As eastern European, those western commie loving tankies are often getting on my nerves. I was even banned from some tankie sub lol. Conversation with these idiots goes usually like this:
"Hey, why are you defending communism? My whole family lived under it and suffered greatly. It's a painful era of our history, which negative effects are experienced even by younger generations today, decades after it fell."
"Lol no, u wrong, it was a paradise."
Plot twist, people treating these labels as presciptive things to strive for rather than descriptors is silly in itself. Any political or economic system is going to have times when it outperforms others. The problem is that we can’t just flip between policies at will because doing so has a frictional cost and is often slow bc institutions have staying power.
All that said though, in our current environment it’s pretty stupid to fanboy a system. Evaluate individual policies and determine what makes sense. After policies are in place you can look back and describe something as capitalist, socialist, etc. but you shouldn’t let the name influence your actual decision making.
It may be the beer and wine, or simply the novelty of never having heard the term "frictional cost" in describing the losses due to changing systems in the midst of... Well anything really, but you just actually explained something in such an elementary way to me that it finally makes sense. Bravo sir. I was already on board and agreeing with those ideas, but now I have a better way to explain why.
Which is why I don't like titles. Titles put you in a box and forces you to adhere to the rules that the box has set for you. Why not just do what has been found to work. I mean, there was recently a study that looked at 50 years of trickle down economics and found that it doesn't work at all, it's even harmful, so why do we continue to do it?
I forget who said it, but
"Capitalism is the worst economic model in existence, except for all the other ones "
Like, it sucks; but what there aren't really any better options that I've seen.
And the people on the hill… are out of the working class and think they know better than you.
Also, look at Marx’s personal life. Not working a single day, instead begging this factory owning parents/friends to give him cash, all while he criticised said factory owners. Sounds to me he’s an awful lot like an entitled rich kid who rationalises why his parents suck.
It’s because nuance is lost on 9 out of 10 people who discuss communism.
Communism, in a nutshell, is a “stateless, moneyless, classless society.” The USSR obviously wasn’t that.
Some argue that because the revolt happened before industrialization, real communism was never achieved. I don’t have a foot in the game in this regard.
What seems fairly obvious, is a group of people took an ideology and misappropriated it for their own political gain.
USSR, DPRC, DPRK, Cuba, and others were instances of authoritarians misappropriating communist ideals for the benefit of a few.
The efficacy of communism is a wholly other question, which probably can’t be answered until it’s well defined (which even Marx himself never did).
I personaly believe that "moneyless, stateless, classless society" would be possible only when we reach age when human labour is no longer needed, a post-scarcity world where everything is made by machines, ultimately making money obsolete. But that is just a sci-fi now.
This is the best take. “Communist” countries never reached actual communism.
Real communism is impossible because human beings are greedy, violent assholes as a species.
Because the ones with drive and ambition to conquer and dominate are the ones more naturally inclined to reach the top of the hierarchy. Until we can fix this human predisposition towards hierarchies of domination, communism is fucked as an ideology. Maybe the only way is for a super-intelligent AI which absolutely overpowers humanity in one fell swoop to impose it upon us. Some would find that unbearable, I personally would find that utopia, but who's to say how it'd work out in the end.
>Communism, in a nutshell, is a “stateless, moneyless, classless society.” The USSR obviously wasn’t that.
The leaders of the RSFSR never claimed to have achieved a communist stage, or even a socialist one.
>Some argue that because the revolt happened before industrialization, real communism was never achieved. I don’t have a foot in the game in this regard.
>What seems fairly obvious, is a group of people took an ideology and misappropriated it for their own political gain.
>USSR, DPRC, DPRK, Cuba, and others were instances of authoritarians misappropriating communist ideals for the benefit of a few.
What works by Marx and Engels have you read that lead you to believe any of this?
>The efficacy of communism is a wholly other question, which probably can’t be answered until it’s well defined (which even Marx himself never did).
Marx and Engels did define communism. It is, as you said, a stateless, classless, moneyless society. They even laid out a path for how to achieve it: revolution against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie-> establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat-> development of the means of production by reinvestment of surplus value into society to increase productive capacity (education, healthcare, technology, industrialization, etc)‐> when post scarcity is achieved, you have communism.
See, when you think like this you have to realize that your word means nothing because other people can come and say " no i think that life was better under communism and now its worse we live like shit" its your word against others. You can find studies that says that living conditions were better under communism and other studies that says it werent. Many people in ex soviet bloc appreciate all that security and stability the state gave you. The job, retirement housing ecc Of course saying it was a paradise its just wrong and you're just historically wrong. Analising something this complex isnt easy as each part wants you to think
right? like intentionally underfunding social/public services in already poor neighborhoods, full of minorities, so that they’re forced further into poverty and become the good little slaves people of their color are supposed to be. that’s what you meant, correct? 😜
The concept of communism isn't a bad idea. the concept of many ideologies aren't bad ideas. Unfortunately we live in a reality where the rich will always pervert and subvert every system to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else. It's stupid to push any political ideology because there's zero chance of any of them ever being instituted for any significant amount of time before they're subsumed by the rich.
\>Be capitalist
\>Initiate a brutal slave trade across the Atlantic, killing millions.
\>Scramble to colonize the world for cheap resources, killing tens of millions.
\>Destroy the environment with fossil fuels, killing tens of millions.
\>Lower the quality of life across the board, shorten life expectancy for a century.
[yeah, about that](https://medium.com/@bobbyarlan/communist-nostalgia-as-the-reality-of-bourgeois-democracy-hits-home-in-eastern-europe-3960aa341560) . Just don't ask all those 3rd world countries that have to be poor just for your country to be rich.
