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Give me one example of a communist country that didn’t immediately devolve into totalitarianism.
That’s the problem. Patch Communism to remove the dictator/elite class exploit please. I wanna like this game but I can’t support a movement that just reshuffles the elite class. Classless. No hierarchy. Nerf ambitious psychopaths. Nerf people’s tendencies to simp for them.
The problem with communism is that Russia was the first to try it and their culture revolves around corruption so much that it is unable to separate “us vs them” and the idea of personal gain from the ideals of communal wealth, which is the core of what communism is.
Russia then exports their flawed model to countries flipping due to frustrations born from the system capitalistic imperialism. The world has only ever had Russian style communism - either Lenin or Trotsky. No one uses German communism, like what Marx was proposing, ACTUAL communism.
Right. And now most (loud) internet communists simp for the hammer and sickle and act like Stalin did nothing wrong but from my POV there’s no actual difference between Nazi Germany and Soviet Union or CCP. The end result is identical. Oppression.
I honestly don’t think humanity is capable of true communism because somebody somewhere with a high CHA score and a complete sociopath is gonna herd the sheep into yet another bullshit dictatorship. And people can’t help but simp for these people. To me it’s completely crazy and when I bring this up to people IRL they look at me like I’m the crazy one.
This is not a defense for the status quo however.
I don’t see anyone simping for Stalin in this thread and rarely do tbh.
Not only is simping for sociopaths with charisma completely possible under capitalism, it’s pretty much required lol. All the better if you can be sociopath yourself; as long as you get money you’ll have won by every metric that matters in the U.S.A., that’s the sad part.
Simping for charismatic sociopaths is a HUMAN trait not specificly capitalist or whatever. Everyone does it.
Stalin was a piece of shit but there’s mountains of difference between the Nazis and the USSR, and the CPC as well. Was the USSR perfect? Fuck no, it wasnt even good. Was it as bad as Nazi Germany, the country that killed millions of Jews for their ethnicity? Also fuck no.
To invoke Bill Burr: why don’t Stalin’s kills count? He’d be sitting up at the top of the scoreboard with Mao if you counted them.
Political murder isn’t inherently better than ethnic murder. Stalin and Hitler both murdered out of malice, the fact that you’re clearly more comfortable with political murder shows a dangerous bias
Would he? By modern estimates and not the Conquest numbers made before the CIA documents and USSR archives were available, would Stalin be sitting up with Mao? Even then, most of Mao’s “death toll” were due to extreme incompetence, such as telling his soldiers to kill birds who were eating rice, which led to an overpopulation of bugs who ate far more rice.
I fully acknowledge that Stalin was a piece of shit. However, the USSR ultimately did provide for their people and people were generally hopeful. The Nazis were committing genocide purely for the sake of it, Stalin was murdering to keep the USSR going against what he feared were counter revolutionaries. One is evil, one is paranoid and dangerous.
Killing “counter-revolutionaries” was just Stalin putting a different label on whatever enemies he wanted killed. It’s no different. Because the USSR was ostensibly a revolutionary and progressive government they just used more palatable phrasing and staged sham trials, but it amounts to the same.
I already explained that he was paranoid and dangerous, but he wasn’t killing out of pure malice and evil like Hitler with the Jews and other genocide victims. There’s a clear difference between those.
There is non-state communism. This whole state or national communism thing is the new creation. With which Lenin shit the bed on multiple fronts. Centralizing power, to be wielded by a somewhat benevolent dictator. A thing that generally does not exist. And in the small instances it ever did was short-lived. Counting that they would be good judges of character and would never let control fall into the lap of monsters like Stalin Etc. Lenin may have had good intentions. But he is the Bad Luck Brian of good intentions. And his road to hell was definitely paved with them.
Traditional communism, of the variety Marx discussed was a significantly different beast. That’s why the Soviets, China, and North Korea are all specifically classified as ML Communism. The L being for Lenin. Anarcho communist are anti-totalitarian. They are also anti-government structure in general. Well at least at the extremes. There is a bit of a gradient. But communism isn’t what a lot of us have been educated to think that it is.
