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this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Lemmy is rife with these trolls. And I'm not just talking about the tankies.
I will never understand people who advocate for communism as opposed to democratic socialism. Every major country that has ever gone down the communist road has ended up a dictatorship. That's not a bug of communism, it's a feature. I get the criticism of capitalism, I really do, but we can enact socialist laws that rein in the excesses and extremes of capitalism without sacrificing our democracies for one-party governments.
Up until not too long ago, every democracy relied on slavery, disenfranchised large parts of the population, and eventually ended up a dictatorship. If you asked someone in like 1810 whether democracy could work, it'd be completely understandable if they pointed out all the horrible aspects of Greek and Roman "democracy", American planations, colonialism and the Reign of Terror, and if they assumed all of these to be inherent to democracy.
"Sure, the king isn't perfect, but he's surely better than Robespierre (who was inevitably succeded by Napoleon). And besides, great thinkers like Plato argued for a philosopher king – and that guy lived in a democracy, who would know better about all of it's evils?"
Yes, communism has failed in many respects so far.* The reasons for that are complex, include active sabotage by anti-communist states, but anyone who doesn't genuinely and critically reflect it's failures is (probably) doomed to repeat those mistakes.
Assuming those are inherent and inevitable based on less than a hundred years of history is imho short sighted.
*Some very early societies were probably kinda close to what we conceptualise as communism™ today, but applying the term is anachronistic.
I don't think that's a fair comparison. Slavery was never an inherent part of democracy and democracy certainly didn't rely on it. Ancient economies might have, but not their democratic systems of government. By contrast, communism does inherently call for the violent overthrow of existing governments in favor of a one-party transitional government that violently suppresses all others. Like I said, authoritarian rule is not an unintended consequence of communism—it is very much intended and seen as necessary.
I don't really think it's that complex. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When you have a governmental system wherein multiple groups can check each other's power levels, the system can self-stabilize (that's not to say it always does, but it can at least). Communism, with it's one-party system, has no checks and balances, and therefore is much more prone to succumbing to authoritarian rule.
You say we just haven't given communism enough time to "get it right" yet; I say they've already gotten it "right" multiple times. China is communism working as intended.
I think one thing that's confusing is that there's Marxism, communism, Leninism, MLM, etc. Different communist countries try to learn from other countries and each one has its own implementation based on its own material conditions.
From what I've heard, Lenin's vanguard party and violent revolution thing was basically theorized to be required basically because of the long history of more peaceful movements being squashed by violent capitalists, the difficulty it is to wrest power from the old dictatorship, that of the rich, and the difficulty it is to change a country's culture (see the super brainwashed US that might re-elect Trump let alone ever be able to get affordable health care). It's not really required for communism so much as seen as a working theory of what's required to achieve it in a pragmatic way due to the US trying to destroy it in every country that's gone near it from its very inception and their full corporate-owned media blitz on people like Bernie or the democratic socialist in the UK.
A lot of the authoritarian nature of these countries is due to the material conditions from which they arose (usually poor, rural non-industrialized dictatorships, often colonized) and from which they had to stay alive (which is usually in a siege mentality as the US or other Western countries continued to sanction and undermine them). I'd definitely prefer to live in a Nordic country than any communist one, but they also started off in very different contexts, so I'm not sure if that will always be true. Like the other commenter, I'd be curious to see more data. I'd give the point to socialist countries right now though, because the experiment of capitalism has the entire global south counting against it.
Anyone can call any other group "brainwashed." If that's all it takes for you to justify violence in order to change a system, you yourself are the fascist. Regardless of how wrong or deluded you think a people are, democracy requires that you rely on debate and conversation to change their minds in order to accumulate the support needed to change the system. If you resort to violence, you are enacting authoritarian rule, plain and simple.
Amen, well said
Quite a few of those communists actively celebrate and want to imitate the monsters others are pointing to as cautionary examples.
I think this is semantic(definitions) confusion. Please let me explain. For example communism by definition is a stateless society. Meaning a state cannot be communist. The countries you are thinking of have all called themselves socialist not communist. Socialism does not necessitate dictatorship or democracy. It's simply economical. Socialism is an economic system that abolishes private property which marx defined as different from personal property. Personal property includes your place of living your tv your clothes all your personal shit. Private property refers to owning the means of production. So under socialism you could own your house but not a factory or Google ect.
