Even from people that never lived in a communist state
edit: im 17 and i hate communism
Lemmy, the social network, started off as a leftist hangout spot.
From the perspective of “Open Source developers who are anti-Reddit pro-Fediverse”, it makes a lot of sense for Leftist/Communist and anti-corporation leaning people to hang out.
After all, the more extreme the viewpoint, the more driven to action (ie: write tens-of-thousands of lines of code and release for free) people get. In some regards, its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology. IE: Free Software is driven by ideology, not by money. So you get ideological people, especially when the software is small and niche.
The July 2023 Reddit Blackout was a big challenge for Lemmy’s old community and the new community, as the new community basically “invaded” a large scale leftist hangout spot. But hopefully we all learn to work together and the nature of our neighbors moving forward.
I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion. Which is enough of an alliance to keep us together, for now.
It does mean that we’ll have to keep up with the far-left old-timers on this network who wish to push their viewpoints. But they are the legacy and the start of Lemmy in some respects, even as the hypergrowth (starting in July 2023) has moderated the community pretty severely.
I don’t see the problem with people having communist views…capitalism isn’t great.
Yeah, the problem is that you have instances like Hexbear and Lemmy.ml that tread more into tankie territory, where if you argue anything less than the complete annihilation of the West and hail China, you’re likely to get harassed. I think rational people can agree that there’s a pretty gap between “The current system is corrupt” and "anyone who thinks differently than me should die,’ but I’ve seen plenty of irrational leftists.
Came here to make this point.
The CCP’s version of “communism” is almost a textbook example to me of how an interesting system that can work beautifully on the local level can be completely betrayed and turned in to something much more like an oligarchy.I don’t understand how someone of reasonable knowledge and judgement could possibly be a tankie in 2024.
Eh, if by tankie you only mean literal communist tankies, that’s just a single aspect of human nature.
There’s absolutists, extremists, and (frankly) sociopaths in every political/ideological grouping. The more you get towards an extreme, the more you run into militant examples of the group. Tankies are just the communist bloc of the crazies.
But, there’s folks like me that are all for revolution, but draw the line at unlimited killing to achieve it, or the eradication of groups in the name of the cause. I’m an extremist by most peoples’ standards, but they’ve never been exposed to the real crazies of any extremist bloc.
You run into the bonkers adherents of communism, anarchism, nationalism, or religious extremists, and they’re essentially the same mentality because it’s a human failing that some of us are willing to kill indiscriminately for a belief. We’re just lucky that that degree of extremism is split up, keeping them from being a serious, constant threat rather than the intermittent threat that they are.
Seriously, if you ever spend time around people that are working towards a goal like a change towards socialist thought, you’ll run into the batshit ones on the edges. You hang around the wrong places, you’ll run into right wing militants as well. They, none of them, are avoid knowledge, judgement, or reason. They’re zealots, and they’d be the same no matter what ism infected them because it’s about the fire, the anger, not the actual thing they’re using as their obsession.
Fuck, I’ve met a couple of people involved in pacifist movements seriously express the idea that “we” should just rise up and kill until all the warmongers are gone. People, humans, are always going to have zealots like that, no matter what.
Even if you adopt hardline Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as an ideology, the modern state of China has applied so much pro-capitalist revisionism to it that it’s a shell of its former self. Today, Maoist parties are suppressed in China.
I’m not a Maoist by a long shot, but I can at least appreciate the fact that the ones shouting “revisionism!” the most are the ones who have most bastardized their own texts.
it’s a shell of its former self.
And from my reading, its former self was little more than a dictatorship with ‘communist trappings,’ anyway. Mao was a monster, and nobody to be emulated from what I’ve learned.
He killed more people than almost anyone else in history. Maybe the most.
Because they’re paid shills using communism as a facade to spread Kremlin and CCP propaganda.
Those places are basically just The_Donald for people who think they’re more clever than to fall for the typical bullshit that was found in The_Donald.
They’re not.
I don’t agree with that crowd at all politically, but I don’t agree with everyone on all Web forums out there, all subreddits, all Usenet groups, or such either. We can share an Internet without it being a problem, I think. Just means that I tend to avoid a couple of instances and communities.
l’d be more worried about influence attempts, astroturfing, than people who openly take a position. Having a hexbear or lemmygrad home instance is being pretty open about one’s positions.