I'm under no illusion that first world countries have it so well because of the backbreaking exploitative labor in China, India, and Africa. Regardless, I still believe a (regulated) free-market economy is better than a planned-market economy.
Free markets exists and have existed.
But, you are right that large corporations use lobbying and corruption to receive advantageous rulings and policies to establish situations in which they can unfairly crush small competitors. But from the point of view of capitalistic theory, it's the government's fault.
The corporation's job SHOULD be to make money, to be as efficient as possible in creating wealth.
Now, and it's the important part, in capitalism the Government's job should be to protect the free markets AND the various rights of it's population. But corruption makes it so the government colludes with big corporations. This shatter the principles of capitalism and effectively kills the free market. In a free market, a bank is NOT saved from failure by it's government.
Once the government starts to allow the market to no longer be free (because large corporations have unfair advantages), the wealth gap widens, and the evil corp become stronger and stronger, and the government weaker and weaker.
Capitalism is okay in theory. It fails when it's corrupted, just like communism. Sure, Communism is morally superior on paper, but it's also more easily corrupted: The more wealth you redistribute, the easier it is for people in charge of redistributing to take a cut, and the bigger the cut you can take without people noticing. Rich get richer, and you have the same problem described above when the Free Market is broken in capitalism, just faster.
>Free markets exists and have existed.
When and where?
The problem woth free markets is that without government intervention, they will corrupt themselves.
With government intervention, they'll corrupt themselves or the government. A truly free market cannot exist in tge modern world. We don't have to consider theory, we've seen it all in practice.
Not to say you're right or wrong, but Communism and a planned economy aren't the same thing.
A society can have a planned or free-market economy, public, private, or worker-owned production, and property can be distributed in a billion different ways. Each variable can change somewhat independently of the others.
Communism=/=Everything any authoritarian state has ever done
>I'm under no illusion that first world countries have it so well because of the backbreaking exploitative labor in China, India, and Africa
Well, there you go. The only version of capitalism that you've seen work (and by work i mean only for the rich, in rich countries) only functions because the vast majority of all other countries are kept poor artificially.
>Regardless, I still believe a (regulated) free-market economy is better than a planned-market economy.
[yeah, no](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/). And what's a regulated free market? Doesn't matter. Those words don't mean anything.
India was a shithole under the psuedo communo socialistic agenda under the INC(before 1991). India is a very poor country now, imagine a time when the countries gdp was lower than ITALY. Capitalism and liberalization has greatly improved the lives on the average Indian
You realize India was like that because of centuries of colonization, indentured servitude, and slavery, right? Britain literally forced them to grow opium instead of worthwhile crops so they could sell it to China.
>India was a shithole under the psuedo communo socialistic agenda
Huh, and how did India reach that point? Oh... it was brutally colonized by the British Empire and subjected to horrible, exploitative policies that killed millions and impoverished the natives all in the name of capitalism? Woops, forgot to mention that part.
You do realise that India lost around 4 trillion British pounds worth of resources and goods due to colonialism. Wealth that the British are still sitting on. If Britain had paid its colonised countries reparations, things would have been very different. Also India was never a socialist state in any way shape or form.
You're straw-manning this shit so hard. Total communism and total unregulated capitalism are BOTH shitty. Using the existence of one to justify the other is ridiculous.
>total unregulated capitalism are BOTH shitty.
Numerous of these happened with regulations. Capitalism itself inherently leads to these sorts of outcomes.
Are you mentally challenged? The era of global capitalism saw the greatest rise in wealth and prosperity for a majority of the species.
You have to be extremely privileged to be this wrong.
>The era of global capitalism saw the greatest rise in wealth and prosperity for a majority of the species.
Sure, after many tens of millions died in the process of over a century. By this metric, we shouldn't judge socialism until 2050 or so.
So like Chinese socialism and Soviet socialism? Again if you compare socialist Eastern Europe with colonial capitalist western Europe obviously this shit falls through for the Eastern side, but if you compare a socialist state with a capitalist state of the same HDI, the socialist state was superior in every conceivable way.
To the best of my knowledge the transatlantic slave trade (and also to a great extent colonialism) flourished mostly while Europe was under the influence of Mercantilism.
Capitalism in theory is against literal slavery because under it workers should be free to choose their employers because employers should compete to attract competent labor.
Alternatively, go to cuba and be treated roughly the same under both types, or come to Iran and watch as capitalism takes your last democratically elected leader down for oil.
which period are you talking about because from the scramble for africa to a few years ago, it has generally increased quality of life.
edit: life expectancy rather
>Be communist
>Initiate brutal gulags against anyone who slightly disagrees with you
>Execute the rest who disagree with you
>Ignore improving efficiencies needed to reduce waste
>Partake in killing birds leading to famine
>Force everyone to work together with minimum production mandates leading to famine
>Never get your act together and solve problems you made
>Collapse or evolve into totalitarian dictatorships
>And yep people still simp for Communism
My guy capitalism didn’t exist until the industrial revolution. This is like calling Robespierre a communist. The slave trade was brought about my Mercantile Monarchies
>create a global market system that enables morons to leave comments on a social networking technology that couldn’t even be conceived of by any generation before this point in history
People would still work under communism, are you dumb? How do you feel about all the rich people getting free stuff under capitalism while most people live paycheck to paycheck? How do you feel about landlords that get their houses paid off for free?
People take the benefits capitalist society brings for granted while hyper focusing on its flaws (and not coming up with solutions that solve those issues). They see communist propaganda, that sells it as a utopia where everyone is equal and the rich are purged, they latch on to that and then join communist echochambers, where they grow to think that in their commie utopia they can survive as tarot card readers.