The countries that are exploited the worst have sometimes had socialist revolts in the past. These countries are typically not functioning democracies beforehand. The USSR had a tsar. China's last emperor ended up joining the socialists once he was overthrown. Cuba had a U.S. backed dictator before Castro's popular revolution. These countries were not made into dictator ships because of socialism. You have the idea in your head because of capitalist propaganda.
Democratic socialism is just capitalism with a nice welfare state built on it. Despite the name it doesn't necessitate having democracy or socialism. Infact it's incompatible with socialism. These states are nicer then usual capitalist states but often backslide. For example Britain moving closer and closer to privatizing their healthcare.
I hope that makes some sense.
Marx's definition of socialism is unhelpful, has been detrimental, should be ignored. He did advocate for socialism, but in a specific way. He saw socialism as a step towards communism. Marx believed that after a workers' revolution, society would first enter a socialist phase where the workers control the government and economy. Then, eventually, this would lead to communism, where there would be no need for a state and everyone would share everything equally.
The United States regulates businesses, provides welfare. Those are socialist ideas. China, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, has rich and poor people. It isn't communist.
Marxs definition of socialism is the important definition because it's his word. Marx did think socialism would be the next step after capitalism and that communism would eventually follow. But he thought communism would follow in a far off future.
"The United States regulates businesses, provides welfare. Those are socialist ideas. China, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, has rich and poor people. It isn't communist."
Socialism is not when the government does stuff. I know you have been conditioned to think that but that's not what it means.
Points for pleasant irony. You're doing good work 👍
Thanks stranger, I appreciate it. 👈😎
The goal of democratic socialism, like all socialism, is communism. My guess is you either meant social democracy instead of democratic socialism (easy confusion to make) or you've been made to think communism means stalinism (also prone to happen if you've lived under McCarthyist propaganda your entire life).
The goal of democratic socialism is not communism, generally. I'm sure there are a range of individual goals.
Democratic socialism is closer to a fully capatalist system than it is to communism, but attempts to limit capatalism in ways that could be detrimental society (regulation and taxation). Additionally, it implements programs that benefit society (public infrastructure, Healthcare, etc).
A completely capatalist society will kill itself. A fully communist society will grind to a halt. A careful balance between those extremes can deliver many of the benefits of both. Finding that balance is difficult and there are reasonable debates to be had about how. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unreasonable people in power.
You're describing Social Democracy. As I said earlier, it's easy to confuse the two.
It’s obvious you have read no theory. Read the Communist Manifesto, Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds. For anarchism read David Graeber or Rosa Luxembourg.
If you still feel the same after reading, fine. But read first. Instead you wallow in ignorance and declare your opinion informed. It’s not.
Or maybe you could try presenting actual ideas. Do you not know what the books you supposedly read were about?
Basically they are about (specially Blackshirts and Reds) how “libertarian” socialist experiments all failed, and were ultimately destroyed by national and international bourgeoisie.
I think Critique of the Gotha Program by Marx is much better than the Communist Manifesto, as it’s also a critique of the libertarian socialist Germans.
Like, if you want to get very sad, read about the politicides in Indonesia, Korea, South America etc. Communists (and I include anarchists, libertarians socialists, democratic socialists etc. here) have to organize in strong movements to survive.
All communist experiments that lasted more than 1 years were either MLs or Maoists.
We really should look at this and try to learn from it. It’s a fact, it’s just something that has happened.
We have to understand why democratic socialism is vulnerable to being exterminated, and why ML and Maoism aren’t.
Why should you listen to me when the people I referenced are more knowledgeable? That was the point. Read.
Because I don't care. And you haven't made me care.
You have a bit of time here to make some kind of point to make us interested in the hours you want us to spend. You haven't accomplished that.
It's like trying to sell someone on coming to your space opera production when all you've done so far is sing off key for six seconds.
No? Why would anyone want to voluntarily subject themselves to that. I don't need to spend five hours of my evening attending your play to know that it probably sucks.
If it were any good, you'd be able to make a small, interesting point out of it.
