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I don't like to think that I or we really can't imagine a better system but I don't think it's completely unrealistic to say something like best we got. I say this only because things like communism and all their promises can only really come about through a revolution and the price in blood is jaw dropping. So much killing. It also almost certainly means people materially worse off for a long time if not the rest of their lives in the wake of this revolution even if over generations it manages to eventually deliver.
I'm all for substantial reform and leftist/liberal politics but it's difficult for me to ignore the great peril and huge gamble of revolution. Some times a society successfully manages to make things so bad that there's so little to lose that it can seem a realistic option but I think everybody considering that option should weigh it very carefully. It's very possible to sacrifice everything including your own life and thousands of others' only for the whole thing to get derailed by opportunists and to make a bad situation so much worse.
I say this only because things like communism and all their promises can only really come about through a revolution and the price in blood is jaw dropping. So much killing. It also almost certainly means people materially worse off for a long time if not the rest of their lives in the wake of this revolution even if over generations it manages to eventually deliver.
These same arguments can be used to ward off a revolution against a dictatorship or absolutist monarchy, though. Or even against slavery.
It's true.
This is one of the three big problems of communism for me, though I believe that long term there's no other way forward than by using violence. The few that are powerful got there by willing to play dirty and please the rest of the bourgeoisie instead of the people, and anyone that enters that scene hoping to make a change will either be forced to play that game or to be kicked out. It's a endless circle that only force or technology can break, and I don't bet on technology making things better for us.
The other two are:
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Realistically the proletariat can't all run a state together simply because there's too many voices, so there always ends up being a few that rule over the many. Some have proven to believe in the cause and not use their newfound power for a new bourgeoisie to arise, but eventually they will pass away and someone has to take their place. How do you make sure that no one ends up betraying the people leading to either reviving the old system or a new bloody revolution?
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The late stage withering of the state is a nice concept that does make sense assuming that society completely changes after a long time of living in an equal system, but it hasn't been seen in practice. Of course it's unfair to rule it away since it wasn't inefficiency that killed communism but outer interferences from capitalist countries that feared communism like the plaugue (which makes sense given that the rulers of those countries don't want to become one with the proletariat and definitely don't wan't to be imprisoned, exiled or executed).
This is the first time I've seen this mentioned on lemmy, and it's always been my fundamental concern with communism. We've never made it to the end state of communism - to date, it has always stopped at the authoritarian stage, which is supposed to be temporary and transitional.
Arguments can be made that this is a product of foreign interference, and there's definitely merit to that, but it's not the whole picture. No matter what political system you have, highly concentrated power is not easy to dismantle and socialize. It doesn't magically get easier just because you ousted the old guard and put new people in that position. So long as there is benefit to being the leader, you're generally looking at people who want those benefits, not the responsibility of carrying the project forward.
Technology could address some of the difficulties involved in direct democracy (which, imo, is THE fundamental thing required in communism - hell, democratic capitalist countries would benefit too), but there are many ways to manipulate a populace so that it almost wouldn't matter.
I'm not going to pretend I have any answers here, or that communism as a political system is inherently bad, but the draw of power is a fundamental source of corruption no matter what your stated intent is.
Communism is simply an economic framework, not a political one. I dont agree with the notion that authoritarianism is a prerequisite for communist society.
At the very least the existence of anarcho communism points towards that.
Communism is an entire social philosophy, not just an economic model.
Fair - I did wonder about inappropriately conflating things around this point - but a transitional 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is definitely a stage of development in communism. For what it's worth, what I'm reading on the subject right now is this (only started reading after commenting, prior comments based on previous knowledge/discussions of communism): https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm
Admittedly, perhaps not all flavours of communism, but it's hard to argue with this showing up in history. The question becomes: is it really a dictatorship of the proletariat? Or a separate political class using that language and ideology to justify their position?
I will be the first to admit I'm not up-to-date with my communist theory, nor aware of the dominant strains of it in contemporary good faith discourse. So I'm happy to be presented with rebuttals or different positions on this - the more you know and all that.
You seem well intended, no worries.
Just for an example, Im a libertarian communist. I believe in a Democratic communism where a direct democracy makes larger political decisions.
Somewhere between anarcho communist and socialist. My view on governments, communist or otherwise, is that they should be only big enough to help the people. It should serve effectively no other purpose but to run social programs and to stop greedy people.
The dictatorship of the proletariat originally, in Marx's work, did not mean a literal dictatorship, but a democratic government run for the workers with the effective exclusion of other potential power centers. He refers to capitalist democracy in turn as a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, for reference.