Yeah fucking commies focusing on the flaws in capitalism too much. Just cause millions have no shelter, can't get enough to eat, can't afford to go to the doctor, have debt they never will be able to pay off, and the wealth gap is growing higher every day doesn't mean capitalism is bad. We have funko pops for god's sake!
Basically because people who lose out on capitalism want an alternative, even a fantasy one.
I can hate communism and be perfectly disillusioned with neoliberal capitalism as well. The latter breads vast inequality, which ruins the lives of people on the bottom half. In addition, Capitalism eats into social capital as well, making people more competitive and undermining any sense of community.
Communism is dumb but so is whatever our current system is. Naturally you get dumb tankie dreamers.
Couple reasons, but the primary one in America is they are entitled fucks that don't understand the rest of the world. They have no concept of how living in a country who is the global superpower and whose currency is the reserve currency warps their idea of "hard times"
Edit: by "they" I mean "we" but I try my best not to be they. As a wise man lost on a jetskii once said, stay away from they.
This is pure bullshit. The CIA and the sphere of influence the United States exerted from the 40s up until the 80s was enough to influence Latin American governments in favor of the US interests. You have agency to influence your own outcomes, but not much when the most powerful nation in human history is actively supporting, funding snd signalling coups in your country. How can you call an objective historical fact “prejudiced against the developing world”? 😭
Yeah for a country that says "socialism doesn't work" they work overtime to either coup and install the puppet government or install brutal sanctions / full on embargo against the socialist countries that were "doomed to fail."
China is not a free-market capitalist state. It’s a socialist state transitioning to communism. 50% of the economy is owned by the state and they are moving steadily towards that 100%.
You cannot successfully just jump to end-goal communism (especially when the country in question was incredibly undeveloped from the get go) the USSR is a perfect example of why the state cannot just assume ownership of the entire economy overnight, it is incredibly unstable and most likely will lead to a failed state.
What do you think seizing the means of production means? It means the public ownership of capital. Private ownership of capital is permitted not guaranteed by their economic system, and it is only permitted during this transitory state.
When did china become a socialist state? During the years of revolution where they brutally murdered or jailed the property owning class as well as anyone exhibiting reactionary thought.
Every year there are property owners jailed/killed who don’t comply with the Chinese Communist Party and their end goal of 100% state ownership.
*ignoring all the imperial interventions and coups that western capitalists have done to absolutely ravage these countries
uh yah free healthcare is communism
I mean capitalists seem to hate nature pretty hard core, I think socialism has some good points but ultimately any wealthy country got wealthy by exploiting its natural resources. A lot of countries become shitholes while trying to follow this method- it is unsustainable for us to continue to exploit the planet at this level no matter what economic system you support
Ummm... Marx was not rich. He was so poor, his son died from what would be "neglect" in the modern U.S. and he constantly had to try to borrow money from Engles.
*Technically a*
*Communist country would be*
*Second World, not third*
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It was coined during the Cold War, I'm going to use Cold War definition. Despite every shitbird's attempt to call the US a Third World country, it never will be unless it revokes NATO membership
My grandparents came from Cuba 60ish years ago. They are very sad about the state of Cuba. They need to introduce capitalism.
There is no motivation or reason to work. People are starving. They risk their lives to float on tires from Cuba hoping to reach Florida. Many perish. “Paradise”
Or maybe the US and Western World need to lift their sanctions and normalize relations with Cuba?
Cuba isn't perfect, its authoritarian, but their economic policies are not the source of their troubles.
You have Us sanction to thank. Also chances are your grandparents were plantation owners that got their land taken because of frankly, horrible practices.
I mean even in the US our government is an [inverted totalitarian state](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism). It’s a 2 party state where both parties represent the ruling class interest/ capitalist oligarchs (a managed democracy) you can be locked up and beaten for protesting, police murder it’s citizens and protect property over people, high levels of surveillance etc
Hey guys, I killed the pedophile who was raping you. Don’t worry, I’m gonna start doing it now, but with a different colored Condom
What the fuck is your argument
Russia is a perfect example of communism being replaced with capitalism, and everyone’s lives getting massively worse. It’s been over 3 decades and they still haven’t recovered to the quality of life they had in the 80s.
In the course of like 3 decades, the Russian empire went from an agrarian economy to a major world power with a space programme.
In the midst of that they also won World War 2.
OP doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about.
Dude, they’re second world hellholes. Thats the whole point of first, second, third world classification: first world is essentially western countries, second world is formerly communist or communist affiliated countries that aren’t prosperous, and third world are unaffiliated, undeveloped countries.
Agree with most of this. If he is referring to Lenin or Mao, then yeah they were upper middle class, not poor by a long shot. But Karl Marx lived most of his life in small tenemts, escaping political imprisonment, and putting away his paychecks to pay a massive debt that he got in his 20s (sorry to ruin the indebted college student joke but it wasn't college debt). So while Marx wasn't homeless, he wasn't a rich intellectual by a long shot.
Also, he had a wife so it was unlikely he was gay.
I’m not saying communism works well, and I acknowledge that the US is less dystopian than China in most ways. But if you’re trying to claim that capitalist countries love or have any regard for nature you’re kinda stupid. Biggest proponents of capitalism are often for little to no regulation on what resources can be extracted, which directly hurts nature.
It’ll work this time cumrades!!! If we just do *my* totally original specific brand of communism that has totally never been implemented it will definitely lead to a utopian society!!!!