Do I want to learn more about your hemorrhoids? No. Fuck no, dude. That's not how I'm spending my evening.
You know while I do empathize with being asked to care about something and being annoyed at that, it's also annoying to be inundated with takes from people on complicated subjects, who aren't willing to put in some hours worth of work. Nobody's going to be willing to personally walk you through the subject matter and do all of the intellectual labor for you specifically, that's an unreasonable request of them, and frankly, less efficient than just reading.
We are doomed
Why would it be a book if the information in it could fit into a forum comment? What kind of hollow fluff are you reading?
While I don't think full-on Marxism is necessary and am in agreement on the democratic socialism, I think the reason for this is really more towards the political end of it than the economic.
If a country practicing a communist economy had a more representative/democratic political system from the start, I'd like to see how the results panned out. And I'd also like to see which came first, the dictatorship, or the communism. The former being first makes more sense than the latter.
Communism weds its system of government with its economic system pretty inseparably. I'm not sure how you'd set up a communist economy without a communist government to manage it. As for the communism/dictatorship chicken-and-egg problem, I'm not sure it really matters when communism predisposes itself so readily to authoritarianism that a dictator is a foregone conclusion.
I'm not sure how many times people have to point out that true communism is stateless for it to stick.
It's never been achieved, and there are so many good reasons to believe it never will be, so who cares? The transitional phase of communism is actually the end one, so authoritarian rule for life. Great fucking system.
Well I ask these cause authoritarianism seems counterintuitive to the main philosophy around Marxism. Saying "the proletariat should have greater value and power in a business, since they're doing the actual labor", but then rolling over and accepting a dictatorship where the populace has no political say seems nonsensical.
Hence why I suspect the authoritarianism must have come first. So I can't necessarily agree to "communism predisposing itself to authoritarianism" since it doesn't make sense for a True-Marxist society to want to accept that sort of government.
As for how to set up the government in a communist-economy state: probably more of a Republic. People elect multiple representatives, and these representatives meet and decide on policies for the country and how to run it
A one-party system is inherently authoritarian; that's what predisposes communism to becoming a dictatorship. Communism starts with the premise that the old regime needs to be violently overthrown. I don't know how much clearer a line towards authoritarianism you can get.
Cuba's a dictatorship?
What's sad is I can't even tell if you're being serious or not, so I'll just post this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba#:~:text=Cuba%20is%20one%20of%20a,political%20opposition%20is%20not%20permitted.
Yes, it's a fucking dictatorship.
Who's the dictator? Are their laws literally forced down upon the people? Is there no democratic process?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Cuba
It's different than our liberal "democracy" for sure. It has far more mass involvement at every level.
https://cuba-solidarity.org.uk/cubasi/article/187/all-in-this-together-cubarsquos-participatory-democracy
I don't for one second believe you need this history lesson; you're just trolling, but for the sake of documentation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro#:~:text=Ideologically%20a%20Marxist%E2%80%93Leninist%20and,reforms%20were%20implemented%20throughout%20society.
There is no possible democracy in a one-party system, because all of the politicians you can vote for have to be approved one way or another by the only allowable party. This isn't complicated, and the fact that you point to Cuban sources and claim that's all that's going on is pretty laughable. I could point to Iranian sources and claim that's not a corrupt state, but it wouldn't be true.
Honestly, you sound exactly like one of the trolls described in the OP article, and this is the end of my convo with you. You're either trolling or as detached from reality as a Trumper.
Fidel is dead, btw. Who's the dictator of Cuba? How are laws made in Cuba? What process do they go through?
Maybe look into things like that before blindly spewing western propaganda.
They won't reply to this. Far too much fact here for them to handwave away, so they probably won't bother.
Tbh I think having everyone in the country in the same party might be a perk. It's an interesting way of abolishing the idea of political parties. Basically opposition is allowed, we saw that with those protests before, the economic reforms, and the Constitution updates, but it's done by people changing things within the party.
When you cannot vote for anyone but communists, you don't have a democracy
Big brain here
So what do you call it when you can only vote for a capitalist?
They don't last long. Behind the scenes lemmy servers are active at booting trolls.
Hello? Lemmygrad.ml?