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How i feel on Lemmy
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this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Didn't the USSR just do state capitalism, and not actual communism or socialism? And weren't they also totalitarian & also not a democracy? Are people actually asking for what was happening in astern Europe or something else?
Yup. Also shot the anarchists, that worked with them and wanted democracy, in the back of the head during a meeting, The USSR then also did imperialism in their neighboring countries, deported a ton of people from those countries to death camps in siberia and allied with the nazies dividing Europe in their treaty
Anarchists are the first victims of authoritarian regimes. The dictator goes for them first, even before their sworn enemies, e.g. fascists or, if it's a fascist dictatorship, communists.
The story of ukrainian anarchist communist, Machno, is interesting in this resect. Bolsheviks treated his so well. Russian revolution, although started occasionally with good ideas, quickly revealed itself as authorithian russian nationist imperialism.
That's kind of the point of horseshoe economics, "the people own the economy" is impossible to implement without an intermediate agency to actually oversee the day to day of said economy.
What's that entity? The government. Any conceptual type of non-state entity would just be governance in nature regardless of title, and therefore still essentially operate as "a state" if not the same state that the federal government exists as.
Though as someone who works in modern IT I foresee the future of robotics and AGI allowing for the kind of economic automation that would make communism inevitable eventually as jobs are reduced over time in the course of the next hundred or two hundred years.
Yeah, I thought that too, but now that we're getting some rudimentary functional AI and robotics, what we're seeing is companies using it to save them money - basically automating work that would be done by highly paid specialists, contractors, or outside companies. And they are not investimg in it to automate low paid rote work because the human labor is cheap enough that a big automation investment only yields gains long term - and businesses have been focused on short term gains for the last few decades. So, automation, in the short term at least, is really just limiting our opportunities for more satisfying work.
What's more likely to happen in the short term is that the pressure to adopt new tools will fall on the worker. AI and robotics won't take your job, but someone using them will.
You talked about the long term, hundreds of years, and it's difficult to speculate how our society would work then. But... work and money is a form of social control. There will be significant pressure as jobs disappear to ensure the populous is still working to earn something that the ruling class has more of. Nothing short of a looooonnnnnnng term political change or violent upheaval of power dynamics will change that. Now, is that possible in the time scale of hundreds on years? Maybe, but I find it hard to believe that those in power would easily give up the very thing that gives them their power.
In Germany the left leaning parties want that shit. It sucks. They side with Russia atm as well and a lot of them just have this odd nostalgia for the time
not to defend them, but capitalism is not doing very good recently, so that might give them points
Yes, I know. I'm not a fan of that myself.
But the idea that current day Russia has it better is insane. The Propaganda has survived through 30 years of non existence
There is a difference between Russia, communism and an authoritarian/totalitarian regime.
Communism is not necessarily authoritarian or totalitarian.
Marxism-Leninism does, and invariably so. It's not however the only existing current of communism.
What's an existing current for. Of communism that hasn't gone Auth or totalit?
Which is what you describe, is once again based on Marxism-Leninism (some would want to shove a little dong after another hyphen, but it still remains the same shit regardless), and can go rot in hell.
I couldn't disagree more, I see human nature as something more nurtured than innate, and traces of healed wounds on bones found on archaeological sites rather demonstrate that caring for the weak, the community, prevailed over selfishness. Let's pretend it is as you say: even then, our nature isn't something immutable, else, males would still drag their female to the cave by the hair whenever they want to mate, and it would be seen as socially acceptable. This can change through time and conscious efforts (even negatively, and it won't surprise you if I say that it's how I see our current individualism and glorification of power-mongering).
Personally, I don't see a forceful change as viable; it should be done slowly and steadily while ensuring that outside forces don't hinder the movement, or distort it to their own benefit. But first, we should throw away this warped crap that is Marxism-Leninism once and for all, draw the useful conclusions from its failures, and adapt the movement accordingly; evolving is after all supposed to be one of communism's core components (just like humans, dare I say).
I kindly throw that ball back at you. To humor your vision of an immutable nature, it urges us more to run naked in the woods among our close relatives than to form planet-scale social structures. But again, I'll pretend it's how things are (accounting for the whole comment, not just the quoted part): the answer appears as evident as reducing the scale of our social structures, and work towards degrowth; and hey, it just so happens to be the form of communism I'm advocating for! 😛
Just wanted to specifically touch on that: first, I find it detrimental to a sane analysis to assume our own vision of things as the norm, you'd be better of if able to detach yourself further, but you do you.