Just to point out, Lemmy.ml isn’t really like that, with a few exceptions. Before the big influx of Reddit refugees, it used to be the default Lemmy instance, and so has quite a few non-political communities.
It’s Lemmygrad.ml that’s the super tanky echo chamber.
I mean, I’m currently getting a ton of downvotes in .ml for suggesting the radical idea of voting for local leftist politicians over destabilizing all of Western civilization.
I’m even outwardly for the destabilization of all civilization, but apparently “actually trying to enact meaningful change” isn’t what they’re interested in, unless it involves someone else dying in their revolution.
You can’t just say “in .ml”, is my point. Which specific community?
If you’re talking about like say, worldnews@lemmy.ml, then I totally understand, but my point is that if we are talking about instances as a whole, then Lemmy.ml is quite mild in its “tankiness”.
I mean, I don’t have much problem with people disagreeing with me. But I’m pretty openly pro-capitalist, though I’m not a dumbass libertarian.
I recognize the need for the “capitalist edge cases” (externalities, monopolies, etc. etc.) that must be regulated and fixed for the system to work. I also recognize that we’ve failed to regulate externalities (ex: CO2 emissions), and failed to regulate monopolies / anticompetitive behavior (see Google).
So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
Overall, I accept that the commies / tankies were here first, and the history of Lemmy makes it clear why that happened.
So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
Right there with you.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
We also HAVE to teach the kids how to protect it better than people did 100 years ago. Most of our problems today stem from people voting to remove “useless red tape” (that was put there for damn good reasons).
My problem with communist views is they’re unproven and have only lead to authoritarian governments when put into play.
Capitalism has regularly gone off the rails … but not to the degree communism has. Capitalism has been defending democracy for the last few centuries, not communism.
These are the nations that identify as communist:
- China (PRC)
- Cuba
- Laos
- North Korea (DPRK)
- Vietnam
These countries were previously communist and (of that has that) have pretty much only improved since transitioning to democracy with capitalist economic systems:
- Afghanistan
- Albania
- Angola
- Benin
- Bulgaria
- Congo
- Czechoslovakia
- Ethiopia
- Germany (GDR)
- Grenada
- Hungary
- Kampuchea
- Mongolia
- Mozambique
- Poland
- Romania
- Somalia
- Soviet Union
- Tuva
- Yemen (PDRY)
- Yugoslavia
That’s not to say that capitalism doesn’t have its problems, people here aren’t angry with it over nothing. However, if you really look at the problems it’s had, they all come down to voter manipulation and/or apathy “things are going good, why do I need to worry about politics?”.
We didn’t just wake up with weakened labor unions, weakened voter rights, weakened infrastructure, etc; we got their because of generations of apathy and frankly electing the wrong people. People that cut taxes, asked “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” (short term gain), allowed our unions to be broken up, allowed jobs to be exported over seas to communist China (which is now one of the greatest international threats), bought the cheapest products (from mom and dad at the store to the executives running major corporations) without asking why they’re cheap, etc.
The “common people” cast the votes that ultimately lead to corporations being people. The “middle class” cost votes that ultimately lead to the middle class shrinking.
I think it’s naive that communism somehow automatically makes those problems go away/means we’ll never end up with similar problems. Especially when communist countries are consistently doing worse/falling into authoritarian rule.
We need to expand our social programs, reign in our billionaires, and reign in our corporations and we’d be a lot better off. Capitalism works so long as you don’t let anyone or anything get “too big to fail.” Capitalism doesn’t have to be capitalism without limits. The reigns of power will always be challenged no matter what system we find ourselves under, only an educated vigilant population can stop that.
In my experience in lemmy these same people have a very big problem with you not sharing their communist views
A leftist world view is the correct world view in my book. What I can’t stand are people who defend Russia and China.
I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion.
I don’t particularly have any problem with Reddit beyond the fact that (a) I don’t like their “new” Web UI and (b) the fact that one of the moves that they made to monetize their service was to ban third-party clients, which is a tradeoff that I’m not willing to make.
I mean, I was expecting that at some point, Reddit was going to have to have to shift from growth to monetization. I just didn’t agree with the particular tradeoff that they chose to make.