All this ML and vanguard theory is designed to buff the corruption / exploitation tendencies. If you start from and accept flawed theory, you get a flawed state.
I agree. My only point was that there are other types of communism than the ones we are propagandized and indoctrinated with. And that not all of them are flawed. Like Lenin’s monstrosity.
Me and the boys looking for a single communist country that wasn’t a totalitarian hellhole:
Me, looking for a single communist country.
I hate being that person but communism has essentially been exclusively used as a campaign promise by corrupt/evil groups attempting to seize power from the population.
Broadly speaking, people don’t understand communism and assume it just means “you own nothing and share everything. And starve.”
Just like people argue that crony capitalism isn’t capitalism, totalitarian communism isn’t communism. Corruption is the real problem.
The problem isn’t really “corruption”, but systens which allow and even encourage corrupt actions.
That’s why these countries turned into totalitarian hell holes, the system was set up for a small group of people to rule over everyone else.
And Capitalism isn’t such a system?
It is
Which is diametrically opposed to what communism is supposed to be. They just stole the name.
Corruption is the real problem and all systems must develop a tolerance of it to some degree.
It seems to me, when looking at the history of communism, that it has a particularly low tolerance for corruption and that things go to shit quick.
It’s not that true communism hasn’t existed, it’s that it simply cannot exist.
It’s like a shitty cake recipe that looks good on TikTok, you can tell me how great the cake looks all day, but I saw you add a cup of salt to the batter
Here I go fixing communism again…
First up, just because it hasn’t worked, there’s no reason it can’t work - or is there? I’m all ears. You missed that bit.
Beyond that, the most common issue is the fact that communism is typically achieved abruptly, with little to no pre-work. If you don’t address the centralisation of wealth (and by extension, political influence), of course power is going to collapse back into authoritarian hellishness.
Transition via social democracy, taxing away the inequality, getting the populace on board with world-class social services, providing more services over time, as you transition from worker representation on boards and equity stakes to full worker ownership and workplace democracy over time.
Taking the benefits of the people fuelling the economy - workers, and handing it to wealthy shareholders that contribute nothing as they consolidate into monopolies, creating market failure in an economy fundamentally built on markets makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There’s a better way - it just takes a bit of work.
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The idea is to minimise the power imbalance to prevent individuals from being able to act on their own interests to the detriment of others, while changing incentive structures to minimise the benefit of doing so.
The government can intervene (and has done so historically) to crack up monopolies. By failing to do so in an economic system where economic power is tantamount to political power, we’re signing the execution order for democracy. Look at the political influence that the likes of Musk, Bezos, and Gates already hold. It spits on the face of democracy - a concept that I happen to value. This is a problem with a simple set of solutions.
The path we’re on only leads to worse lives for all of us - lower wages (they’ll only avoid slavery as long as the government stops them - look at Western companies operations in developing countries), less competition, higher prices, less social mobility, the elimination of the concept of meritocracy, escalating tragedy of the commons… We can and should do better.
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The greatest predictor of corruption, as with most crime, is inequality. Removing massive inequality eliminates the means to fund corruption, while a fairer allocation of resources disincentives it (though I’d also support strong penalties for engaging in it).
Western companies operate overseas because they’re financially incentivised to do so - this is largely due to cheap labour with minimal protections (slaves more frequently than there should be), but also due to factors like proximity to raw materials. The fact that they would move to America in a heartbeat isn’t exactly a selling point - it’s just more evidence of the harm done by capitalism, and an argument for worker enfranchisement. The long, well documented history of the CIA overthrowing governments to install regimes more favourable to US commercial interests doesn’t exactly help this point either.
The free market doesn’t self regulate - it naturally collapses into monopolies, and all the associated suffering, graft, and market failure. The corruption is an example of the failure of these companies to self regulate as they work to bypass existing regulation. Regulators regulate companies chase profit - no matter what… We should empower the regulators to stop the worst tendencies of companies operating under the profit motive. Again, look to western countries operating in the developing world for all the evidence you need of this - nestle is a great, though far from unique case study - abhorrent labour practices, environmental vandalism, political fuckery, and predatory marketing in particular.
