this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
1259 points (82.8% liked)
Memes
45727 readers
533 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why a lot of people on Lemmy like communist so much? As a person who grow up in a country which is almost destroyed by the communist party in the past I don't know what to say just why?, capitalist or not it's depends on your own country's government, at least you still can talking shit about them without getting arrested and torture to death, have we not learn from the past or other communist country, why don't you live in North Korea or China and see how've you like it
I'm going to take your question as genuine and answer in equal.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Most leftists will agree with you, the USSR and other Eastern Europe countries that were communist did a lot of damage and most likely more harm. They committed atrocities. They were authoritarian. It was disgusting.
The leftists who still prop those countries up on their shoulders are what many call tankies. Today they sing praise about Russia, China, and North Korea, but your observation is correct, they won't ever move there. These are individuals who repeat propaganda and are, ultimately, just red fascists. When you actually dig into their ideals they parallel and sometimes mirror Nazis.
I believe leftism cannot have an authoritarian element to it. I think most social hierarchies need to be destroyed. I think the only way to have a socialist society is through democratic means. Democracy in the workplace and national level. I think most of us can agree workers need higher wages and there is a wealth gap that needs to be dismantled. I think most of us believe healthcare needs to be universal, food and shelter and water, education, information (internet), speech, and much more should be free and readily available. There is this element of freedom that needs to be achieved that isn't found the countries that are "communist".
I don't want to explicitly say those communist countries wasn't "real communism", but fascists, authoritarianism, always appropriate from progressive movement. There is no freedom, especially of workers, under a dictatorship. If workers are starving, dying, being outright black bagged and killed, i don't think that can be considered communist.
The last paragraph comes across as about "no true Scotsman" as it gets. Maybe true IRL communism is as much fiction as the star trek depiction of it is.
That's the point of my concluding paragraph. I am acknowledging that fallacy. So I ask, if freedom is an actual component to socialism, communism, or anarchism, then is the USSR actually a communist state? I can easily argue North Korea isn't. China and Russia aren't socialist at all. Russia is an oligopoly and China is just state capitalism.
So what is "true socialism"? I don't think we can ever achieve. We can't have a "perfect" society, but I do think we can get close enough having workers been more in control of their labor, be more democratic, and not live in an authoritarian state. We may not 100% be able to live in a Star Trek universe but I think we can get quite close.
Sure, here are some examples:
As you may imagine, they aren't finding their way to exist easy. But they sure are having success in learning how to create a horizontal society.
The former is operating illegally amidst intense violence that they have as much responsibility for as the Mexican government and the latter have committed ethnic cleansing. So I'm not sure why you think they are good examples. Unless you think socialism means people must be killed.
In the "capitalism did better than communism/socialism" debate i still feel a great lack of historical context. Eastern Europe has been largely destroyed by the Nazis. China has lived through brutal Japanese occupation and a genocide of 10 Million people. Korea has been subject to a war emplyoing terrible new weapons such as Napalm to bring great destruction.
Meanwhile the US homeland has been faring without any destruction, France surrendered quick enough to avoid most damage and the UK sucessfully fended off the Nazi attacks so the damage was limited.
Purely economically speaking the Western allies were off to a much better start than the Eastern countries. So i would argue that for the economical question, it remains impossible to claim capitalism to be superior to socialism. Otherwise authoritarianism is always to the detriment of the people.
Hello, I'd like to speak for people I disagree with
As a leftist whose platform doesn't seem to include a word about abolishing capitalism, any time I am challenged by someone to the left of Bernie Sanders, I turn into a right wing crank telling people 'if you don't like it get out'
And today I'd like to tell you about horseshoe theory
It's an unfortunately nuanced subject, where people don't agree on the underlying definitions of words. For instance, I think you're confusing "capitalism" with "democracy". You can have authoritarian undemocratic capitalist countries, where you can't talk shit about your government.
For me personally, I think communism has too many issues to actually try, but I like some of its theoretical tennants when compared to that of capitalism. Those goals are something to strive for. The spirit of communism is helping eachother and rewarding work, and the spirit of capitalism is sacrificing others for personal gain
I think a lot of people don't want to admit that most political ideas ranging from communism to capitalism are half baked labels we stick onto a collection of beliefs about what works best to solve certain problems. If you got rid of the labels you might just ask the question of what works and where the money will come from
Because they are reacting to living under the oppressive structures of late capitalism. Having been raised in a capitalist world, they naturally overemphasize economic systems and their alternatives and make assumptions about government.
So when they communism theyusually mean communism + some equitable government or just they mean socialist democracy.
Funnily enough, you live pretty well in China these days if you're a good little capitalist.
"China is capitalism with beastly grin"
- Ekaterina Shulman
This community is on lemmy.ml, which explicitly leans hard left. Maybe a memes community on another instance would be less like this
A number of reasons. Just like you claim a Communist party almost destroyed your country, Capitalist parties destroy and are destroying many countries as well. The existence of bad Communist parties does not itself mean Communism is structurally a bad thing, as pursuit of a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society is a noble goal for humanity.
I think it's fair to say that decentralization is a good check against Authoritarianism, and as such, this should be extended to the workplace, not just government.
As far as why Lemmy leans left, the founder is a Communist, and principles of decentralization and federation tend to appeal far more to leftists, while Capitalist-inclined individuals have Reddit.
deleted
Heads up, this guy is a troll. His sole, self declared purpose is to be an asshole and pick fights. Not worth engaging
I don’t believe you. This sounds like the sort of thing a person could say to poison the well against someone else, unless someone demands proof.
So where is this statement of purpose?
The self righteous part in question that he's born to be against, is literally just claiming to be tolerant. Not bludgeoning people with tolerance, not using tolerance as a weapon to silence people as he claims. Just labeling oneself "tolerant", and the general idea of tolerance. He also spent several comments doubling down. Maybe go read the exchange and see for yourself?
It’s not so much the existence of bad communism that indicates communism is a structurally bad thing, quite so much as the utter lack of good communism that indicates communism is a structurally bad thing.
That's certainly enough to form a hypothesis, but far, far from proof against it. There aren't any "good" developing countries either.
Saying that any existing communist party looks like what we, or theory, want(s), is like saying that North Korea is a Democratic Republic because it's part of the name. Authoritarians love corrupting the meaning of words so they can keep people ignorant.
Though to be fair, DPRK is the way it is at least in part thanks to the Americans obliterating their cities and farm land. But we can ignore history to make a "I used to be in a communist country and it's bad, trust me bro" statement.
And I agree, I prefer to live in a system where prisoners aren't primarily minorities or political prisoners. And where the prison system isn't the most populated in the world, and rife with for-profit forced labour.
I would also be curious to hear which definition of "capitalism" and "Communism" you are using. That is, if you are open to dialogue.
Grass is greener on the other side
Because they hate the system they live in and communism is the only modern alternative that has ever existed.
When someone comes up with an alternative to both, humanity will move forward.
What Country?
'in the past'
How old are you? If your claim to authority here is that you grew up being told history by the winners, what should that mean to us?
What was done in South America for a century was done in a decade in Eastern Europe when the west finally won the cold war. Read Shock Doctrine.