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It's a simple world view
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this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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I wonder if this meme still applies to those who have fled communist countries?
Its kind of ironic that Lemmy was created to take away centralized power, but the same people want to create a communistic society which will...centralize the power?
It doesn't matter whether communism is good or bad, capitalism is still terrible.
That's a fair criticism, we do need to find a better way
The Nords found it because they keep their capitalism restrained as it should be to serve the interests of the people in their societies instead of the reverse as it has become here.
The problem, of course, is the market crony hyper-capitalists that spawned mostly out of the US are using their power/capital to do what they did here everywhere else in it's insatiable quest for growth/metastasis. The UK has already fallen to the faustian bargain of "YOU can live large, just sell out your fellow citizens." Germany is getting on board, France's people are fighting but losing. Unrestrained capitalism high on its own greed is absolutely cancerous and deadly.
Capitalism CAN when tightly, tightly straight jacketed, be used to incentivize labor as communism cannot, but it must be tempered by the heaviest of taxation for the commons. Being a doctor or a lawyer should yield better rewards than a janitor, but within fucking reason/sanity.
Should a Doctor be able to afford a bigger house and a nicer car than an average worker for their effort? Sure. Should they be able to afford 3 houses to the janitor's studio apartment in a bad neighborhood? No, both provide essential services to society after all.
There needs to be a drain for out of control capital acquisition or that capital will eventually be used to propagate greed and capture the regulatory bodies meant to keep the sociopath that is capitalism sedated and restrained. No individual should possess enough capital to have more power over socetal structures than their single vote allows.
In exchange for not allowing greed to run absolutely rampant as it does here, they go to college based on merit, get healthcare when they need it, don't end up homeless in hard times, don't sweat job security, on and on...
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/happiness/
At least until the global markets find enough greed driven traitors in those societies to "turn the bull loose" there too. Because once they get a foothold, that's the ball game until collapse. Once that happens, they start using their for profit media machines to propagandize division within the citizenry, ensuring no meaningful counter movement, they use their power over government to indoctrinate children through education to call greed "rational self-interest," deify profiteers as "job creators," to feel hatred rather than empathy towards those that are struggling(herp derp those evil powerless homeless people are lowering my property values! If they can't/won't work, why won't they just die?), etc. That's why the US will need to collapse under the weight of its own corruption before things can even begin to improve. We're too far captured.
Amazingly well put. Capitalism is necessary. Unrestrained capitalism is deadly. The unfortunate reality of capitalism is that even as it is in the process of burning everything to the ground, it looks for all the world like glorious success. And it is glorious success, if you don't compare it to what could be in a system where it was properly restrained.
Capitalism is in no way necessary. It's a poison, a cancer, a virus which at all given times threatens to destroy the fabric of society, all for the next quarter's profit.
Capitalism isn’t necessary; a new economic system that takes some aspects of capitalism is necessary. If you have to strip capitalism of all of its core features to make it work, you’re no longer dealing with capitalism but rather a different economic model.
I agree. People who say, "nuhuh, capitalism works!" are 99% of the time thinking of the basic concept of markets or money. Which ... Very specifically, are NOT capitalism.
They are used (and abused) by capitalists, but they are not inventions of capitalists.
Reason 1 that I'm happy to ditch reddit for Lemmy completely is watching these ideas explained by other people, every day.
Not having to explain the difference between capitalism and commerce feels 😩🔥
Thank you!
In their pure forms, I see capitalism and communism as extremes specifically with regards to human nature.
Communism starves our human impulses to succeed and grow, but capitalism gluts and force feeds our worst impulses exclusively, selfishness, unhealthy competition, jealousy, schadenfreude, sociopathy, self-delusion, narcissism, dehumanization, on and on, which is why I see it as the greater evil of the 2 in a vacuum.
A successful communist society would be very difficult to grow, but maybe that would be a good thing on a planet of finite resources that can take finite finite pollution. That's why the answer lies somewhere in democratic socialism, imho.
That's all academic though. The rigged market hyper-capitalists own this fucking place and have an iron grip on it. Plus communism would have kept the population low, as it should have been. It wouldn't be able to accommodate the needs of our ridiculously massive human population as it is. That ship has sailed unless we want billions to starve to right it and live within sustainable means in this finite habitat.
Nothing about communism forces human impulses to be ignored, unless you mean the impulses we already suppress as sentient beings, such as fucking everything that moves or eating until we literally die.
This made up thing you call communism sounds really terrible.
Sorry, but you're highly wrong about your misconceptions of Communism. Communism in no way starves human impulses to succeed or grow any more than Capitalist success does. Communism eliminates the profit motive, yes, but that is historically a highly flawed motive in general.
Socialism/Communism/Anarchism are not fairy-tale Utopias where everyone magically gets a pony, people still work to produce goods and services. However, this production is democratized, in opposition to anti-democratic privatized systems.
