Know the difference.

Dialectical Materialism. Right now, they are. You either work towards communism or capitalism moves towards consolidation of capital. Those are your choices.

there's capitalism and its variants (the current system), and there is anti-capitalism in various flavours. (socdem, ML, anarchism)

you can choose your favorite flavour, but its either moving towards capitalism, or moving away from it.

Yes. It’s just those are the two mentioned, and I’m slightly communist. So there’s some bias.

We did that already. We could do it again.

we tried that before though, improving things temporarily, but it will never be permanent until we extinguish the owner class.

Yes, we must have a middle ground between having parasites and not having parasites. Thank you enlightened centrist.

Why do you think that way?

@Gigan @SouthEndSunset
There is nothing bad about the collective ownership of the means of production. I can, however, think of many things that are bad about one person owning the entire means production despite not doing any work, which is what exists under capitalism.

Yea, no shit, nothing to do with what I said though.

No it isn't, but it does highlight the main issue:

Communism would work if it weren't for people trying to co-opt it for power

Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism is the end goal (since, it being automated, means there should effectively be no way to hijack it), but we ain't getting there for a long time. Let's go for socialism first and work from there

I've been to Capitalist countries, I've been to Communist countries.

Guess which system has their people immigrating to the other system on rafts with their children, just to try the other system. Guess which system builds walls to keep people IN, guess which system has beggars asking for milk for their children instead of money.

Your comment isn't the dunk you think it is when it brushes up against the harsh truth that is reality.

Yeha, I could also point far right authoritarian governments and say that capitalism is bad... But that would be stupid.

Slaves are e human capital. So by definition weren't plantations capitalist?

What is it with people here thinking that earning a wage is slavery? That requires either a complete lack of understanding what slavery or just some serious impressive mental gymnastics.

I associate corrupt authoritarianism with communism because it's an inevitable outcome. Communism only works of you remove individual freedoms and force people into it. This, by design, requires a dictatorship. Dictatorships foster corruption because you can't have transparency.

The USSR had a minimum sentence of 5 years of forced labor for being gay. Being gay is also apparently wrongthink.

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror#Industrial_workers

Do also take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1917_Russian_Constituent_Assembly_election

And this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Revolutionary_Party

Selected quotes:

The SRs were agrarian socialists and supporters of a democratic socialist Russian republic. The ideological heirs of the Narodniks, the SRs won a mass following among the Russian peasantry by endorsing the overthrow of the Tsar and the redistribution of land to the peasants.

In the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly held two weeks after the Bolsheviks took power, the party still proved to be by far the most popular party across the country, gaining 37.6% of the popular vote as opposed to the Bolsheviks' 24%. However, the Bolsheviks disbanded the Assembly in January 1918 and after that the SR lost political significance. (...) Both wings of the SR party were ultimately suppressed by the Bolsheviks through imprisoning some of its leaders and forcing others to emigrate.

Following Lenin's instructions, a trial of SRs was held in Moscow in 1922, which led to protests by Eugene V. Debs, Karl Kautsky, and Albert Einstein among others. Most of the defendants were found guilty, but they did not plead guilty like the defendants in the later show trials in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and the 1930s.

Note that these guys won the elections because they were the actually existing socialist movement in Russia and had been for decades. Lenin only led the government instead of them because he had the organization to overthrow the Mensheviks, not because the Bolsheviks were a better representative of socialism.

There's no country where every single person lives in freedom and happiness. But there are numerous countries that have significantly improved the quality of life for the vast majority of people compared to what they had before, including Cuba, Vietnam, and China.

It may be true that in some cases the quality of life is higher in capitalist countries. But there's a good reason for that! Historically, the countries most prone to socialist revolutions... were countries with some of the lowest standards of living in the world!

Despite this, China has recently eclipsed the United States in life expectancy. If you compare the two countries' life expectancies before the Communists came to power, no one would expect that to happen! Why? Because for the average rural Chinese person, their way of life was virtually unchanged since ancient times with a life expectancy of 35, comparable to that of the Roman Empire.