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I don’t really know what ads they showed, as I used an ad-blocker. I’d believe that it’s probably annoying, but the same is true of most websites that show ads. Reddit Gold provided a commercial ad-free option, so it wasn’t a requirement even without blocked ads. And unlike most companies, it was possible to purchase Reddit Gold without linking to one’s financial data, since they provided purchase options bounced through cryptocurrency and such. As web services go, I suppose it was probably a fair bit better than the average.
I’d have probably been willing to buy commercial Reddit service – I mean, I’ve subscribed to Usenet service, have commercial email hosting service, have commercial VPS service. I don’t have a problem with commercial service, as long as it’s something solid. The value-for-money was probably pretty good, given how much I used it. I just don’t want to be obliged to run their binary code on my systems and have data extracted from my system and be data-mined other than what they get from my web browser or open-source client.
They’re starting to roll ads into AI-generated comments, and are selling off user data. It really does suck.
In the beginning, I was okay with the ads on Reddit. But then, Reddit just kept making stupid decision after stupid decision on the official app’s UI, so I switched to a third party app, that happens to also have no Reddit ads. When Reddit killed the apps and continued making the official experience worse, I bailed Reddit and came here because I’m not supporting a greedy platform.
What are you on about? “its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology”? Aside from your first sentence, this is just baseless word salad.
I mean just that.
Open source developers are not paid in money. One of the other major motivators is ideology, so that becomes a major motivator in practice.
Be careful where you tread here. You must be careful to separate “communists” (people who believe in economic reorganization away from the power of capital) and “tankies” (those who support corrupt regimes that project the illusion of communism).
There are indeed quite a few communists and various other alt-camp political spectrum believers on here. They do have quite liberal beliefs but don’t typically cause much of a fuss, because rational people can coexist with differing beliefs… and i dont mind them one bit. But the tankes, like lemmygrad, hexbear, etc, do stir up an anti-west "commie propaganda"fuss every chance they get, without being related to actual communism, especially if one mentions a hot button like Israel or Ukraine. And if you get into an argument with a tankie, they will just sling mud on you and call you a Nazi.
The cool part is, you can filter a lot of the chaff by just blocking the ugly instances from your user settings page (since Lemmy supports that now), blocking frequent flyers, and trimming/moving your subscribed community list to other, often smaller instances. A minimal amount of effort VASTLY increases the quality of content you’ll see on lemmy.
There are very few real communists left. On here, it’s going to be pretty much all tankies.
I’d definitely describe myself as a communist, but I do realize we never had a proper communist state on this planet, just authoritarian states that acted like communists to win over the workers. Capitalism needs to be regulated as fuck to create a fair society, so for now, I strive for socialism, because I understand going straight to communism probably won’t work.
Sorry if this was uncalled for, I just wanted to show there are sensible communists who don’t excuse Russia and China for the shit they’re pulling. But neither do I excuse the west for a lot of shit we are pulling.
Those states would agree that they have not achieved communism, and they would agree that they are authoritarian, namely the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin, 1917, The State and Revolution
Let’s just skip the euphemisms and use ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’
There is a euphemism for dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and it is bourgeois democracy.
Bourgeois democracy is a separate term. It can describe something like European nations voting between which bourgeoisie will rule the proletariat. The more you know.
The more you know.
Even NATOPedia thinks they’re synonyms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_bourgeoisie
The only time they’re not synonyms is when the capitalist class finds kayfabe democracy insufficient, at which point they deploy fascism. That’s what’s been developing in many Western capitalist states around the world in recent years. The working class is more and more agitated by their deteriorating conditions under neoliberalism. Even the petit bourgeois feel threatened. The far-right surge isn’t organic, though: the capitalist class fuels it to maintain their position.
There are dozens of us!
Yeah, unfortunate but true…
Global news communities in instances like beehaw or lemmy.world seem to have predominantly communist and leftist posters. The nazbols congregate on their own famous three instances.
Show me a single comment on Hexbear or lemmy.ml or lemmygrad that promotes nazbols or patsocs or MAGA communists or LaRouchites like Dugin or Hinkle or Haz or Maupin.
Or Juche, Maoism, Leninism, Stalinism…
Given your false reports to the authorities, it seems you like authoritarianism after all.
Were the reports false or were the authoritarians false?