This brings me to ask - why would you cheer for our political democracy to be choked out by a lack of economic democracy? Why would you not want democracy in your workplace rather than having the fruits of your labour leeched away by unaccountable, unproductive, uninformed owners?
You are correct, but that is because no one has ever applied communism IRL as it should be. It has always come along with a dictatorship type of leadership sadly.
It’s more accurate to say Communism has never been achieved. It’s a far-future society, not one you can just jump to overnight.
let me know when you find one. Meanwhile,I’ll be looking for a single marxist country that the US didn’t actively try to destroy.
Capitalists are going to oppose communism and socialism no matter what anyways because it threatens their wealth. They are doing well under the capitalist system but the ones who have real power and wealth wouldn’t have it under other systems, so they will use whatever words to prevent it, and if that fails, whatever force they can muster.
Whether or not communism can work is a seperate debate, but IMO it’s important to realize that those who benefit the most from the current system will go to great lengths to protect it, resulting in many bad faith arguments that don’t make sense. Trickle down theory was another one of these.
The only way to create a functioning communist state is to enforce it. It is inherently totalitarian in it’s very Inception.
It is also assumes that all involved work for the greater good which is so woefully naive and makes any honest attempt at communism vulnerable to the most malevolent.
Blatantly untrue. The state controls the monetary policy and can restrict capitalism through lack of available currency. No force is needed. Barter opens up communal valuations of labor to set a price for a person’s time based on what they can personally contribute. Want to hire someone to rewire your house? Better have equivalent skills or time to compensate the electrician.
Capitalism has conditioned people to think that violence is the only alternative to it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_money
Would you mind explaining how any state could prevent this? Whenever money became worthless, people resorted to using something else as a currency. Want someone to rewire your house? That’s 5 liters of gasoline / 20 cigarettes / whatever.
Marx suggested Labor Vouchers, which are paid based on time worked and destroyed upon first use.
It sounds like an interesting idea, but it has a few drawbacks I think. A quick example: If you wanted to move to another city, you may not want to keep every piece of furniture and instead “sell” it. You could just gift them to your neighbors or the next person moving in but you paid for it with vouchers and you don’t want to waste the hours worked after all. How would you get rid of the furniture while still keeping its value? With a currency it’s trivial - just sell it. But you can’t really do this with vouchers, since they can’t be transfered by design. You could perhaps trade it, but what if no one has anything you need?
And that’s ignoring the glaring privacy issues of a centralised, personalised labor voucher system. Sure, it prevents fraud but it also allows the government a lot of insight into your life.
Presumably, you would gift the unneeded and unnecessary goods. Considering Socialism is designed in a more equitable way, people wouldn’t struggle, assuming the industry is sufficiently developed.
As for privacy issues, we already have absolutely no privacy, and work in a mostly cashless system anyways.
I don’t know, just because you don’t struggle doesn’t mean you don’t want to keep the value of something you worked for. And the value of the furniture (or any product) would be determined by the voucher cost. Something costing a lot of vouchers will be seen as valuable because it takes a lot of time and effort to acquire it.
And I would say there’s quite a lot of privacy you’re able to achieve, it’s just not the default. I live in a country where cash is still the default, often times you’re unable to pay with card at all. Plus, there are a few ways to pay anonymously online using certain crypto currencies - although this has a ton of drawbacks and is mostly used for illegal purposes.
You’re still thinking in terms of a Capitalist system though, with Capitalist living standards. In a more equitable system, donation would be even more common.
That’s money too.
Not exactly. Money is transferable. If you mean a representation of Value, then yes, it’s the same, but can’t accumulate.
If you go by the definition of money : “The primary functions which distinguish money are as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment.” (Wikipedia, but it’s a workable definition).
It’s a medium of exchange, because people can use them to buy things. It’s a unit of account, because it will be used as a metric for economic calculation (ie accounting). It’s a store of value too, because people don’t have to spend it at a particular time. And the “standard of deferred payment” part is also fulfilled, as it quantify the work-time debt society (or simply a company) owe to a worker.
