this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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It's one thing to be a communist; it's another to be an apologist for the CCP.
And what really is the difference between Socialism and Communism?
Communism entails the collective ownership and administration of all means of production and the absence of social classes, while socialism advocates for worker control over means of production within a democratic society, allowing for some individual ownership and social stratification.
In addition, there are different levels of socialism. "Some" individual ownership turns people off. "The State owns the house I worked so hard to pay off?" You can have full private ownership of your things AND have single-payer health care, top-tier public education, reining in predatory banks, etc. We want to be Norway, not Venezuela.
Your government is directly responsible for Venezuela's instability. Your government's entire foreign policy is destabilizing different parts of the world to float the Dollar as the main currency and you the citizens benefit the most from it, this is why I cringe inwardly when Americans complain of Capitalism's adverse effects, if you enjoyed it while it was good, you must enjoy it while it gets bad.
As a venezuelan, no. What happened and still happens here was the sole responsibility of the socialist party's government and the ultimate reason why I don't trust leftists as they don't own up their failures and just disregard them as "not true socialism"
The government of Venezuela isn't blameless but to think that American sanctions didn't affect the Venezuelan economy are the words of a true partisan. Your kind set up piano wire and beheaded civilians on motor bikes in Venezuela and I find that despicable.
My kind? Thanks for the uncalled xenophobic racism.
Venezuela has been going to shit since the 2000 with Chavez.
Sanctions were stablished from 2015 and only to 7 individuals from the venezuelan government.
Keep your lies up. Maybe you will start believing them.
Lol racism card when I don't even know your ethnicity? I was talking about you being a rich asshole.
You literally jumped to call names on me and accused me of murdering people when you don't even know me. You call me rich as if that means anything, and to top it You justify yourself with ignorance. You don't knowing my ethnicity is the least of the issues here and frankly not knowing things about me is not stopping you from engaging with me in an uncivilized manner.
I find you despicable and a true rich asshole just given your behavior
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Surely enough you are a misogynistic as well.
😄😄😄 I'll give you this you made me laugh. But in all seriousness, stop supporting the killing Venezuelans based on your political beliefs so you can have a lower tax rate. Please. It's just greed and that's a sin.
Are you talking about the leftist venezuelan government murdering civilians openly? If right that are the ones you insanely advocate for.
Not sure where you got that information but the right wing in Venezuela have been begging the USA to overthrow the democratically elected government in Venezuela for a couple decades now. They can't win the elections fair and square so they assassinate politicians and kill Venezuelans during riots. It's all documented on sites like Venezuelanalysis and CommonDreams. There's been a massive propaganda campaign against Venezuela since the late 1990's to try to get Venezuelans to give their resources to US corporations and their rich greedy Venezuelan opposition leaders (often who refuse to participate in elections the EU and other international bodies have called free and fair.)
Lol shows much of what you know but calling an imaginary right wing party in Venezuela even when all of them are open socialists.
The only thing people are begging for is for the socialist venezuelan government to stop murdering civilians left and right.
Oh but I'm sure you have a justification for that too.
I can't tell if you're being disingeneous or not so I'll probably stop engaging but I think Henrique Capriles, Guaido, the US State Department, and that crazy lady who wants the US to assassinate Maduro would disagree with your statement there is no right wing opposition in the country. Which BTW can and do participate in elections. They just pout and incite violence when they don't win.
Repeating something doesn't make it true.
I encourage you to read up on what's happening on Venezuela from multiple news sources. Try Venezuelanalysis.
How about you try living there. As I do and the rest of my family?
The things is the path to one of the other begins the same, of course, paved with good intentions
As opposed to being paved with bad intentions up front?