And second, do you need a strong emotional response to something in order to care about it? Having been emotionally numb for as long as I can remember, it's something I genuinely can't understand. Seeing things through an analytical lens as well as my values is enough, I don't need to feel outraged by something to keep in mind at long term that it should be addressed: envisioning a feminicide, a school-shooting, or a mining accident as the result of (to grossly and simplistically summarize) a lack of education, lack of proper mental care, or lacking/exploitative policies, and acting accordingly at my level seems, to use the term once again, more sane.
Very mature. Bravo...
Ah, here's the issue: my mind was set on a casual exchange, yours on wanting to come out on top.
Would you mind elaborating on this, even succinctly?
Edit: well then, I'll have to guess that it's bouncing off and answering when in a discussion, as well as advising to take a step back when analyzing, that makes me the same as a conspiracy theorist 🤣
Okay, so this is a case of communism not going the way you claim it is currently going in other places. So can you please name one of those places?
I don't question your good faith (in regard to your other comment). But I can't point you to such a country, because unfortunately, all we've seen of communism at such a scale until now has been based on this Marxism-Leninism pile of crap (Stalinism, Maoism, and whatnot). That's the unfortunate truth, and why the simple mention of communism makes people's blood run cold. It's a meme at this point to say "real communism hasn't been attempted" but there's a part of truth in that; only a specific current has been, and each time proved that said current is a pungent pile.
Since communism is a dialectic philosophy, we could think that ML would've been thrown to its rightful place, the trash bin, but alas, some people are too attached to following a dated and distorted dogma to actually respect the ever evolving imperative of the movement.
Every single one that isn't more interested in installing a new bourgeoisie (so themselves) than giving power to the people. And most ironically, Marxism, since old beardo's ideas have been practically more perverted by his own partisans than by his opposition...
Okay, what's one of them, though? Can you point to a country that currently has this going on? I'm not trying to do a gotcha here, I'm genuinely curious.
"Parents should never talk to their kids" ~ Marx
Care to point me to the source of this alleged quote?
Sure, might take a while tho, I used that in my Bachelor work
Take all the time you need, even if it's in days from now; it's not a chat, we're in no hurry 😊
Yes, because there's no other way to implement communism. They tried hard and it still didn't work
Despite the downvotes, you're correct.
The Soviet idea was that 1) if it's state-owned, then it's people-owned and not capitalism, 2) it's people-owned, because USSR is a union of soviet republics, where soviet is a democratic (initially) entity, 3) it's socialism, not communism, as we've not built that yet, 4) it's still socialism as we use money to buy things and not receive them as we need automatically, as the planning precision doesn't allow for this.
(A soviet is initially like an elected body, where every member on level zero is elected by constituency, like certain factory's workers or inhabitants of some street, as this thing was static in the USSR, or on every level above zero by an underlying level soviet ; the main difference between this and normal democracies is that those factory workers or that underlying soviet can vote anytime to recall and replace their representative, which turned out to make it more authoritarian all by itself ; well, also obviously these in fact decided nothing in the USSR anyway, the party structures did).
I guess that's the best way put it I saw in this post. I'd just add that after growing up in soviet and postsoviet state, and later coming to western Europe, my first impression was that they somehow almost managed to build here what "communist" soviet party tried to build so unsuccessfully.
Even Marx thought that path to communism is through capitalism, what soviet state did is something very different.
lol, no it wasn't. They had a planned economy.
if the government owns the economy (i.e. plans it) and the people don't control the government (i.e. no or bad democracy), then it is state capitalism.
The USSR was definitely communist. They called themselves communist, were inspired by communists and implemented communist policies.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is definitely a democratic republic.
No because they are not inspired by democratic republicans and they do not have democratic republican policies. Read me whole comment next time.
Critical thinking needs a bit of work there buddy. That's exactly my point: the USSR did not have communist policies, it wasn't even based on communism. It was an authoritarian state-capitalist regime which called itself socialist (not even communist), much like North Korea calls itself a democratic republic.
Go to the Wikipedia homepage: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union
State Capitalism a term used exclusively by a vocal minority of leftists to gaslight, revise and no-true-Scotsman historical events to fit their ideological world-view.
China also calls themselves Communist
I love when people employ the Socratic method tactfully lol.