie. just leaves out things and lines things up for a particular narrative. So you can’t be like. This right here is an outright lie (I mean oftentimes you can but not always) and instead have to be like. this ignores this or does not take this into account. etc.
Because fascists are mostly content with gobbling Fox News cock.
Why are we getting homophobic?
Why’d you assume it was gay?
I don’t observe any homophobia in that comment. Their statement is that fascists submit to anything Fox News says, and makes no remarks about oral sex beyond the graphic metaphor. Also fascist is a genderless term so there is no way to know if the fascist is gobbling on same or opposite gender cock.
Gobbling cock is great. Fox News cock, though? Have some standards.
U/TheUncannyObserver there is a lesson in there…
Oh, there’s plenty of fem fascists out there too.
“I’m 17 and I hate communism”
😂 enough said. Come back when you’re a bit older and a bit wiser.