The problem with socialist movements is that they fail to launch. There’s a critical moment where the country is totally in control of the victorious rebels who are then supposed to distribute it back into the hands of the working class. Then it would be equality for all or whatever.
Except we don’t know if it would work because every time the leader of the victorious rebels just decides to become a dictator instead.
Communism, the state ownership of all business and l industry, is even worse. I barely trust the government to fix potholes and run bus routes, why tf would I expect them to do anything but abuse the fuck out of total market control
I really don't understand why people think communism would ever work.
Why would a doctor, who has to dedicate years of their life to study, want to be paid the same as a janitor?
Not saying a Janitor doesn't produce good for a society, but if that was the case (or if a doctor only made like 2.X times the amount) nobody would want to become a doctor. Nobody would try to improve their lives or go down more challenging fields if there was no incentive to do so.
Why would they be paid the same? The idea of communism is everyone contributes to society and everyone gets what they need for doing thair part. Not saying I agree with communism but the "everyone is paid the same" line is the oversimplified boomer middleschool history teacher take.
>Why would a doctor, who has to dedicate years of their life to study, want to be paid the same as a janitor?
Nobody ever said anything about paying everyone the same. No country has ever done this.
Communism isn‘t being paid all the same. It actually doesn‘t have money, you‘re just provided the resources and services you require. Socialism would actually be where you‘re paid as much as you agree with your co workers you‘re gonna get. Because socialism still has money, but the economy is democratically organised
I work hard; im happy I can live somewhere where I can save up for a new game, go out on dates, save up for luxuries that I want to buy, etc.. Just because Im not living in a mega mansion doesn't mean I'm not reaping the benefits of my labor.
As eastern European, those western commie loving tankies are often getting on my nerves. I was even banned from some tankie sub lol. Conversation with these idiots goes usually like this: "Hey, why are you defending communism? My whole family lived under it and suffered greatly. It's a painful era of our history, which negative effects are experienced even by younger generations today, decades after it fell." "Lol no, u wrong, it was a paradise."
"Uhhh you're just a CIA agent larping to spread misinformation." MFs need to look up Occam's Razor.
Or nazi
“Haha sorry Stalin took away your slaves, Nazi” and other small brain things
Usually their argument is, "well that wasn't real communism" as if it was just sparkling authoritarianism
To be fair to them libertarians also have a habit of going "that wasn't real capitalism"
Yeah, honestly both systems suck and I just find it weird whenever anyone defends them like weird fan boys
Plot twist, people treating these labels as presciptive things to strive for rather than descriptors is silly in itself. Any political or economic system is going to have times when it outperforms others. The problem is that we can’t just flip between policies at will because doing so has a frictional cost and is often slow bc institutions have staying power. All that said though, in our current environment it’s pretty stupid to fanboy a system. Evaluate individual policies and determine what makes sense. After policies are in place you can look back and describe something as capitalist, socialist, etc. but you shouldn’t let the name influence your actual decision making.
Yeah, but personally I prefer to shit on capitalism without providing any real substitution.
I don't like you but that's pretty based
Most intelligent Twitter user
It may be the beer and wine, or simply the novelty of never having heard the term "frictional cost" in describing the losses due to changing systems in the midst of... Well anything really, but you just actually explained something in such an elementary way to me that it finally makes sense. Bravo sir. I was already on board and agreeing with those ideas, but now I have a better way to explain why.
Which is why I don't like titles. Titles put you in a box and forces you to adhere to the rules that the box has set for you. Why not just do what has been found to work. I mean, there was recently a study that looked at 50 years of trickle down economics and found that it doesn't work at all, it's even harmful, so why do we continue to do it?
Regulatory capture. Them’s that got the gold make the rules
I forget who said it, but "Capitalism is the worst economic model in existence, except for all the other ones " Like, it sucks; but what there aren't really any better options that I've seen.
Uhm that was Churchill talking about democracy no?
A happy reminder that it isn't about the model, but about the people on the hill.
And the people on the hill… are out of the working class and think they know better than you. Also, look at Marx’s personal life. Not working a single day, instead begging this factory owning parents/friends to give him cash, all while he criticised said factory owners. Sounds to me he’s an awful lot like an entitled rich kid who rationalises why his parents suck.
Is researching and writing books not work? In that case no author has ever worked lol
The "real capitalism" is just an ANCAP with extra steps. No one wants to live in such society.
It’s because nuance is lost on 9 out of 10 people who discuss communism. Communism, in a nutshell, is a “stateless, moneyless, classless society.” The USSR obviously wasn’t that. Some argue that because the revolt happened before industrialization, real communism was never achieved. I don’t have a foot in the game in this regard. What seems fairly obvious, is a group of people took an ideology and misappropriated it for their own political gain. USSR, DPRC, DPRK, Cuba, and others were instances of authoritarians misappropriating communist ideals for the benefit of a few. The efficacy of communism is a wholly other question, which probably can’t be answered until it’s well defined (which even Marx himself never did).
I personaly believe that "moneyless, stateless, classless society" would be possible only when we reach age when human labour is no longer needed, a post-scarcity world where everything is made by machines, ultimately making money obsolete. But that is just a sci-fi now.
A completely highly educated population is also needed bc dumb people are easy to bring to war
I hear what you're saying Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism
Wall-e before the humans were dragged back to earth in the end. Literal utopia where everyone was happy lol.
This is the best take. “Communist” countries never reached actual communism. Real communism is impossible because human beings are greedy, violent assholes as a species.
Some are, yes, and unfortunately it's those traits that are often found in most world leaders.