Marxist-Leninists are the big offenders here, because two of the major 'innovations' to Marxism introduced by Marxist-Leninists (at least, two which are relevant here) are that of the revolutionary vanguard (that you need to give power to a small number of people who are really well-read on theory, and THAT'S what will save the revolution), and the idea that you can 'skip' over capitalist democracy and go straight to socialism if you just try really hard and shoot a lot of people who think wrong.
Marx was long-dead by the time Marxism-Leninism came about.
I fully agree, it's refreshing to find someone open minded that can have an actual discussion over politics without going all agressive and insane
Communism IS fundamentally bad. Why? Because it's inherently authoritarian, oppressive, and violent. The utopia is just that, a fantasy. We'll never achieve an a perfect society. Therefore, this ideology will always be permanently stuck in it's authoritarian, oppressive, and violent stage. The authoritarians in power will never voluntarily give up their power, they'll never stop oppressing and killing people, and they will never agree that the utopia arrived. The communist utopia will always be just around the corner.
The few that are powerful got there by willing to play dirty and please the rest of the bourgeoisie instead of the people, and anyone that enters that scene hoping to make a change will either be forced to play that game or to be kicked out
This is conspiracy-theorist nonsense.
Real "drain the swamp" energy
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You say this as if capitalism isn't responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions or more of deaths
It is not, if anything capitalism for preventing billions of deaths
In the face of capitalist derived climate catastrophe, I'm not sure if we have any options.
All you need to do here is show that non-capitalist systems won't consume fossil fuels, which I find to be extremely unlikely.
Communism doesn't incentive excess production or planned obsolescence. Historically they also had good public transportation.
Im saying there is a lot of energy waste in capitalism that leads to tons of emisions
Its no coincidence that the the US is one of the highest emitters of carbon.
Energy waste like heating homes, powering hospitals, and getting food from point A to point B?
Considering the Holodomor maybe that last point I can concede
What exactly are you arguing?
Are you suggesting communist societies don't have heat, hospitals and transport?
Are you suggesting there aren't green methods to achieve those?
That list in particular , yes they can be covered by renewables
Im am of the belief that we cant maintain our current lavish lives on renewables alone though.
Personally I think scaling back mixed with renewables is the answer. Less priority for the meat industry (of which I am a partaker), more work from home, more low emmision public transport.
There is no one silver bullet in the fight against the climate change. It will take an amalgamation of methods.
I agree with all of these things, but I find it doubtful that the industry, if left to the whims of its industry leaders, will ever take the plunge of their own accord, because they're making too much money producing fossil fuels. And that income includes massive subsidies, eclipsing any efforts towards renewables, meaning the state is also in collusion.
Oh absolutely. No disagreements here.
The quickest path to mitigating the effects of climate catastrophe is to reform out economic and therefore political system. Easier said than done though
Yes, I wouldn't say it's a simple fix. But the broad strokes are easily described: introduce democracy to our economy. True democracy, from the people, to the people. Let us dictate how the market functions and what it produces
No. The exact opposite.
I think you clearly are misinterpreting my argument.
Capitalism produces MORE emissions. That's all im saying. I never said Communism produces zero emmisions.
Citation needed
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
Scroll down to the breakdown by year by country. None of the communist inclusive countries and continents even make the list.
South America, famous for its communist and socialist revolutions is barely a blip on that graph, as a whole continent.
Those aren't wastages. Also...
Lmao I can't believe you actually linked some shit-ass YouTube video saying the Holodomor was fine, actually.
some shit-ass YouTube videoA thoroughly researched essay on the subject
saying the Holodomor was fine, actually.saying the Soviet famine was a fucking travesty, and Stalin should be shot, but there is no indication it was a deliberate policy
At least watch the first 10 seconds, ya fucking goof
Why? Production would be drastically lower, because there's no need to flood the market. Democracy would dictate what gets produced, so an educated population would object to polluting industries, and thus not support them, leading to their demise.
Because people love to not die, and suddenly ending our use of fossil fuels would kill a fuckload of people.
Dude think for half a minute
First off, I disagree with that assessment. But secondly, are you implying climate change won't kill people?
No I'm responding to the idea that communists won't use fossil fuels, which they did, and would.
How do you think Venezuela affords their socialism?
This is just the dumbest take possible.
Where did I say communists don't use fossil fuels? I do maintain they use objectively less though. There just less need less production all around.
Hell, your knowledge about. Venezuela is even incorrect. Its categorically a failed socialist state, not a communist one.
Neither of those things are capitalist, so my statement holds.
If people need to consume fossil fuels, socialists or communists will produce fossil fuels. This isnt rocket science.
