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Happens too often...
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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The only people who will actually "suffer" or have anything to lose from such a revolution are the owning class
These sob stories you hear from people who "fled communist oppression" are just people who lost untold privilege. We call them "communists stole my slaves" stories
this is an unhinged reply if you actually think that. ask people from Poland or some post soviet countries what they thought about living under totalitarian communism.
People loved their totalitarian boot-on-face experience and anyone saying otherwise just believes propaganda, comrade.
That's why all those people were weeping instead of celebrating when the Berlin wall was torn down
I'd ask them, but they'd have no frame of reference. They never lived under communism. They definitely lived under socialism, though.
Pretty sure there are people who lived under communism still alive in that country.
Hell, probably about 50% at this point (depending on birth and death rates).
So there are literally millions of people who have the experience to ask.
Not a single one.
What do you think communism is?
Look up its definition. Compare that to the political system found in the USSR. See they are not the same.
Lenin started a path towards it, called socialism, but by the time Stalin was in power, revisionism was in full effect oriented toward market reforms.
Do you ever actually get outside your bubble and realise you been fed a bunch of horseshit or do you just plug your ears going nanananana naaaa I can't hear you?
Because you are on some wierd tankie shit.
The projection lmao, have you maybe thought about the fact that you've been fed BS all your life and here you are now spewing it without actually knowing what you're talking about
Yes, in fact, that is how i learned this "tankie shit". So ironic. I had to get out of my bubble to stop believing in liberalism.
Do you think society shelters and fosters socialist beliefs? No. It forces liberalism down our throats from the day we're born.
Well, seems you went from one bubble to another.
Interesting perspective you have there. I guess it would be surprising for you to hear that i, too, attacked and insulted left wingers, SJWs, communists and anarchists for the entirety of my adolescence, and even into my mid 20s.
It wasn't until I took the time to listen to their arguments, think through their reasoning, and read their theory that i realised - GASP - serious intellectual thought has been put into this for over 100 years, and it has the backing of thorough scientific enquiry.
Let me put it this way. Does it make sense for production to occur through the work of a person, who then goes on to only be compensated for a fraction of their work, with the rest going to a person or grouo that didn't have anything to do with the work? Does it make sense for anyone to own a home they don't live in, for the purposes of withholding it from others for payment?
It doesn't make sense to me, and any argument in favour of landlords or private ownership in general seems to fall back on might makes right, or truisms such as "that's just how it works".
Hey, pro tip. Ad hominem attacks don't help you.
Some of you arguments I agree with (as I like socialist policies).
But you act like a fucking tankie. So, chill out.
What ad hominem? What are you talking about? I haven't attacked you whatsoever. I'm just explaining the core contradiction of capitalism. Elsewhere in this thread you can see me Stalin should have been shot, and that the USSR under him was a revisionist disaster. And nowhere here have I advocated for anything remotely resembling Stalin's policies. So I'm just confused why you're calling me a tankie. And why you thimk I'm attacking you.
It would take only the most cursory examination of documented revolutions, communist ones as much as any other to immediately see that that's not the case. Millions get swept up in it. People starve, civil and international wars are fought and combatants die, civilians become collateral damage, power struggles emerge within the ranks of the revolutionaries and loyal partisans are swept aside so ambitious people can ascend. Revolutionary zeal leads to countless cases of misidentification of suspected 'reactionaries', economic turmoil creates desperation leading to violence and crime and then further violence in the attempts to restore order. In the chaos and lawlessness of the initial stages of a revolution people will take the opportunity to settle old scores. Individuals who previously held no power now take up new roles in the new society and wield even tiny petty amounts of power yet still more than they could have dreamed of before and turn out not to be responsible with it and others still manage to claim masses of it.
And this is only the people who you would hopefully agree didn't 'deserve' it, but for me on a personal level, though it does make me rather useless I suppose, I'm not in to killing, so even those who arguably did 'deserve' it, the 'ruling' classes, I may be glad to see them stripped of the privilege and influence but I don't want to see them or anyone strung up. And in the period of re-defining and re-shaping society after the revolution the new order will seek to identify just who counts as 'ruling class', this has, in the past included people who owned a shop, people with 'bourgeois' jobs in the former government, teachers accused by students of being 'reactionaries'.
It might just be that communism really can, if not de-railed create a utopia on Earth and it might just be that all that happens above really is actually what just needs to happen for us to get there, but I'm not sure I could stomach it.
I don't agree with such extremes, such as the executions of landlords etc.
This, I have to admit, is my one sticking point in actually calling myself a communist. This one question has tortured me for a long time:
What do you actually DO about the reactionaries and counter revolutionaries?
The USSR sent them to gulags. That seems harsh, but it's something. Mao's China killed them, and I'm sure similar things happened in Cuba.
There has to be an option that doesn't scare people or cause horror in general, but I don't think I personally have a perfect answer. I could say, "the average person won't be mistaken for a bourgeois," but I don't know how convincing that will be. The revolution would have to be truly perfect for that to happen.
What I can say, though, is that Marxists of the present day recognise and condemn these actions, and the Marxist tradition teaches us to constantly reevaluate our methods, in the scientific discipline of observation, experiment, reflection and so on. It's a cold way to put it, but the mistakes of the past have been carefully studied to ensure they can't happen again.
That doesn't mean new mistakes can't happen. We are only human, and even democratic will can run foul. But we can use our knowledge of material conditions to measure our approach. Only ever what the people want - and what we want is justice for all.