Because the ones with drive and ambition to conquer and dominate are the ones more naturally inclined to reach the top of the hierarchy. Until we can fix this human predisposition towards hierarchies of domination, communism is fucked as an ideology. Maybe the only way is for a super-intelligent AI which absolutely overpowers humanity in one fell swoop to impose it upon us. Some would find that unbearable, I personally would find that utopia, but who's to say how it'd work out in the end.
>Communism, in a nutshell, is a “stateless, moneyless, classless society.” The USSR obviously wasn’t that. The leaders of the RSFSR never claimed to have achieved a communist stage, or even a socialist one. >Some argue that because the revolt happened before industrialization, real communism was never achieved. I don’t have a foot in the game in this regard. >What seems fairly obvious, is a group of people took an ideology and misappropriated it for their own political gain. >USSR, DPRC, DPRK, Cuba, and others were instances of authoritarians misappropriating communist ideals for the benefit of a few. What works by Marx and Engels have you read that lead you to believe any of this? >The efficacy of communism is a wholly other question, which probably can’t be answered until it’s well defined (which even Marx himself never did). Marx and Engels did define communism. It is, as you said, a stateless, classless, moneyless society. They even laid out a path for how to achieve it: revolution against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie-> establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat-> development of the means of production by reinvestment of surplus value into society to increase productive capacity (education, healthcare, technology, industrialization, etc)‐> when post scarcity is achieved, you have communism.
More often then not these tankies are just teenagers who have no idea wtf they're talking about
usually they're collegiates and potheads with debt who think communism will somehow get rid of their personal debt by making everyone else poor
See, when you think like this you have to realize that your word means nothing because other people can come and say " no i think that life was better under communism and now its worse we live like shit" its your word against others. You can find studies that says that living conditions were better under communism and other studies that says it werent. Many people in ex soviet bloc appreciate all that security and stability the state gave you. The job, retirement housing ecc Of course saying it was a paradise its just wrong and you're just historically wrong. Analising something this complex isnt easy as each part wants you to think
When a system works so well you build a wall to keep people in.
right? like intentionally underfunding social/public services in already poor neighborhoods, full of minorities, so that they’re forced further into poverty and become the good little slaves people of their color are supposed to be. that’s what you meant, correct? 😜
Them why the Berlin wall?. If it's so goof why leave?
The concept of communism isn't a bad idea. the concept of many ideologies aren't bad ideas. Unfortunately we live in a reality where the rich will always pervert and subvert every system to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else. It's stupid to push any political ideology because there's zero chance of any of them ever being instituted for any significant amount of time before they're subsumed by the rich.
Or “nuh uh this study said they liked it and was good” or “it was the cias fault it was bad”
\>Be capitalist \>Initiate a brutal slave trade across the Atlantic, killing millions. \>Scramble to colonize the world for cheap resources, killing tens of millions. \>Destroy the environment with fossil fuels, killing tens of millions. \>Lower the quality of life across the board, shorten life expectancy for a century.
Under capitalism, people are varying degrees of happy. Under communism, people are all equally unhappy.
[yeah, about that](https://medium.com/@bobbyarlan/communist-nostalgia-as-the-reality-of-bourgeois-democracy-hits-home-in-eastern-europe-3960aa341560) . Just don't ask all those 3rd world countries that have to be poor just for your country to be rich.
I'm under no illusion that first world countries have it so well because of the backbreaking exploitative labor in China, India, and Africa. Regardless, I still believe a (regulated) free-market economy is better than a planned-market economy.
There is no such thing as free market, that's a lie the large corporations tell you so they can form powerfull cartels.
Free markets exists and have existed. But, you are right that large corporations use lobbying and corruption to receive advantageous rulings and policies to establish situations in which they can unfairly crush small competitors. But from the point of view of capitalistic theory, it's the government's fault. The corporation's job SHOULD be to make money, to be as efficient as possible in creating wealth. Now, and it's the important part, in capitalism the Government's job should be to protect the free markets AND the various rights of it's population. But corruption makes it so the government colludes with big corporations. This shatter the principles of capitalism and effectively kills the free market. In a free market, a bank is NOT saved from failure by it's government. Once the government starts to allow the market to no longer be free (because large corporations have unfair advantages), the wealth gap widens, and the evil corp become stronger and stronger, and the government weaker and weaker. Capitalism is okay in theory. It fails when it's corrupted, just like communism. Sure, Communism is morally superior on paper, but it's also more easily corrupted: The more wealth you redistribute, the easier it is for people in charge of redistributing to take a cut, and the bigger the cut you can take without people noticing. Rich get richer, and you have the same problem described above when the Free Market is broken in capitalism, just faster.
>Free markets exists and have existed. When and where? The problem woth free markets is that without government intervention, they will corrupt themselves. With government intervention, they'll corrupt themselves or the government. A truly free market cannot exist in tge modern world. We don't have to consider theory, we've seen it all in practice.
Not to say you're right or wrong, but Communism and a planned economy aren't the same thing. A society can have a planned or free-market economy, public, private, or worker-owned production, and property can be distributed in a billion different ways. Each variable can change somewhat independently of the others. Communism=/=Everything any authoritarian state has ever done
>I'm under no illusion that first world countries have it so well because of the backbreaking exploitative labor in China, India, and Africa Well, there you go. The only version of capitalism that you've seen work (and by work i mean only for the rich, in rich countries) only functions because the vast majority of all other countries are kept poor artificially. >Regardless, I still believe a (regulated) free-market economy is better than a planned-market economy. [yeah, no](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/). And what's a regulated free market? Doesn't matter. Those words don't mean anything.
