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An anti-Communist civilian fighter runs with an AK during a street-fight in Bucharest, Romania. 1989.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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Communism is fine. People are shitty tho. They tend to ruin everything, including capitalism.
Wrong. People aren’t shitty. The power to exploit turns people shitty. Power corrupts people. Hierarchy enforces a rule of shittiness, an opportunity and almost need to exploit. Eliminate the exploitative hierarchy and the concept of people being generally shitty would disappear.
I mean, this just re-enforces what I said. I can't think of one example where people are not eventually corrupted by power. Hence, why people are shitty. It really is in our nature to destroy ourselves. Just look at where we are now. There's no proof we'll get better. It's all just lofty ideals we like to say, which is another shitty thing we do. We are shit.
This is what you said and what I was responding to (or a reasonable facsimile thereof).
Which is kind of the exact opposite of what you just said.
Communism is both an idealized view of people and their ability to create a system that is best for all—but it’s also overly naive about the entire process because it requires putting a unified party in charge to oversee the transition. So the general thrust of this belief is people are good, and people can be trusted to use their ultimate power for good…and then to willingly step down. Which is where every single communist movement has failed and every person put in power abused it and murdered.
Capitalism is a system that was designed to make people exploit each other. Its founding concept is exploitation. The more people down the line that you exploit, the more profit you have. It’s where underpaying, lobbying, outsourcing and slave labor, insider trading…literally every problem humanity has right now is inextricably tied to capitalism. Because the entire concept is built on exploitation. Screwing over more people = more money.
Do people in your daily life treat you like shit? And I mean just people. Not your boss, but everyday people. No. People on the whole are generally pretty easy going. But the system into which we’ve been born conditions us to hurt each other. We are all encouraged to take from everyone else because it means we get more.
But that is capitalism. That’s not people. If we were all born into a cooperative society…people would be helpful. The instinct to exploit and hurt others would be gone. Of course there are people that are just generally bad and hurtful, but this sense you have of people being generally awful would be gone. Because what you’re seeing is the hand of capitalism bitch slapping everyone. And you’re blaming it on people.
I just think you have it backwards. People are good. Capitalism ruined people. And communism is naive—but only because it believes you can hand a unified party of people ultimate power and they’ll happily relinquish it. Anarchism is the answer. It’s the same concept, but without trusting politicians.
Communism never seems to really be done properly though like sure people are a problem and they ruin it but the necessary checks and balances never seem to be put in place to actually prevent the corruption from happening.
The USSR never really got as far as properly implementing the philosophy. They did the first bits which are very open to corruption but then never finished off with all the extra bits of policy.
It's like capitalism but with no worker rights, environmental protections, or safety laws.
As long as educated and wealthy people who don’t want to hand over their wealth exist communism will fail. If you “get rid” of these people your society is left weaker due to brain drain and those who remain are left worse off. Imagine being super intelligent and generating vast wealth with your labour and intellect then being forced to hand it all over and watching it get wasted by the government on projects you know will fail and given to lazy unintelligent people who enjoy all the benefits of your work while you get nothing more than them in return for your extra contribution