Anti-communists would have us compare communist countries against either an imagined utopia, or against countries starting from a significantly higher level of industrial development. But those comparisons are not relevant to the question at hand! In order to evaluate the efficacy of socialism, the relevant comparison is the system that actually existed before, and what it was on track to do! And in cases like China, we can clearly see that the quality of life was miserable and stagnant for the vast majority of people, until the communists came to power!

Why do Westerners fail to account for this vital evidence? Because people used to a higher standard of living would take these improvements for granted! For a village tailor, being able to afford a sewing machine could be life-changing - but someone living in the imperial core would have no relevant experience to relate to that! The only thing they would notice is how poor the person still is, regardless of how much or how quickly their life is improving!

Is there a Capitalist country where all people can "live in freedom and pursue happiness?" What does that even mean? What are the solid metrics by which you track that, so you can say a country passes or fails that?

First of all, communism isn't utopian. Even communists don't think it will be some paradise where all worries disappear. You'll still have to fight racism, sexism, bad weather, famines, etc.

But it's often better for an average person from a country of a starting equal level of economic development. You've got to give it the "If I was reincarnated in a random person's body, where would I want to be?" test. US is a good answer, but it's got a way higher level of economic development with a big headstart. Even then, you could end up in the hood and die early and stressed. When you give the test comparing countries of equal starting economic development, it becomes a lot more muddled.

Like, would you rather randomly live in Cuba, or Somalia? The place where you get free education, health care, etc or a place that is also extremely poor but you don't get that stuff? You could reincarnate as some rich, warlord there, but would you want to take that chance when you could reincarnate in Cuba as literally anyone and not be worried about ending up homeless? When giving realistic comparisons like this with proper historical context, and you do it over and over again, they tend to come out on top.

In fairness, everyone dies in every political system. Yes I'm fun at parties

No they die under F R E E D O M.

That's different, because of reasons. When someone dies within a communist system that is communism's fault. When someone dies in a capitalist system, that's their own fault for not tugging on those bootstraps.

The "black book of communism" includes german soldiers who died during WW2, it includes people who might have had 4 kids but only had 2, it includes victims of the US in vietnam.

“Communism but not like that. Or that. Or that. Or….”

ew a revisionist, it was REAL socialism led by REAL communists and it was based as fuck and the one that are still around are real and they are based. also theres no such thing a one party socialist state that is a myth at most u could say past and present socialist countries has a dominant political party but by no means was there only one, and other parties were and are allowed in those countries.

Do you have a real-world example of a successful communist state? Because you may not like it, but those "communist" countries are humanities best attempts at enacting communism and they resulted in millions of people dying.

AES countries were and are legitimate attempts at building Communism. People have died in these countries, but at the same time many saw drastic increases in quality of life and industrialization. Dismissing AES is usually a sign of not understanding Marxism.

Communism is a goalpost on wheels, that’s why no nation has “finished that progression”

'We're only defending the imaginary ideal!'

That's not how words work. Things mean what they are used to mean.

Y'all understand this perfectly when describing "capitalism." That word becomes synecdoche for every level and aspect of modern reality. By definition, capitalism is only really the part where having money makes money, but nobody has any trouble understanding what you mean when you refer to its consequences and implications. Nor would you respect if libertarians split hairs about "corporatism." Like oh, this isn't capitalism, because it lacks X and Y and Z, which have never existed, so how dare you talk about bad things that actually happened.

still

many cases of people fleeing from communist countries to capitalist ones

far less cases of people fleeing from capitalist countries to live under communism

most people don't want communism, that's why there are no democratic elections in communist countries and wrongthink is persecuted

This reply perfectly highlights why people who have issues with basic logic support communism.

im on latin america and despite being bad over here, i'm a bit skeptical on this one. the blockade is currently making sure cuba can't even get basic medication in sufficient quantities.

i'd say its safer to say they are much better in some aspects, the ones they can control.

No, I just have very different ideas what progress is.

Progress in my eyes is made when a society becomes more democratic, and when we solve conflicts without bloodshed.

In that sense, sure, the GDR was a step in the right direction, but nazi germany didn't exactly set the bar very high.

The idea of socialism is nice, but you hardly have any progress if the system (be it built on free markets or planned economies) doesn't work to improve ordinary citizens' lives, but only to keep the powerful in power.