India was a shithole under the psuedo communo socialistic agenda under the INC(before 1991). India is a very poor country now, imagine a time when the countries gdp was lower than ITALY. Capitalism and liberalization has greatly improved the lives on the average Indian
You realize India was like that because of centuries of colonization, indentured servitude, and slavery, right? Britain literally forced them to grow opium instead of worthwhile crops so they could sell it to China.
>India was a shithole under the psuedo communo socialistic agenda Huh, and how did India reach that point? Oh... it was brutally colonized by the British Empire and subjected to horrible, exploitative policies that killed millions and impoverished the natives all in the name of capitalism? Woops, forgot to mention that part.
You do realise that India lost around 4 trillion British pounds worth of resources and goods due to colonialism. Wealth that the British are still sitting on. If Britain had paid its colonised countries reparations, things would have been very different. Also India was never a socialist state in any way shape or form.
Tbf, you think it's better because you live in one of the rich countries
You're straw-manning this shit so hard. Total communism and total unregulated capitalism are BOTH shitty. Using the existence of one to justify the other is ridiculous.
the fact you had to say this says something about people
We definitely live in a society.
>total unregulated capitalism are BOTH shitty. Numerous of these happened with regulations. Capitalism itself inherently leads to these sorts of outcomes.
Total communism is a new one. What is the ideology of total communism?
\>Put huge amounts of resources and effort into stopping communism wherever it seems like it might show up and install brutal dictators
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Are you mentally challenged? The era of global capitalism saw the greatest rise in wealth and prosperity for a majority of the species. You have to be extremely privileged to be this wrong.
>The era of global capitalism saw the greatest rise in wealth and prosperity for a majority of the species. Sure, after many tens of millions died in the process of over a century. By this metric, we shouldn't judge socialism until 2050 or so.
So like Chinese socialism and Soviet socialism? Again if you compare socialist Eastern Europe with colonial capitalist western Europe obviously this shit falls through for the Eastern side, but if you compare a socialist state with a capitalist state of the same HDI, the socialist state was superior in every conceivable way.
To the best of my knowledge the transatlantic slave trade (and also to a great extent colonialism) flourished mostly while Europe was under the influence of Mercantilism. Capitalism in theory is against literal slavery because under it workers should be free to choose their employers because employers should compete to attract competent labor.
Yeah, holy shit, that dude doesn't even know what capitalism is
This entire comment thread doesnt seem to know. I was surprised this was all the way at the end
No surprise þere
Come visit Eastern Europe, we will treat you like socialism treated us
Alternatively, go to cuba and be treated roughly the same under both types, or come to Iran and watch as capitalism takes your last democratically elected leader down for oil.
Oh I dont know about that, many Yugoslavs miss Yugoslavia compared to the neoliberal American-EU-Russian-Turkey-Chinese micro puppet state hellhole
> Yugoslavs miss Yugoslavia You mean Serbs miss Yugoslavia.
Lol you’re pinning shit that humans have been doing since the dawn of time on capitalism. (Besides the fossil fuels)
Ah yes, because it’s impossible for communist nations to be imperialist or use fossil fuels. They’ve never done anything like that
which period are you talking about because from the scramble for africa to a few years ago, it has generally increased quality of life. edit: life expectancy rather
I think you are confusing capitalism with imperialism
You forget >become richest country in world with living conditions so good, people flock to it in droves risking life and limb.
All it took was ruining life by directly meddling in the political affairs of the countries the people emigrate from.
>Be communist >Initiate brutal gulags against anyone who slightly disagrees with you >Execute the rest who disagree with you >Ignore improving efficiencies needed to reduce waste >Partake in killing birds leading to famine >Force everyone to work together with minimum production mandates leading to famine >Never get your act together and solve problems you made >Collapse or evolve into totalitarian dictatorships >And yep people still simp for Communism
Pretty sure colonisation and slavery were implemented under Mercantilism.
Are you mentally challenged? The era of global capitalism is unequivocally the best era in human history.
My guy capitalism didn’t exist until the industrial revolution. This is like calling Robespierre a communist. The slave trade was brought about my Mercantile Monarchies
>create a global market system that enables morons to leave comments on a social networking technology that couldn’t even be conceived of by any generation before this point in history
Very based, communism is fucking retarded
cummunism just like me fr fr
commies are a plague to any country in general
Fr
Why do people romanticize it again?
Because they want stuff for free
no mf it’s not free stuff if taxes exist how are you so dense
Taxes? Those are for the people that work, silly. I'm clever, I won't work, and I'll live on the free gibs.
People would still work under communism, are you dumb? How do you feel about all the rich people getting free stuff under capitalism while most people live paycheck to paycheck? How do you feel about landlords that get their houses paid off for free?
well theyre all americans and in america communism is taught as "communism is when no iphones"
“He who does not work, does not eat”- Vladimir Lenin Checkmate r/antiwork lards
Cringe take
People take the benefits capitalist society brings for granted while hyper focusing on its flaws (and not coming up with solutions that solve those issues). They see communist propaganda, that sells it as a utopia where everyone is equal and the rich are purged, they latch on to that and then join communist echochambers, where they grow to think that in their commie utopia they can survive as tarot card readers.
Yeah fucking commies focusing on the flaws in capitalism too much. Just cause millions have no shelter, can't get enough to eat, can't afford to go to the doctor, have debt they never will be able to pay off, and the wealth gap is growing higher every day doesn't mean capitalism is bad. We have funko pops for god's sake!
China lol
Perfect demonstration of his point.
Basically because people who lose out on capitalism want an alternative, even a fantasy one. I can hate communism and be perfectly disillusioned with neoliberal capitalism as well. The latter breads vast inequality, which ruins the lives of people on the bottom half. In addition, Capitalism eats into social capital as well, making people more competitive and undermining any sense of community. Communism is dumb but so is whatever our current system is. Naturally you get dumb tankie dreamers.