Honesty or lie. Mmm a hard bargain
I agree with what you've said. That's how I saw it too. Communism is the last stage, while Socialism is a transition period, as a Communist friend once told me. P.S. WTF am I getting downvoted for asking a question?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq0EYo_ZQVU
/s
Most Americans definitely do not want socialism. People simply want things to be affordable, and be able to live with the social services we need readily available, and to have the freedom to do what they want. That's not socialism, that's a well functioning democracy with a strong economy.
A lot of Americans "definitely do not want" Obamacare either, but they sure don't want to give up the improvements that came with the Affordable Care Act.
In other words, Americans hate the label, but not the policies.
(By the way, regarding your other comment: FDR doesn't get to decide what words mean. It doesn't matter whether he called himself a socialist or not; what matters is whether he acted like one.)
Tell me a time in history when this existed without FDR's socialism.
FDR said he was not a Socialist.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/16/democrats-socialism-fdr-roosevelt-227622/
I'm having an easier time arguing with tankies then I did with right wingers. Right wingers don't even believe themselves, so they shift the goal posts around to suit their needs.
Oh, I saw the futility of talking to them lonnnnnnnnng ago. You might as well try to convince a christian that they're wrong. You know why that is? Because they're both cults.
True.
Fuck China, and fuck the United States I live in. The nations of the Nordic region and a few other developed nations have my respect because they respect and value their citizenry. Their economy is a tool that is used to facilitate the distribution of goods and services for the benefit of their society and its citizens, what an economy is supposed to be, instead of doing it ass backwards as we do, hurting citizens to protect the beloved fucking economy and the growth/metastasis expectations of the owner class.
China/The US/Russia are the world leaders in exporting the notion that their citizens should be exploited to stoke the growth of the economy for the benefit of their respective elites. Whoever wins, their people lose.
Why should I go rah rah America when most stakeholders in our society are not meaningful institutional shareholders in the value society produces?
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html
It shouldn't be about saying simon says or coming out of a rich vagina or if not making perfect economic decisions and kissing ass from age 18, begging to be included and killing yourself for masters who were born into wealth for a small chance of being included in the prosperity of the prosperous nation you're supposedly a member of.
And don't you just love the class traitors here that come out to celebrate the failures of citizens who tried? oh you took out student loans in a subject that in hindsight didn't pay dividends, haha loser. Oh you just started working and didnt get an education and are stuck in the underclass, haha loser. That's what it means to be an American, rooting against one another as the owner class laughs.
Those nordic countries are suported by a global network of unequal exchange
To me, the definition of a 3rd world country is about how the poor are living there.
You can live a nice life in literally any country, if you have enough money. But how do those live, who don't have anything? That's what differentiates between a decent country and a 3rd world country.
I'm someone still recovering from republican/libertarian capitalist brainwashing. Would you know of a good book or two on this subject? It's fascinating to me.
Like on which topic? Capitalist critiques, options for a better society, inequality?
I would recommend David Graeber or however it's spelled writing. Any time you read anyone's opinion take it with a grain of salt but Debt and Bullshit Jobs address many things, some of which can be taken as criticism of capitalism.
James C Scott is another anthropolgist and his most accessible book is probably seeing like a state. It's relatively even handed in it's critques of capitalism as it focuses on states including the USSR. It highlights quite well how markets and states can crush humanity because they have wildly different goals to people.
You probably don't want to jump right into hardcore theory so this might be a gentler intro into asking why society is the way it is and how it might be different without expressly pushing a particular political theory.
Capitalist critiques mainly.
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (easy) A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey (medium)
Thank you! I'll read one of these next.
Liberals try to understand political nuance challenge: Impossible!
Where's the nuance in simping for an authoritarian state-capitalist regime? It's like the people who unironically think the DPRK is more democratic than the US.
I'm going to let you re-read the comments and think harder about how to re-interpret them.
I believe in you. Unless you're a liberal, then you proved my point.
sometimes its painful to watch them. =(
On a slightly broader note: just people going out of their way to justify bad behavior.
As a communist who hates the CCP I see this as a win.
Some days it’s hard to tell the difference…