Personaly, I don't care much about free markets or planned economies. I think the best approach, as so often, is a kind of blend, a social market economy that allows independent companies in a framework that protects workers, consumers and the environment.

Thing is, the specifics of the economic system aren't important. What matters is that the people are the ones who decide them.

There is nothing wrong with pursuing a utopian society, but ultimatly you have no control over what happens in the far future (neither should you, future societies need to be ruled by future people).

The only thing you can control is the present and the near future, so what really matters aren't the ends you strive for, but the means you employ while doing so.

Neither the USSR or China fulfilled Dialectical Materialism yet either. That's a prerequisite for the ideals of communism.

Lol it sounds like someone trying to defend capitalism. "No, it's totally fine, we just didn't implement it right. There are certain laws and regulations that can fix it, we swear!"

Yet for some reason any flaw with a communist country is endemic to communism itself, instead of the implementation, contexts of their outside conditions, or foreign influence, or general state of economic development.

As I understand it, "real communism" is supposed to be some kind of stateless society. As the GDR was, well, a state, it clearly did not achieve that. Nor would it ever have been likely to, as actually doing what was ideologically promised would have required those with power within that system to relinquish that power, which is incredibly rare as it conflicts with human nature.

it WAS real communism

I mean, it wasn't, at least not according to the actual people who ran those governments. The USSR and the CCP were/are revolutionary governments, real communism happens when/if the revolutionary governments succeeds and transitions the means of control back to the proletariat.

and ur grandparents probably deserved it.

Really working hard to build those bridges of mutual respect and cooperation I see. This is one of the key reasons the USSR imploded in the first place.

The expansion of Soviet influence happened under the influence of Russian chauvinism, a major contradiction with the more successful maoist ideology today. Instead of allowing communism to be shaped by individual ethnicities or nations they did their best to russify or simply purge the base of power in the country, bolshevists or not.

Stalin and Beria did a whole bunch of purging of leftist to secure their control over the party. If you actually think everyone the Soviets killed deserved it, please go read about the Makhnovist, the Mensheviks, the Georgian bolshevist, hell go read what the Soviets did to the original leftist leader in North Korea.

difference is under capitalism it is constant under socialism it is rare.

Unfortunately that's just not true. Revolutions are highly hierarchical due to their inherent need to react to militant reactionaries. As they begin to solidify their revolution and take over the responsibilities of the state, this hierarchy gets transferred from the the state.

Authoritarian governments are highly efficient, but are extremely hard to get away from once established. Often times the militant leader of the revolution is not the guy you want to be in complete control of the state after establishing a revolutionary government.

Mao was decent enough to accept this after the failure of the cultural revolution, Stalin on the other hand......

Take it from a self-identified pinko commie and someone born in one of those regimes, it was not real communism. It was authoritarianism with a strong (but at times selectively applied) social safety net. To say that their grandparents deserved it when you know nothing about them is fucking absurd. You're not helping your point or cause. You're just being a child.

Just... no. Coming from an anarchist communist

Pure Ideological Marxism Gang Will Rise Eventually

Good ol Marxism

I know, also I didn't say I'm a communist fan, all I'm saying is that they rebranded totalitarian form of governments under communism so we don't actually know if Marx communism works or it's a flop

When you pay for a luxury brand phone it's not you master telling you too, it's you choosing. Don't come at me with the onipotent lord that control all of us. The system IS broken, captalist is NOT the best for the people but people stiil choose.

Iphones build by communists btw

Thank you. Kids here trying to justify having Iphones when they could very well have the cheepest phone workable. They screem comunism but want to be better than others. I don't thino there is a solution because humans are imperfect. No perfect solution will ever exist if a human is responsible for managing it.

I don't disagree at all! But if you want to scream "milk cpmpanies are bad" don't go buing their product. I hate people that want to support a cause on the internet but do NOTHING to change it. Usually those are the first ones in line to buy the latest trendy Iphone. Don't be a caplatist if you don't want captalism.

BTW I'm not american. I'm looking from the outside and I only see irony. My country have labour laws and consumer protection and if someone messes with it we make a huge fuzz