What does a decision to rely on ad hominem display… A deeper stalking would brittle it down tho
The phrase is whittle it down.
“It wasn’t real socialism!!1!” lmao
This is the position you get when you understand capitalism is fucked but you still believe capitalist states’ propaganda about socialist revolutions that have actually managed to successfully overthrow the capitalist class, which gets worse the more those states have managed to rival and threaten capitalist rule globally.
Leaves platform enshittified by capitalism
Complains about people being communists
Bruh
Yes, but it was not enshittified by capitalism, instead it was the evil corporation that wanted more money
🤣
without capitalism this company wouldn’t have existed and you could only share you thoughts on one single website. without competition, imagine that
The internet is a government project. Without “Communism” you wouldn’t even have a single website, imagine that.
so your point is that we should not have a choice at all?
We already don’t, our choices are dictated to us by the executive boards that act as America’s unelected central planning committees.
You realize that capitalism is different from the free market and commerce, right? … Right?
I know getting upset means I’m losing, but you’re really good.
sorry for making you upset
Capitalism isn’t about competition or the free market or any of that. It’s about the idea that there is an ownership class that is entitled to control the flow of wealth because they had some meetings, moved some money around, and now own some buildings they didn’t build full of machines they didn’t make or move, that produce things they didn’t design, test, inspect, or assemble. But they get to decide who gets the benefit of that economic activity (it’s them, while those who actually make all that happen get peanuts).
A communist economy can reduce redundancies to increase efficiency, but that doesn’t mean it can only offer one option for any good or service. Art, variety, and uniqueness can still exist in communist economies, they just wouldn’t be gated by ability to afford things but instead by ability to produce things. Star Trek is a communist economy because the replicators can make whatever anyone wants. We don’t have the technology for that level of communism and, IMO communism doesn’t work very well unless you’re in a post-scarcity world, until then I believe it’s good to incentivise and reward workers. But even with scarcity, a communist system could make you choose between having a really nice computer vs a really nice bike, and offer less nice options to those that choose the nice other thing.
You’re hilarious. Is this a bit? This has to be a bit.
What?? 😭 😭 😭
American says communism and means socialism
the hardest test for any American
define communism
define propaganda
use both in a sentence that applies to the agreed definitions
How would you define communism? I hear so many different definitions and find it hard to differentiate which one is accurate.
I was kidding around, and part of the joke is how pointless the definition is:
communism: that the assets held by a body are indivisible across the individuals of that body when the assets in question are required to engage in production.
Thereby any definition of “body”, “asset” and “production” can be used to define specific types and scopes of a communist ideology.
propaganda: a piece or collection of communications that has the primary purpose to persuade.
communist propaganda: a communication to persuade the reader to share the means of production across a collective.
American says communism and means conservative democrat or Trump Republican, depending on who is saying it.
AES barely even registers, except for the occasional “Why don’t you move to Vuvuzela!”
Why isn’t anyone defending AEC countries?
Nobody actually wants to be Estonia anymore
No, there are outright communists on Lemmy. This is an accurate take.
You’re proving their point. You say “outright” communists, as if socialism isn’t just a transition between capitalism and communism.
I’m saying it because places like Lemmygrad and Hexbear are outright Communist and they will take it as an insult if you call them socialist.
I’m not talking about the shades of different economic preferences, I’m talking about the extreme cases. In the extreme cases, there are multiple outright Communist communities on Lemmy.
they will take it as an insult if you call them socialist
What a dumb thing to say. Browse those instances and talk to communists/socialists there before you make weird claims about them. Or at least learn about socialism in general first.
I don’t get why you’re being downvoted. There’s a great comment by Cowbee (I think) that explains why this is a thing.
There are people who are explicitly self-proclaimed Communists on Lemmy.
This isn’t some “Healthcare is communism!!!1” thing.
A lot of the users on those instances also has usernames or pronouns which includes “commie”
I think it is because some people think that socialism is a kind of communism, when that take wouldn’t be accepted by a lot of communists here.
Communists believe that socialism is a transitional state from capitalism to communism, but 1) communists aren’t the only socialists and 2) a lot of Americans think milquetoast social safety net capitalist reformers like Bernie Sanders are socialists despite them never calling for the abolition of private ownership of the means of production.