I honestly fail to see what difference you are trying to make.
The distinction is necessary because when Marx refers to Communism as a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, Labor-Vouchers aren’t the money he is referring to as abolishable. They mechanically work entirely differently as they are used up, rather than transferred.
Barter opens up communal valuations of labor to set a price for a person’s time based on what they can personally contribute.
Soo… money?
Barter is the model we are given for a non-currency centric society… It is also not how money less societies work. In a general sense the most common purely non-market socialist societies of the past and present (Communism alocates resources and property on a more rigid basis of “need” as artificially determined by an authority ideally (ideal being the operative word) democratic in nature, socialism just holds specific properties or services as common trust and can be split into multiple ideologies based on what should be considered public trust) had more like a running tab where people aren’t really keeping track of how much they are benefiting.
Like if I come over and ask you for some of the wheat you’re growing you’ll probably say yes because we’re neighbours and I helped you build your house and will give you a share of my apple harvests later on. If all of our group keep supporting each other this way and helping each other out we can get everything we need. People do still notice and socially reject shirkers in these systems but it is more like you recognize their stingy behaviour over a longer period. There are still theives who take things they are not welcome to and there does exist a sense of personal property. Trade straight across for roughly equivalent goods still has a place in these societies but in a limited way for people they don’t see very often or people they have cause not to trust to hold up their end.
Barter still frames things in money centric (though technically not capitalist) veiw of labour. That it sounds inconvenient is largely the point. It’s vaguely propagandist to give you nothing to imagine but a society obsessed with personal ownership of all property that is individualistic in nature.
Not to say that the end goal gor socialists is to revert to these systems. Market socialism basically combines capitalist systems into a blended system as most socialists agree that there are advantages to capitalism worth keeping around, just that unchecked it’s a monster that partitions off what should be held in public trust to parties who erode the public good for personal gain that never fully returns to the system.
No. In the example, an electrician is skilled and can provide their skills and experience to your project - but they have a project of their own that they need help with. Unfortunately he wants help converting an old car into an EV, which you don’t have experience in so you become unskilled labor for his task. An hour of skilled labor would be worth several unskilled labor hours, in this example, but that value conversion wouldnbe determined by the local community.
No money, just being helpful until the project is done.
Common currency has existed since civilization began for an excellent reason: what you just wrote. The goal of communism is to make sure people aren’t unduly exploited for their labor by a ruling class.
There are aspects of human society where some ideologies make more sense than others. Adherence to communism or capitalism exclusively is antithetical to a healthy society.
Sincerely, A mostly socialist
And how would this hypothetical communist but not authoritarian state enforce its will? Polite suggestions? Strongly worded letters? Do you honestly think the wealthy and their allies will just throw up their hands and let them have it?
The same way capitalism does: not participating in the system would cause the loss of home and no prospect of food, water, electricity, or any other service that would require payment as prescribed by the system. No overt force needed - the realization that the rest of their life would be a struggle of their own making will be enough, just like it is today.
If there’s no force, there would be nothing stopping “alternative” currencies from emerging (crypto).
Government not always controlled the monetary policy, and it does it only through force. Without it things would quickly revert to its “natural” state, and we would have some sort of Agorist system
You’re determined for forceto be used when there is just no need for it. If people and services use alternative currency then that’s fine, it will be just like Bitcoin and crypto today where a handful of people put their money into it but ultimate adoption will be few and far between. Right now is like a golden age for crypto and where can you spend it? Very specific places - none of which don’t provide shelter or power for living.
Try using only crypto to live and see how that goes for you. Again, no force is needed. Social pressure will solve the outliers when they see how much extra work their own lifestyle is compared to everyone else. If those outliers wish to struggle, go for it. They will be rewarded with the same lifestyle as everyone else, just work way harder for it.
Do you think private property is not enforced in a capitalist state?
This ignores thousands of years of history pre statehood. Non communist systems have only exist for a tiny fraction of human history, whereas most of our history was spent in systems much closer to communism than anything else.
They just need societal systems in place that would allow for our much larger communities to work properly.