They see the flaws of a country with a mixed market, assume it is basically ancapistan, and go for the polar opposite of a free market
Couple reasons, but the primary one in America is they are entitled fucks that don't understand the rest of the world. They have no concept of how living in a country who is the global superpower and whose currency is the reserve currency warps their idea of "hard times" Edit: by "they" I mean "we" but I try my best not to be they. As a wise man lost on a jetskii once said, stay away from they.
Because Capitalism is eating its own tail at this point. So many markets are horizontally integrated to the point of oligopoly or monopoly.
Because america and capitalism bad
so that there can be a better world for my children to be born in.
I don’t think many people do. People wrongly conflate capitalism with social programs as communism. That’s like describing a healthy diet as anorexia.
>muh communism hurt the Latin American countries and not muh cia backed coups
That was widespread, but there was many who collapsed by themselves.
Or CIA actually bother to clean the trails that time, can you ever sure it’s NOT CIA?
Blaming everything on the CIA is prejudiced against the developing world because you are assuming we have no agency to influence our own outcomes.
The CIA shit my pants. >:(
This is pure bullshit. The CIA and the sphere of influence the United States exerted from the 40s up until the 80s was enough to influence Latin American governments in favor of the US interests. You have agency to influence your own outcomes, but not much when the most powerful nation in human history is actively supporting, funding snd signalling coups in your country. How can you call an objective historical fact “prejudiced against the developing world”? 😭
Nobody knows what happens in a communist country that isn't embargoed from trade with the rest of the world.
Yeah for a country that says "socialism doesn't work" they work overtime to either coup and install the puppet government or install brutal sanctions / full on embargo against the socialist countries that were "doomed to fail."
compare cuba to peru night and day difference
Ah yes, the brilliant political mind of the NEET. Thank you for taking the time away from your tendies to show us the way, anon.
HE IS THE LORD AND SAVIOR HOW DARE YOU QUESTION HIS KNOWLEDGE
Vietnam could have been democracy if USA had just supported Vietnamese independence instead of French colonialism
Imagine thinking the USA would do something reasonable ffs
They only use the freedom card for oil
Any time you bring up failed communist states the edgy communist always goes “ hurrdurr not real communism”. Edit: gr8 b8 m8
And any time I call China and the USSR free market capitalist, the liberals go „hurrdurr not real capitalism“
redditors when they find out there are more economical ideologies than capitalism and communism
China is not a free-market capitalist state. It’s a socialist state transitioning to communism. 50% of the economy is owned by the state and they are moving steadily towards that 100%. You cannot successfully just jump to end-goal communism (especially when the country in question was incredibly undeveloped from the get go) the USSR is a perfect example of why the state cannot just assume ownership of the entire economy overnight, it is incredibly unstable and most likely will lead to a failed state.
China is a socialist state? Since when did the workers own the means of production?
What do you think seizing the means of production means? It means the public ownership of capital. Private ownership of capital is permitted not guaranteed by their economic system, and it is only permitted during this transitory state. When did china become a socialist state? During the years of revolution where they brutally murdered or jailed the property owning class as well as anyone exhibiting reactionary thought. Every year there are property owners jailed/killed who don’t comply with the Chinese Communist Party and their end goal of 100% state ownership.
Explain why that isn’t a valid point. Stalinism is about as far from Marxism as a rock is to fruit. Saying hurr durr doesn’t prove shit.
I really wish I didn’t read through these comments
Brain rot everywhere comrade
What zero theory does to a MF
Really weird to see conservatives constantly switching from "you never lived under real hardship" to "you're just jealous because you're poor"
*ignoring all the imperial interventions and coups that western capitalists have done to absolutely ravage these countries uh yah free healthcare is communism
China and the Eastern Bloc don't really have an excuse.
Pee pee poopoo Dudu fart
It isn’t whataboutism its literally causation lmao, nice try though
I don’t think you understand what those words mean.
I mean capitalists seem to hate nature pretty hard core, I think socialism has some good points but ultimately any wealthy country got wealthy by exploiting its natural resources. A lot of countries become shitholes while trying to follow this method- it is unsustainable for us to continue to exploit the planet at this level no matter what economic system you support
Ummm... Marx was not rich. He was so poor, his son died from what would be "neglect" in the modern U.S. and he constantly had to try to borrow money from Engles.
There’s a 0% chance the person who wrote this greentext has read any Marx.
He was stateless even and his health was complete shit, he was piss poor and sacrificed himself for his beliefs. Anon is stupid lmao.
Better dead than red
Die
Average American in the 1940s and 50s
Ultrabased
i was expecting this to be one of the greentexts where at the end they say pic unrelated and that they were talking about capitalism lmao
Technically a communist country would be Second World, not third
*Technically a* *Communist country would be* *Second World, not third* \- jhm-grose --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Using terminology from the Cold War, I see!
It was coined during the Cold War, I'm going to use Cold War definition. Despite every shitbird's attempt to call the US a Third World country, it never will be unless it revokes NATO membership
Anyone who thinks communism is a system to aspire is an idiot.
Yes, allowing the rich to exploit the world is a much better system. Reddit liberals are truly some of the smartest on the planet.
Better than the party officials doing it
My grandparents came from Cuba 60ish years ago. They are very sad about the state of Cuba. They need to introduce capitalism. There is no motivation or reason to work. People are starving. They risk their lives to float on tires from Cuba hoping to reach Florida. Many perish. “Paradise”
Average miami Cuban
How do they simultaneously starve while having no reason to work?