It gets touted as a transition state between Capitalism and Communism, by Communists who want to get away from Capitalism, and Capitalists who fear anything that isn’t Capitalist.
But it is a genuine economic philosophy on its own that blends the best parts of Communism and Capitalism in one. At least to my opinion.
I think it’s because my rent is a third of my income and im not allowed to function without not only feeding the parasites but making them morbidly obese.
Rent is only a third of your income? You lucky bastard.
Half for me :(
so first you choose these parasites and then you hate them? How unfortunate…
Sadly I was born in the world in which they had a massive head start and already own a lot of apartments making it more difficult for me to own one. Ever played monopoly? Thats what it’s actually about.
It’s not really a choice. If you don’t want to be on the streets then you have two options: buy or rent. (There is a third: squatting, but that has its own downsides.) Presumably riodoro1 can’t buy (or has chosen not to for some other reason) and doesn’t want to be homeless or a squatter.
First you choose to be a wage slave and then you hate your bosses?
I’ve lived all my life under capitalism and I hate it.
I’ve read Marx, (for real, grab the book and read it!) and I see the dude does have a point.
The language can be a bit tough to understand these days though so might want to read Ted Reese’s Socialism Or Extinction instead
How someone can downvote two subjective statements of opinion (hates capitalism, sees a point in a book) is beyond me. There’s nothing to downvote here. It’s an opinion, not a statement of fact that is incorrect.
People misuse downvotes.
That’s an easy question to answer. People often downvote comments that waste their time. Opinions that have no basis, or that are based on bad definitions or falsehoods, those tend to get downvoted. Because there’s nothing to learn and nothing to discuss.
My approach is to only downvote factual inaccuracies or extremely terrible takes. I know that’s not for everyone, but I wish it was.
I thought the same many years ago, until I saw how it went for every single country that implemented communism and then I didnt like it so much. You all seriously think is a coincidence?
You gotta look the context and learn about geopolitics. If Communism is so bad why the USA need to keep interfering with Cuba?
Lets compare Cuba with other Caribbean islands, how they perform against those? Remember they are blocked by the strongest country in the world.
Cuba developed its own covid vaccine, cuba sends doctors to africa in order to help people there, when Italia was in a health crisis Cuba sent thousands of doctors.
Cuba has the most advanced and inclusive family laws in the world.
Edit: btw Awesome album and Lemmy was an Anarchist.
First than anything, great taste in music my dude. Ok, fair point, these countries have it hard because of economic sanctions, but that doesn’t explain why they all devolve into a tyrannical, corrupt and repressive systems where people are forced to stay and a great majority seems to want to leave. People just don’t have free will and freedom of speech in these places. Is not a coincidence, its by design, communism is intentionally “the dictatorship of the working class”.
And don’t get me wrong, I dislike very much the unregulated capitalistic system of the USA too, yet a lot of people in the world seem to want to live there instead of any communist country. If I those were my only options, I would hate it, but I would choose the same.
I don’t blame the chef when I can’t understand the recipe. I learn what the ingredients are.
I strongly recommend you to read Animal Farm, it’s very easy to understand
You mean Orwell’s classic anti-capitalist novel wherein a worker’s rebellion against tyrannical bosses is betrayed by capitalist pigs who re-create the farm’s original conditions for their own profit?
You should read his “Homage to Catalonia”, Orwell fought against capitalists in Spain’s civil war and wrote a book about his experiences there.
oh you are 17. When I was 17 I also was just like you.
Also disliked communism?
When I was 17? Hell yeah, with the information I had back then.
I was super conservative lol.
I’ve read it.
Orwell was socialist my dude.
Ever read one of his other books Down and Out in Paris and London?
It helps explain why he is a socialist.
I did and it is stupid propaganda.
I recommend you learn from real books about real life like those of Marx and Lenin, not fiction.
Probably has something to do with leaving a platform because it turned into a capitalist shithole?
I’m beginning to see why people call lemmy.world the Reddit of the fediverse
Maybe lemmy.world will have ads and NFTs at some point too lol
I want to block this shit instance but seeing clueless libs like OP in my feed sometimes is fun
The first instance of Lemmy is lemmy.ml
The ML stands for Marxist-Leninists
I mean, its actually the country tld of Mali
Yeah, but that’s not why it’s being used by those instances.
It was used because it was cheap (possibly free?).