And your comment about working for the greater good is kind of stupid in this regard as well. Communism is not a lawless society where people can do whatever they want without consequence.
You would have cops in your communist state. I wouldn’t have a state.
I haven’t seen a single not authoritarian hellhole that communismd
I haven’t seen a single non degenerate productive member of society that anime pfp’d
ITT liberals who think they understand communism because they’ve seen a lot of memes about it.
For everyone going, show me an example for non authoritarian socialism Autonomous region of north eastern Syria .
If you think capitalism is democratic in any way, or just generally the natural order of things you’ve not been paying attention.
The only way to enforce communism is at gunpoint!
communism encourages totalitarianism.
How?
Communism is a bit more nebulous, so I’ll explain it with socialism if that’s okay. I’m also going to do so from the ground up, because it’s pretty clear if you go step by step, so apologies in advance if it comes off as condescending for that reason.
Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production. The means of production refers to whatever creates goods and provides services.
If you think about what falls under the umbrella of goods and services, it’s pretty much everything. Food, water, shelter, health care, all of it should be held in common. You can see totalitarianism emerging already, but I’ll expand a bit further.
What does held in common mean? Well in theory it means that a collective takes ownership and control over something. If a state turns socialist in the purest sense, then that state and the people in it are the collective. The “common” would mean the ruling socialist party, of which everybody is a member.
So how do people get things done? Well, if someone owns a restaurant, they probably hire managers to keep order and give tasks to the workers. If a collective owns a restaurant, someone still has to decide who manages (you find out immediately that you need them if you try without). Since the state is the collective, then the state decides who the managers are. The workers may not like the managers, but instead of having a single owner to deal with, you now have the entire state to deal with.
You might think a union would be the answer to this problem, but unions are both a collective and a service, so if it’s truly socialism it would be of the state as well. The state would have little incentive to act against itself. In socialist countries, it’s common for unions to become agents of the state very quickly, this enacting state level control over how people protest their work conditions
Rinse and repeat with every good and service you can think of, and you have total state control over basically everything.
Couldn’t the workers decide who manages the restaurant? And get rid of them if they don’t like them? I don’t get what you mean by “the state decides who the managers are”.
The ownership of the restaurant is held in common, so if it comes down to a vote everybody in the state would have just as much a right to it as everyone else, so it wouldn’t inherently fall to the workers. If it did, it would be at the behest of the state; that’s true in both cases actually. It just isn’t a natural outcome for the workers to vote for their own manager: if it existed, it would only exist as long as the state allows it or chooses things to work that way.
Also, should workers be choosing their own supervisors? I would argue, regardless of whatever ism you subscribe to, without considering the political climate whatever work is sitting in, I would never see it as a good idea to let workers decide who supervises them. Managers are there to help workers who don’t know what to do, are unwilling to do what they need without supervision, or are just generally unorganized. If someone is in need of a manager, chances are they would also not know the qualities needed for management. In the best case, it’s because there’s some expertise they didn’t know was required for the job that they didn’t know about, in the worst case, I can imagine teenage me voting for the person I liked who didn’t give a fuck
In any case, it wouldn’t take long for some restaurant somewhere to choose a manager that appeases their laziness, stupidity, or whatever out of a desire to escape discipline and/or hard work. People are selfish, it’ll happen. As soon as it does, those in control of the state will decide it’s best to have a process in which they decide who manages their workers on your behalf. You can’t have a full direct democratic vote for every decision, it’s just not feasible, so the alternative is the party that you represent and represents you back and makes decisions on your behalf.
It’s also very easy for those in control of the state to see potential gains in changing the process to give themselves more power, that can and will just happen spontaneously out of a desire to strengthen the party
So your point is people are too selfish and egoistical to have a real saying on how work is organized? Then why are people responsible enough to vote for the right politicians every four or so years? Where is the line? Following your argumentations it seems best if someone in charge makes all the decisions without the majority having any saying. That cannot be what you want.
