Not a tankie, but the USSR had mostly solved this problem, despite all its other issues. There did exist some homelessness, but nowhere near the extent of current USA.

The real communist solution to homelessness was to put them in jails. True story.

I'm going to take your question as genuine and answer in equal.

It's a bit more complicated than that. Most leftists will agree with you, the USSR and other Eastern Europe countries that were communist did a lot of damage and most likely more harm. They committed atrocities. They were authoritarian. It was disgusting.

The leftists who still prop those countries up on their shoulders are what many call tankies. Today they sing praise about Russia, China, and North Korea, but your observation is correct, they won't ever move there. These are individuals who repeat propaganda and are, ultimately, just red fascists. When you actually dig into their ideals they parallel and sometimes mirror Nazis.

I believe leftism cannot have an authoritarian element to it. I think most social hierarchies need to be destroyed. I think the only way to have a socialist society is through democratic means. Democracy in the workplace and national level. I think most of us can agree workers need higher wages and there is a wealth gap that needs to be dismantled. I think most of us believe healthcare needs to be universal, food and shelter and water, education, information (internet), speech, and much more should be free and readily available. There is this element of freedom that needs to be achieved that isn't found the countries that are "communist".

I don't want to explicitly say those communist countries wasn't "real communism", but fascists, authoritarianism, always appropriate from progressive movement. There is no freedom, especially of workers, under a dictatorship. If workers are starving, dying, being outright black bagged and killed, i don't think that can be considered communist.

It's an unfortunately nuanced subject, where people don't agree on the underlying definitions of words. For instance, I think you're confusing "capitalism" with "democracy". You can have authoritarian undemocratic capitalist countries, where you can't talk shit about your government.

For me personally, I think communism has too many issues to actually try, but I like some of its theoretical tennants when compared to that of capitalism. Those goals are something to strive for. The spirit of communism is helping eachother and rewarding work, and the spirit of capitalism is sacrificing others for personal gain

Because they are reacting to living under the oppressive structures of late capitalism. Having been raised in a capitalist world, they naturally overemphasize economic systems and their alternatives and make assumptions about government.

So when they communism theyusually mean communism + some equitable government or just they mean socialist democracy.

Funnily enough, you live pretty well in China these days if you're a good little capitalist.

A number of reasons. Just like you claim a Communist party almost destroyed your country, Capitalist parties destroy and are destroying many countries as well. The existence of bad Communist parties does not itself mean Communism is structurally a bad thing, as pursuit of a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society is a noble goal for humanity.

I think it's fair to say that decentralization is a good check against Authoritarianism, and as such, this should be extended to the workplace, not just government.

As far as why Lemmy leans left, the founder is a Communist, and principles of decentralization and federation tend to appeal far more to leftists, while Capitalist-inclined individuals have Reddit.

Saying that any existing communist party looks like what we, or theory, want(s), is like saying that North Korea is a Democratic Republic because it's part of the name. Authoritarians love corrupting the meaning of words so they can keep people ignorant.

I love the top one, because it's the same way they deal with pigeons. They see poor people as just another pest.

The whole point of Communism is to balance power away from the 1% and back to the masses. The fact that it is an "-ism" and has decades of propaganda demonozing it, doesnt make that any less true.

But I want to defend my -ism

The important parts are paint and maintenance.

Give a commie block a fresh coat of paint every decade or so and they can look good (though I just don't like flat roofs. But that's personal taste.)

But while a somewhat run down european style house can still have some charme for longer (guess I'm biased here) a run down commie block in gray and with cracks in the facade will quickly start to look depressing.

And as they are often chosen for cost reasons inside capitalistic environments, they are often neglected.

So, the problem is not commie blocks, but how they are maintained. And as often we tend to search for the extreme examples if we (dis)like something.

Those houses were built by state-backed actors to support growing urbanization and create a housing surplus for that urbanization to give the workers more power since they no longer have to deal with aggressively rent-seeking private landlords.

Wait, isn't that communism?

Shit still looks better than a tent under a bridge you know.