And .af is Afghanistan, .tv is Tuvalu, and .ai is Anguilla.
But .af is used for “As fuck”, .tv is used for media, and .ai is used for sketchy startups jumping on a bandwagon after they didn’t get rich off of blockchain/crypto.
Could be both.
Malian marxist leninists
Because there are a lot of communists on lemmy?
Some can be very annoying. If you haven’t blocked hexbear, I highly recommend it. They got exiled from reddit years ago and have been stewing in a tankie echo chamber ever since.
Hexbear aren’t communists, they’re just using it as a facade to spread propaganda.
They got exiled from reddit years ago
Huh, just like everyone else here
It’s weird rather that some people are such bootlickers that they complain about people being socialists/communists after leaving a platform because of capitalism
I complained about them being annoying and tankies.
I chose to migrate.
90% of the shit spouted about Hexbear is just baseless nonsense. Soon as you actually try to have a good faith discussion, they’re hecka cool.
Not when I tried it. When shw federated, I tried for about 2 days to talk about stuff. But they kept defending Russia in it’s invasion of Ukraine with super brain dead arguments and holding up North Korea as a shinning example of communism. Plus at the ends of threads, they often just respond with poop emojis. Or even at the beginning of threads. That’s just annoying.
Edit: oh and defending or denying China’s treatment of the Uyghur was also common.
why not? if you’d like a more capitalist experience you can always go to reddit. don’t forget to download their shitty app that no longer has competitors.
They don’t want reddit but want its liberal echo chamber lmao
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As Marx predicted a hundred years ago
Lol you just provided the simplest counter to the most common capitalist argument.
“You don’t understand capitalism, bro. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s the regulation on capitalism. Under a true capitalist system, there can’t be monopolies because capitalism rewards competition.”
Ok so what happened to all the reddit apps
Edit: I really like the reddit app example because it’s simple: no regulation or anti-capitalist force made them to that, it was literally just a capitalist decision.
But regulatory capture is an important part of capitalism, and no matter how many ancap bullshit artists say otherwise, government is absolutely part of the capitalist plan. Giving the workers a “say” (or the illusion of one) keeps them a bit quieter, but more importantly, having a government outsources a lot of crap they would otherwise have to pay for, like infrastructure, which would be a huge strain on profits.
In fact, the ancap bullshit idea that unregulated markets would improve things is an artificial limitation on capitalist power. Total lack of regulation is a restriction on capitalism.
Because there’s nothing wrong with being communist, and yet most of western civilization publicly demonizes communism and anyone who espouses communist views. Given the freedom to share an idea without fearing ad hominem attacks, ideas are judged on their merits alone.
See also: Satanism, Atheism, Socialism.
The issue that every “communist” when pushed will take position on atrocities committed by various communists regimes… they gonna do that thing that “fascists” do: “well he really did not do it but if he did, they clearly deserved it”
Tell that to east Asians or Europeans to their face… everyone is deff hard online tho.
I find that liberals are much more dismissive of US atrocities. Most communists I speak to know a wealth of details about the failings of mao and stalin.
Ask a US conservative about our 20th and 21st century atrocities - torture, massacres, coups, support for genocidal regimes and ecocidal companies, etc. - and they’ll proudly defend our brutality. Ask a liberal and they’ll hedge, deny and justify like an internet tankie who’s never opened a history book.
Boomers are deff in denial but younger gen seems less likely to straight up deny it. It would be coached as “lesser of two evils” lol
Social media has a lot of bad faith actors who polarize every discussion so top comments will generally be extreme with an inflammatory shit show under.
That hasn’t been my experience at all. Sure, there are nationalists who will defend their own favorite Communist^™ Regime, but an ideological believer in communism is just that.
every “communist” when pushed will take position on atrocities committed by various communists regimes… they gonna do that thing that “fascists” do: “well he really did not do it but if he did, they clearly deserved it”
I have never encountered that argument. Is that something Tankies say?
What I have seen is the often mocked argument, that these regimes were not communist in the first place.
Actual communism has never existed and probably never will.
There are however plenty of communists that will openly denounce stalinism. That is the entire premise of Animal Farm, btw.