"People" are not responsible for the majority of our emissions. Businesses are, as well as the military to an inordinate extent.
Again, I never once mentioned a zero fossil fuel society. You are putting words in my mouth.
People cause there to be demand for fossil fuels, not corporations. Businesses don't burn oil for funsies.
People are absolutely the cause of all carbon emissions. Businesses only exist because there is demand
This is why a carbon tax is an effective means of fighting climate change. It disincentivizes consumption of fossil fuels and thus lowers demand
People don't need to consume fossil fuels, though, so... 🤷♂️
Defeated by your own argument
No one said communism "doesn't use fossil fuels", so I'm not sure why you're trying to disprove that
The argument is that climate change is a result of capitalism which is demonstrably false.
So demonstrate it. The vast majority of pollution is caused by extremely profitable capitalist industries, supported by neoliberal capitalist states. And democratic will continues to swing towards reduction, yet states, bought off by fossil fuel companies, refuse to take action.
It doesn't need to end fucking immediately, because of that very reason.
Think for just a second, friendo.
Weird that you'd want economic conditions that don't contribute to new tech rather than economic conditions that do contribute to new tech, then.
Also I'm not your friend.
Source? Do people just not go to school or have ambitions to improve the world, simply because their basic needs are met? You think no one dreams of tech in communism? That a social order based on cooperation and mutual aid would not engender exactly that?
A source on socialism having less incentive to fund new technologies and more barriers in the way of such progress?
It's called "economic incentives" and you are more than capable of giving it a Google.
I tried to find a scholarly article titled "economic incentives" that proves that socialism doesn't heavily invest in technology, but found none. I ended up discovering great leaps in technology in the USSR and China, though.
Also, those economic incentives are driving climate change. I googled it and found that capitalist states pay fucking billions into fossil fuels.
You could have saved yourself some typing and just written "I'm selfish and wilfully ignorant"
First - educate yourself on communism, you clearly know nothing about it, but the fact that you're against it because "bloodshed" yet are openly in support of capitalism makes you nothing more than a wilfully ignorant hypocrite.
Capitalism has and continues to kill hundreds of millions (at least, in all the time it's existed) for profit in war, with hunger and restricted access to water, with homelessness and poverty, with preventable disease, all created and excused with the myth of artificial scarcity, with climate change, with immoral laws and entire systems designed to keep large segments of the population as slave labour, which is what they used to gain their power and wealth to be in the position to impose all of this in the first place. And all that just off the top of my head, there is so much more violence that is inflicted on us daily, they've just got most people, yourself included obviously, convinced that's just life, when it really really isn't. And those who actually benefit are never just going to give all of that up.
You keep mentioning the potential "sacrifice" which tells me just how privileged you are, but don't be mistaken - that privilege will only keep you safe for so long, and you not giving a shit about those of us who don't have it and are already suffering and dying under the system you're so eager to defend despite openly admitting to not understanding it (and displaying no understating of the alternative either), doesn't change the fact that said system is destroying the planet and everything on it, and no amount of bootlicking will save you from that.
First - educate yourself on communism
Wow, this is such a shit 😀 So everyone got it wrong, that's why it failed everywhere.
But you know what, go for it. It fucked up my country but I'm sure this time it's gonna be different, this time you get it right 🙂 I just grab my popcorn and enjoy the show
Many many capitalist societies have failed, but we let survivorship bias cloud our judgement.
We've only really attempted communism a couple of times.
Heck, all of the communist societies were built from the ashes of capitalist ones.
Heck, all of the communist societies were built from the ashes of capitalist ones.
I mean, Soviet Russia and China were really built on the bones of feudal societies, and that's something that Marx warned against.
Saving this liberal-killer comment
Go for it.
I have loads more links saved, but these come in handy most often:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
https://blacklikemao.medium.com/how-liberalism-helps-fascism-d4dbdcb199d9I wonder what excuse they'll use next to make sure they don't have to read anything that might challenge their bias.https://libcom.org/article/capitalist-democracy-illusion-choice
Thank you very kindly. These will come in useful for future arguments against libs and reactionaries.
Linking a site titled "blacklikemao.com" will not win you any arguments and will get you laughed at
Maybe by people like you, but that doesn't concern me.
I would be the person you'd be arguing with, so yes.
Do not use those links because rather than be "lib-killing" they are "lib-amusing"
I don't care to try to educate people who don't care to listen.
So, no, I wouldn't be arguing with you.
Also, your attitude doesn't exactly scream "liberal", to me. It screams "reactionary". Because you are describing a reactionary mindset.
Lol
Then why haven't you shut up?
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".
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.