this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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I think fundamentally most people would agree with that. The problem with communism though is that it’s not just a staple of the USSR. There is something on the order of 48 countries that have experienced state-sponsored communism in relatively recent times and it has never once succeeded in achieving these goals but tends to exacerbate poverty, class division, and government oppression of human rights, if not resulting in completely failed states.
Some will read this and assume I am advocating for capitalism. I am not. Asserting problems with communism does not imply capitalism is perfect or even good. But if we do choose to abandon capitalism, the wrong decision is to move to a system with a 100% failure rate of achieving its goals over dozens of historical attempts. As the meme suggests, many Eastern Europeans are old enough to have personal experience with those failures.
Where communism can work well is on a smaller, voluntary scale. When people choose to get together and establish their own rules for pooling resources, small communities can sometimes live quite satisfactorily this way. But no, if we are willing to call capitalism a failure based on its history we have to be honest enough to say the same thing about state-sponsored communism.
I'm not quite sure how to reply to that, because you make some good points. I flatly disagree that communism can't work. It's like saying Capitalism couldn't work because for a whole century the French revolution was failing before 1789. Which is not even the first humanity's attempt for a capitalist system, but the first well known one. We still have ways to go and failed attempts to try to get it right.
However, the most important thing in my eyes is to learn from the past. Being in a country that was surrounded by communism, tried, and was refused help from the then socialist states, I know very many people that still look back to those times with fondness. From my country and neighboring ones that were parts of the socialist block. But all those implementations had their problems and these same people would be the first to admit that. Our job is to go through all that history and judge it with clear heads, see where it went wrong and how or why, so in the next attempts we'll fail in a different way, until we get it right. Similar to how every socioeconomically system did so far.
I don't care about Anarchy or Socialism or Trotskyism or whatever, as long as it gets us to the end goal of a classless system without economic or power elites that see us as data nodes to profit off. Each of those approaches has its pros and cons and there are many others as well.
But saying it failed so we best move on, because the first handful of attempts went wrong is not going to bring any change whatsoever.
Yeah I get you. But it’s important to realize that we’re talking about much more than a handful of attempts. I see the value in learning from history and iterating on processes to try and get better over time. But if we’re honestly striving for the best system for humanity, what we shouldn’t do is say, “I really want it to be communism so let’s just assume that must be the right answer and keep trying it over and over again until it works.” At some point you do have to be willing to try something new.
It’s my opinion that communism has had more than a fair shot and has been eliminated from the running. But I am also not so crazy as to immediately disregard some new communist paradigm that theoretically works in some new way that is designed to fix the problems that continually appeared in communist systems historically. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen it presented yet. And it’s also not what these “western teenagers” (as the meme calls them) are advocating for. They use language and symbols characteristic of very specific brands of communism that were massive historical failures in terms of preserving human rights and eliminating poverty and class divisions.
I disagree about the part of enough attempts and fair share, but honestly, I don't care much. Could very well be something completely different and as long as it kept the basis of no inequality, no ruling elite, free education and medical care and so on, I'd be in. I just haven't found anything that does that even half convincingly.
My belief is that similar to how back in the 18th century, they couldn't see past the following system, namely capitalism, we can't see and plan for past a classless system now, which for the moment is communism, regardless of the path there. That doesn't mean that societal evolution will stop there.
At least we are disagreeing respectfully :)
Another interesting point is whether we attribute the successes and failures of a state on it's particular social, economic and political situation or it's ideology as the root cause of anything. Most people, when they agree with an ideology, will attribute the good things to the ideology and the bad things to specific circumstances, and the opposite with ideologies they do not agree with. The more nationalist Americans will tell you that Cuba is poor because it is communist, and that Bush invaded Iraq either because he was corrupt or because he was promoting freedom. However there's also the argument that Cuba is poor because it is sanctioned to hell by the US, and that Bush invaded Iraq because of American capitalist imperialism. Which one of these you agree with pretty much entirely depends on your ideological opinions rather than what actually happened, and as far as making a valid argument either one is at least a coherent point.
The reality is that you have elements of both the fundamental ideology and the specific political circumstances in every social outcome you see. Which is an idea quite fatal to most of the rhetoric you see nowadays and part of why it's impossible to have any political discussion with people you have fundamental disagreements with.
😂😂😂
yes vietnam no longer exhist indeed north vietnam never once succeeded
consider reading a book and touching grass
those who read know
the largest economy in the world is a socialist state dedicated to working towards communism ⚒️🌍
It's also an oppressive police state where huge portions of the population live in poverty and endure awful working conditions. Oh and they're actively engaged in genocide against a minority ethnic group. But sure if we just ignore all the downsides it's great.
Nor is it, in fact, the largest economy in the world by any measure.
I think you must have inferred something from my comment that I didn’t actually say. I didn’t say every communist country ceases to exist. I also didn’t say that communism can’t generate a large economy.
What I said was that it has a 100% failure rate of achieving its goals, where those goals are economic equality, and elimination of poverty and class divisions. Most open pro-communists today have an additional goal of increasing access to basic human rights which communism has historically failed at as well. I did mention that some communist states have failed outright.
In the case of China, which you alluded to, note that China deliberately weakened their communism in the 90s as part of a series of economic reforms that introduced capitalist principles designed to stimulate growth. Specifically, agriculture was de-collectivized, Chinese business were opened to foreign investment, permission was granted for entrepreneurs to start businesses, state-owned industries were privatized, and many price controls were removed. By 2005, the private sector was responsible for 70% of China’s GDP. There is no reason to believe that China’s economy would be anywhere near as large as it is today absent these reforms.
But is that what you personally want out of your system? A large economy? Is that what matters most?
mate you really twisted yourself to trying to explain two unequitable things.
china literally #1
In what world is a country with billionaires and an autocratic ruling class in which the workers decidedly do not control the means of production, "socialist"?
you aint a communist i couldnt gove a rats booty what yoj believe
go watch some mpre fox news