There’s nothing wrong with communism or being communist, correct. But what we know for fact is that the human species is incompatible with communism, moreso as the population is increased. There is, by nature, traits within that are antagonistic with communism. Communism has failed every time. Our best efforts so far are embracing some communist ideals whilst pandering around with others.
Will we get there? Probably.
Within this era? Hell no. We’ve only just started evolving an adaption to a shrinking planet and working with neighbours. However, as you know we’re still very divided, tribalistic, and prone to taking whatever advantages we can get. This is, after all, how we got to be number 1 and millions of years of evolution can’t be stifled or changed in mere generations.
This is the realisation most people have during year 3 or 4 of the college communist phase. You accept the reality of Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm, that human nature is why we can’t have nice things…yet. I reckon around 2100–2150, after we’ve been through some more shit together and wanked another world war out of our system.
Will it last? Probably not lol.
But what we know for fact is that the human species is incompatible with communism
Sorry what? How on earth would such a thing even be established as fact? This is a very bold claim.
Communism has failed every time.
I’m always really interested in what people mean when they say this. Is it that no organisation that has tried has managed to realise the utopia Marx predicted? Is it that they tend to lose wars with the USA? Is it that great suffering has occurred?
What is a system that has not failed? Like it’s pretty apparent whatever we’re doing now isn’t working. We’re in a mass extinction, the climate is destabilising, homelessness and sickness exist alongside people that personally own jet aircraft.
Genuinely I would love to know what specifically you mean because I see this a lot and it confuses the hell out of me.
Hopeful aside btw. Lord of the flies basically happened once except the kids all banded together and helped each other because humans are actually extremely pro social. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
Sorry what? How on earth would such a thing even be established as fact? This is a very bold claim.
I don’t want to sound patronising, but you have access to the entirety of our species’ history. It’s more about going through it to try find a time where it has worked. Beyond the exception of small communities, in every case I know of it has failed before maturing to a complete enough state—this actually includes some of those small communities too. Unless you’re confusing socialism with communism because of all it’s socialist traits.
I don’t want to sound patronising, but you have access to the entirety of our species’ history
I mean, do you? You think early man was a rugged individualist who pulled himself up by his boot straps?
Homosapiens survived hundreds of thousands of years as a result of collectivism and sharing resources, which are the central tenets of communism. From a historical perspective, the ideas that underpin capitalism - private ownership, the elite controlling the means of production, individuals acting in their own self-interest - came about only very, very recently.
Homosapiens survived hundreds of thousands of years as a result of collectivism and sharing resources
Voluntarily sharing resources.
That’s naive. I think because you’re taking a rather shallow capitalism vs communism stance, not understanding all the capitalist traits your homo sapiens with communist traits had.
None-the-less, you’ve deviated far from the main point and referring to known prehistoric eras before the concept of the topic was conceived is not where I thought this could even go.
You’re also referring to negative byproducts of capitalism as “ideas” of it. There are few social or economical isms that have byproducts holding true to the ideas and intent. That’s my point. Human nature often ruins great ideas and why communism has yet to show any success. We have many great ideas on paper, but they don’t factor human nature.
Well, if we look at humans as a species then obviously the greater part of that is prehistorical. Clearly our “nature” is not incompatible with collectivism when looking at small communities and groups.
However, I think you have a point when it comes to more complex societies with increasingly larger populations, which, as a rule, have tended to form hierarchical class systems that are antithetical to collectivist ideals.
So we could say that humans have historically been fine with communism up to a certain point. It’s when they start to form nation states and larger communities that societies have generally gravitated towards hierarchy and plutocracy, for whatever reason.
Exactly that. And as I said, it’s not just for communism, this goes for most ideologies that influence society.
I think greed and power are the biggest kickers. These two seem to come as a way to ensure survivability in a large population. But it’s of no benefit in a small community where everyone’s acknowledged.
So there’s a very big difference between X hasn’t happened yet and X is factually impossible. Imagine standing there in 1750s and saying “we know for a fact that the human species is fundamentally incompatible with flight”. Very shortly you would look like the complete arse that making that statement made you.
I don’t dispute nobody has achieved the utopia Marx hypothesised, that is trivial to demonstrate, I’m asking how on earth you would establish fundamental incompatibility.
Actually the current prevailing theory is that primitive communism was the state humans lived in before the founding of the first proto states, so if anything your stance should be that evidence suggests humans are fundamentally compatible with communism, unless you mean to argue we have undergone some shift in our fundamental nature in which case I would again ask where your evidence is.