The whole Nordic system is built on brutal exploitation of the global majority. They simply outsource the worst horrors of capitalism where their people don't have to look at them. Here's the reality of enlightened capitalism https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/mars-nestle-and-hershey-to-face-landmark-child-slavery-lawsuit-in-us
The actual reason is that the west colonized these countries in the most brutal fashion, murdered millions of people who opposed western imperialism, then put in despotic regimes in place that serve western interests. You're evidently utterly ignorant of how the world actually works. Here's a book you should read that explains the reality of things https://ia800309.us.archive.org/26/items/fp_Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum/Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum.pdf
No. That's a wrong take.
While Communism is a centralisation of power, it is also decentralisating the decision of what the power does.
Ideally, Communism is like a democratic monopoly. However, in reality, communism has been abused to create a non-democratic monopoly. This is unfortunately very much like what capitalstic non-democratic monopolies do too - albeit more slowly.
Lemmy, like other fediverse projects, is not challenging the democratic or non-democratic part of it. It's challenging the monopoly part.
If we spread out the functional part of systems, nobody will be able to create a monopoly of power, neither through communism, capitalism nor democracy. This is because the power is not centralised at all.
It's not anarchy or chaos though, because each party is capable of embracing or rejecting any other parties, based on their own choice of government. People who run fediverse servers can choose by votes or not which other parties to include or not. Some servers are democratic, others are not. Some might be communist, others might be fascists, but they're not a meaningful power without users, so it'll inevitably be up to the users to decide.
Hey you may want to learn a thing or two about communism, because you seem very ignorant about it.
Communism is not dictatorship Capitalism is not democracy
A lot of the people exiled from communist countries were the ones doing slavery and fucking over the working class max
I love how you can state basic facts, and a bunch of ex reddit libs swarm in to downvote.
I was thinking more so about the ~7,000 - 8,000 doctors since 2006 that defected from Cuba as soon as they were able to.
Are you referring to the loosely defined "kulaks" (wealthy peasants) that were exiled/killed when the Soviet Union was created?
I wouldn't doubt if a percentage were. But is Cuba keeping itself isolated to where people have to defect despite no active war or combat? The US has probably closer to a million doctors from outside the US. The US relies on immigration to survive with slowing population growth and an aging population.
It's very misleading to say that "Cuba is keeping itself isolated". Each year the UN votes to end the embargo/isolation imposed on Cuba by the US, with the vast majority of countries voting in favour of ending the blockade each time.
In the latest vote, in November, only Israel and USA voted against ending the blockade. Ukraine abstained. 187 member states voted in favour of ending the blockade
Make no mistake, the US is what has kept Cuba unjustly isolated for the past decades. Source: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112
The US sees anything that could shake their narrative of the world as a threat, even when that 'threat' is unfounded, and they massively abuse their economic and military power around the globe to keep others in line.
Communism is, at first, Socialism. You're confusing Communism with Monarchism, or Oligarchy, when in reality Communism and Socialism are primarily about democratization and decentralization.
Compare 2 factories.
Factory 1 is Capitalist. It is owned by a businessman, and he employs workers to use said factory to produce commodities for sale on the market. The largest forms of voice the Workers have is Unionization, or, failing that, working somewhere else, if available.
Factory 2 is Socialist. The Workers are the Owners, and as such elect a manager to represent them in worker councils.
Looking at the 2 structures, Socialism is more democratic, and more decentralized, in theory. We must take this theory and see why or why not historical examples have measured up to this, from a practical, Materialist perspective. Tools aren't mystical, they don't corrupt the minds of those who share ownership of them.
It's easy to see why Lemmy, a platform based on decentralization and a rejection of the Profit Motive, has far more leftists.
Workers as the owners?
Apparently, not so in the soviet union: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_the_Soviet_Union
But there is a similar (but not identical) concept currently being implemented in Germany. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
The Soviet Union was anti-trade union, and pro-Soviet, ie worker councils. The Soviet Union had numerous problems, especially with beaurocracy, but fundamentally it was a Worker state, owned and run by the Soviets, and thus can be considered Socialist (regardless of my personal issues with it).
There are several attempts at replicating some form of Worker Democracy in Capitalist countries, but ultimately short of ownership none of this functionally makes a massive difference. Definitely a step in the right direction, but without worker ownership it is more to appease workers and uphold Capitalism, than actually giving workers control.
Don't misunderstand this comment to say that codetermination is bad, it's good, just not as good as it could be.
Well yes and no. There are communist systems that centralize power (mostly to establish a system without it) but there are a lot of different ways to do it other than that. Anarcho Communism for example is the complete opposit which does not want to go the authoritarian way even short term. Because well that did not quite work out. Authoritarian states still are authoritarian states. And i myself dont like/want those ^^
I grew up in a communist country, and I absolutely feel this way. Next question.
How about anarcho-syndicalism?
But the absence of classes and states surely is the same as the dictatorship of the proletariat /s