Your desire to have a ruling party and then “all the others” is telling. Managers should absolutely be elected by the workers. Not all workers are lazy - in fact 20% of the employees create 80% of the issues. The other majority of folks want to work and want to be a part of a team. It’s how democracy works too - one of the people is voted on by all the others to be in charge for a short time. This arrangement doesn’t seem to have resulted in any democracy being less productive than a more authoritative state. In fact, looking at the least economically productive states, all of them are dictatorships where the people DON’T vote for a leader. They are assigned one and the people have to hope they aren’t lazy, corrupt, or self serving. The people don’t get a voice - just like your ideal work environment.
It’s wild that the parallel of democracy was brought up too and you also then say democracy ain’t feasible. It’s like admitting to being a fascist without saying the words - the belief that people can’t be trusted is there and all that needs to be done to capitalize on that belief is an antagonist culture or people.
You do realize you can structure hierarchy from the bottom up, not necessarily top down?
I don’t even know what part of my comment you think you’re refuting
All of it. You’re making this blanket claim that Communism is Totalitarian because you can’t imagine decentralized, bottom-up organization.
Do you think countries that currently run services like trains or healthcare or utilities in the ownership of collective trend towards totalitarianism?
Because while I don’t have any imperial data, it seems to me that corruption and totalitarianism is much more common in capitalist ventures where a small group of people with questionable ethics ha e full control over it and almost always abuse the position for their own benefit.
Because while I don’t have any imperial data, it seems to me that corruption and totalitarianism is much more common in capitalist ventures where a small group of people with questionable ethics ha e full control over it and almost always abuse the position for their own benefit.
I hadn’t read this point when I replied before. This doesn’t sound right to me, could you give me some examples of capitalist ventures that you’re talking about?
I think everything is corruptible, so I think it’s best for the people to be ready to start their own private businesses to open up the market. Don’t like Pet Smart ethics? Well I live in a corporate society in which private business owners tried opening up more ethical pet stores, but pet stores aren’t wildly profitable. It’s a business of passion. They went out of business because only massive corporations can afford business and property taxes.
Pretty much any major company has had a corruption scandal at some point. But to give you some examples. Goldmine sachs, Wells forgot, fifa, Siemens, amazon, Microsoft etc. Etc.
Each of those are publicly traded corporations. Meaning they’re not privately owned. I know it’s confusing, because people call them capitalist all the time, but they’re wrong. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, and those businesses are not privately owned. Capitalism cannot take responsibility for their corruption any more than socialism. Corporatism is the problem there
Lmao wtf, that’s some Olympic level mental gymnastics you’re doing here.
I’ve heard A LOT of BS defenses for capitalism over the years but “publicly traded companies are not capitalist” really taked the cake.
At risk of taking the bait: those companies are still privately owned by their shareholders, just that ownership is traded freely among the capitalist class.
Like just think for a second. Most property is traded publicly on the market, but does that mean you don’t privately own your own home? Of course not, it’s still your private property regardless if everyone had the same chance to buy it.
Yes they do, though just answering the question at face value would give you an incorrect impression of the merit of publicly held utilities. Having the government run health care gives the government control over health care. As a Canadian, I have been both grateful for the care I’ve been given and frustrated by the control they have over how I take care of myself.
But as a member if the collective you have power to change that. Whereas in a orivste system you have no say over it and the people running it have more incentive to screw you over.
Canada may not have a perfect healthcsre system but its miles better than the US system.
Call me when Tankies have a viable political party in the US, or when one gets elected President. Until then, they’re my anti-capitalist allies. I’m an anarchist. This fight is in the future, if it ever occurs at all.
You should lookup the history of Makhnovshchina to understand how alliances with authoritarians end
Thanks. Interesting reading. But it only got to that point after the revolution. The left in America can’t even organize. Let’s have that revolution first, then remember the history we’ve learned.
The left in America does organize.
The justice democrats are practically defunct. The DSA can’t get elected. Politically, there is no left.
Tankies I’ve met don’t start derailing things in the future. They start now. And they’re in our political groups.
What are they derailing?
Only every discussion and attempt at effective mobilization.
That hasn’t been my experience. They’ve only been friendly. If you treat them as enemies, of course they’ll be hostile.