Tribalism is compatible with communism. Kind of where the idea comes from. Unfortunately that’s not how society is these days. Whether communism, capitalism, or any other ism, control needs to be in place to ensure everyone is in line with it, since it’s impossible for 100% of a population to be, especially as that population goes into the millions.
With an authority or controlling wealth, everything results in an elite of some form to try keep a system in place, and that’s the start of failure.
If a village of 100 has just 1 asshole, things can be ruined. Scale up to global populations and you’ve got your answer. No ism can keep the psychopathic, narcissistic, or competitive nature of these people from ruining whatever ism it is you’d like to have.
Sorry, could you be a little more explicit in terms of how you’re answering my questions? I don’t really want to get drawn in to some aimless rambling bullshit.
I haven’t mentioned tribalism, I don’t even know what you’re referring to or why you’re bringing it up.
I don’t know what you mean by how society is these days. Are you saying society has changed fundamental human nature? what is the relevance please?
With an authority or controlling wealth, everything results in an elite of some form to try keep a system in place, and that’s the start of failure.
you’re talking to an anarchist so I have no disagreement there. I do wonder if you’ve ever read Marx though. Could you please honestly answer with what publications of his you’ve actually read? if none, what publications about Marxism have you read? if that list is exhaustive the three most recent?
If a village of 100 has just 1 asshole, things can be ruined. Scale up to global populations and you’ve got your answer. No ism can keep the psychopathic, narcissistic, or competitive nature of these people from ruining whatever ism it is you’d like to have.
???
Sorry, could you be a little more explicit in terms of how you’re answering my questions? I don’t really want to get drawn in to some aimless rambling bullshit.
Yeah, sure. The feeling’s mutual.
The topic of conversation is the scale of success of communism. If an original comment gets dissected poorly and barrels down a tangents of off-topic rabble, I re-read it and ignore stuff off-topic or unrelated, since that’s for a different conversation at a different time.
The points provided are my perspective of this topic and why I have that perspective. It is things I’ve experienced and know, not belief to plug narrative.
I haven’t mentioned tribalism, I don’t even know what you’re referring to or why you’re bringing it up.
Some things you have raised are loosely associated with our tribalism or post-tribalism era. However, tribalism is still relevant in modern society with political parties, sports teams, socioeconimcal ideologies, etc. It reaches back to our nature of belonging in a camp or community.
I don’t know what you mean by how society is these days. Are you saying society has changed fundamental human nature? what is the relevance please?
Quite the opposite. Society is a new thing. The more we attempt to progress it forward, we see more incompatibilities between our ideals and our nature. We will eventually evolve our nature into those ideals, but it cannot be entirely the other way around. As an anarchist, you’d understand your stance is predominantly the result of ideologies conflicting with human nature.
Could you please honestly answer with what publications of his you’ve actually read?
The manifesto, obv. However also a series of works and citations while studying. I don’t see any purpose in listing anything. Though I’d like to point out I was reading a lot on other modern social/political/economical ideologies so as to prevent any bias. This resulted in my conclusion that none of them work and a fool tribes themself to one. For communism especially, this is an ironic position to take, but seems to be the most popular for thee average “communist” these days. It is quite literally impossible to have communism without acceptance of conflicting ideologies or nature.
Unironically “why didn’t Marx think of human nature lol”
Actually read a book and stop trying to sound like a smartass asserting stuff on the basis of “it feels true”.
Must be the lizard people then, huh? I mean, if human nature has had nothing to do with the outcome of Marxism’s lack of uptake in global societies and cultures- Oh wait, I’m doing it again. Just because that “feels true” is might not be so. I’m learning…
So, since that’s all a lie and I’m clearly unaware that Maxism is actually wildly successful across the globe, please, recommend a book so I can keep riding the Revelation Train.
I would like to know why people keep bringing up Karl on a comment about communism. Maybe he has works you know about which explains how they are synonymous. Any literature with that would help since everything I’ve read clearly disassociated and outlines the two, including Karl’s own writings.
Well, it was created by “communists.”
If you want capitalist propaganda you can go back to reddit lol
This has to be the greatest troll I’ve ever seen or else I’m a filthy commie.