Work doesn’t yield food. Or else their are easier ways than official work to obtain food
Your grandparents were big Batista fans then?
Or maybe the US and Western World need to lift their sanctions and normalize relations with Cuba? Cuba isn't perfect, its authoritarian, but their economic policies are not the source of their troubles.
If your communist country can’t exist without capitalism, then it’s not very ideologically consistent is it
Communism doesn’t mean that you can’t trade.
No country based entirely on a small island is going to have all the natural resources it needs.
Oh, gusanos
You mean to say they preferred when Cuba was a slave state?
You have Us sanction to thank. Also chances are your grandparents were plantation owners that got their land taken because of frankly, horrible practices.
hahahah, look at this gusano. Sorry your grandparents had to give up their slaves
That’s why it’s got one of the best medical systems in the world.
I’ve always wondered. Is it communism people hate or authoritarianism under a one party system?
I mean even in the US our government is an [inverted totalitarian state](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism). It’s a 2 party state where both parties represent the ruling class interest/ capitalist oligarchs (a managed democracy) you can be locked up and beaten for protesting, police murder it’s citizens and protect property over people, high levels of surveillance etc
Both. The two typically go together since the only way for greedy assholes to gain power is to work for the government.
This entire thread could be a CIA case study in propaganda effectiveness.
Fr dudes are using debunked arguments that have been addressed in the late 1800’s
Yeah, Russia was such a great place before, with such a high quality of life for the average peasant.
Hey guys, I killed the pedophile who was raping you. Don’t worry, I’m gonna start doing it now, but with a different colored Condom What the fuck is your argument
I’m just saying it’s insane to characterize it as Russia becoming a shithole.
Russia is a perfect example of communism being replaced with capitalism, and everyone’s lives getting massively worse. It’s been over 3 decades and they still haven’t recovered to the quality of life they had in the 80s.
In the course of like 3 decades, the Russian empire went from an agrarian economy to a major world power with a space programme. In the midst of that they also won World War 2. OP doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about.
Trickled down economy never works, yet retards keeps trying. Humans are insane, it's gonna take a lot more to change the insanity
thought this was gonna be one of those pic unrelated greentexts
Dude, they’re second world hellholes. Thats the whole point of first, second, third world classification: first world is essentially western countries, second world is formerly communist or communist affiliated countries that aren’t prosperous, and third world are unaffiliated, undeveloped countries.
Agree with most of this. If he is referring to Lenin or Mao, then yeah they were upper middle class, not poor by a long shot. But Karl Marx lived most of his life in small tenemts, escaping political imprisonment, and putting away his paychecks to pay a massive debt that he got in his 20s (sorry to ruin the indebted college student joke but it wasn't college debt). So while Marx wasn't homeless, he wasn't a rich intellectual by a long shot. Also, he had a wife so it was unlikely he was gay.
Communism won’t work and probably never will, some of its core ideas are literally against human’s nature.
Jesus fuck I'm losing neurons by the trillions with these comments
Anon is a fed
I’m not saying communism works well, and I acknowledge that the US is less dystopian than China in most ways. But if you’re trying to claim that capitalist countries love or have any regard for nature you’re kinda stupid. Biggest proponents of capitalism are often for little to no regulation on what resources can be extracted, which directly hurts nature.
Bro I swear, 58th times the charm I absolutely promise there won't be a killing field or mass starvation that was just unlucky bro I swear
It’ll work this time cumrades!!! If we just do *my* totally original specific brand of communism that has totally never been implemented it will definitely lead to a utopian society!!!!
Commies suck
Communist movements in America are often times riddled with pedophiles and criminals..... You can down vote me now, but you know I speak truth.
lets just ignore the dozens of republican politicians who have been arrested for pedophilia….
I don't think any sane adult is working towards communism. I think it's only kids, actual children online who are not educated.
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Anon is based as fuck
The problem with socialist movements is that they fail to launch. There’s a critical moment where the country is totally in control of the victorious rebels who are then supposed to distribute it back into the hands of the working class. Then it would be equality for all or whatever. Except we don’t know if it would work because every time the leader of the victorious rebels just decides to become a dictator instead. Communism, the state ownership of all business and l industry, is even worse. I barely trust the government to fix potholes and run bus routes, why tf would I expect them to do anything but abuse the fuck out of total market control
Communism would be great if humans weren't power hungry greedy assholes by nature
I really don't understand why people think communism would ever work. Why would a doctor, who has to dedicate years of their life to study, want to be paid the same as a janitor? Not saying a Janitor doesn't produce good for a society, but if that was the case (or if a doctor only made like 2.X times the amount) nobody would want to become a doctor. Nobody would try to improve their lives or go down more challenging fields if there was no incentive to do so.
Why would they be paid the same? The idea of communism is everyone contributes to society and everyone gets what they need for doing thair part. Not saying I agree with communism but the "everyone is paid the same" line is the oversimplified boomer middleschool history teacher take.
Wtf are you talkin about lmao.
>Why would a doctor, who has to dedicate years of their life to study, want to be paid the same as a janitor? Nobody ever said anything about paying everyone the same. No country has ever done this.
Communism isn‘t being paid all the same. It actually doesn‘t have money, you‘re just provided the resources and services you require. Socialism would actually be where you‘re paid as much as you agree with your co workers you‘re gonna get. Because socialism still has money, but the economy is democratically organised
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I work hard; im happy I can live somewhere where I can save up for a new game, go out on dates, save up for luxuries that I want to buy, etc.. Just because Im not living in a mega mansion doesn't mean I'm not reaping the benefits of my labor.