It is terrible to see so many comments here celebrating communism. Communists were ruining our country (Czechia) for over 40 years and led it to economical collapse. When we tried to reform the regime in 1968, the Russians invaded to stop it. Communism doesn’t really work, and it has already been proven.
Also, I have to say the country worked in a bizzare way. The government robbed everyone of their property, so in return, people were stealing from public supplies.
So please try to study something first about communism in Eastern Europe before you start to celebrare this regime.
So please try to study something first about communism in Eastern Europe before you start to celebrare this regime.
If anyone has a sincere interests in studying this in detail its other communists, perhaps you should do more study on modern conceptions of communism (China) and the informative post made by Cowbee.
While the Soviet Economy did begin to stagnate towards the end of the Soviet Union’s lifespan, it did not collapse due to economic failure. The economic collapse happened right after the USSR was dissolved, leading to spikes in poverty, food insecurity, a loss in healthcare, and an estimated 7 million excess deaths. The reasons the USSR collapsed were more nuanced than simply saying the Soviet Model “didn’t work,” because fundamentally it did, and it worked quite well for most of its existence. Stephen Gowens’ essay Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? goes into detail on what legitimately worked quite well, and where it started to falter and eventually was dissolved from the top-down.
The reasons included the following problems:
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Liberal reforms that gave the Bourgeoisie power over key industries (such reforms were actually a major desire of the 1968 Dubcek platform, in even greater quantity, hence why it was shut down by neighboring Warsaw Pact countries)
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A firm dedication to planning by hand even as the economy grew more complex and computers too slow to be adapted to the planning mechanisms
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A huge portion of resources were spent on maintaining millitary parity with the US in order to dissuade US invasion
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80% of the combat done in World War II was on the Eastern Front, and 20 million Soviets lost their lives, with no real economic support from the West in rebuilding despite taking the largest cost of war
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An enclosed, heavily sanctioned economy relied on internal resource gathering, closed off from the world market
Countries like the PRC have taken to heart what happened in the USSR. As an example, the PRC shifted to a more classically Marxist economy, focusing on public ownership of only the large firms and key industries, and relying on markets to develop out of private ownership. This keeps them in touch with the global economy without giving the bourgeoisie control of key industries, and thus the bourgeoisie has no power over the economy or the state.
Moreover, as a consequence of collapse, polling from Pew Researcg suggests 77% of Czechs believe they are worse off economically than under Socialism. This is generally true in various degrees across the other post-Soviet states, had the USSR not been dissolved, it would have likely continued to improve conditions at a faster rate than modern Capitalism, and the misery it has brought.
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I thought memes were supposed to be funny… this just looks like a propaganda poster
I mean, propaganda is technically a type of meme, isn’t it?
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Thank god I’m not the only one.
Luigi’s hand doesn’t look anything like that. Someone fix this meme
You’re not going to overthrow fascism, white supremacy or capitalism with random acts of adventurism. If you’re not more organized than your enemy they will crush you.
I leave that to the plumber’s union.
Socialism allows for both public and private ownership, individual freedoms, and democratic decision-making, while still aiming for social equality. Communism, in contrast, tends to involve total state control and often limits personal freedoms.
Both Capitalism and Socialism have room for public and private ownership, the difference is which sector controls the state, large firms, and key industries. The Nordic Countries are dominated by Private Capital, ie it is Capitalist, while the PRC is dominated by Public Ownership, ie it is Socialist.
Communism limits the personal freedoms of the bourgeoisie. All Communism is, is a more developed and global form of Socialism, where the small firms that once were private have all grown into the public sector or collapsed.
Tell me you’ve never read anything about communism that wasn’t written by anti-communists without telling me you’ve never read anything about communism that wasn’t written by anti-communists.
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The bourgies owning the means of production means a handful of evil vampires have all the power
Makes it always shit
Jesus what a mess of a sentence. You really tried to hamfist that one in there.
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Well I will agree that your average 16 year-old is more well read then the person I replied to.
That doesn’t even make sense…
😘 be well
You should go back to Reddit, you’d be happier there
be better
Limits personal freedoms only for the owning class. If you’re not a landlord or ceo you have nothing to fear.
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How are you going to secure your commune from external enemies without invoking authority?
The Black Book of Communism was debunked long ago, from including Nazis killed during World War II as “victims of Communism” to literally making up numbers to get to 100 million dead to being outright disproven once the Soviet Archives were opened up.
There were excess deaths, but Communist leaders weren’t mindless butchers, either. And with the introduction of Socialism came numerous benefits for the working class, like a doubling of life expectancy, tripling of literacy rates to 99.9%, free and high quality education, healthcare, and childcare, an expansion in women’s rights, a democratization of the economy, and much more.
Anarchism is a beautiful idea, and I used to be one. However, I am more convinced of Marxism, namely because we have more data that shows the success of Marxism, and because hierarchy and centralization are requirements for expansive infrastructure projects like high speed rail and for complex production, such as for smartphones.
I have an introductory Marxist-Leninist Reading List you can check out, if you’d like to learn more.
Yeah I didn’t consider the nazis but they are just lackeys for the landlords and ceos so I mentally put them in there. Ofc nazis have to fear communism too.
All this things sound great, we just need humanity to not be shitty to each other.
Workers of the world unite!
Edit: not that I’m into that sort of thing… I’ve taken history classes, I’ve read about, I’ve watched documentaries, I understand that communism is not to be desired or
Communism is to be desired, though it’s understandable that you’d be opposed if your major exposure is through western education and western documentaries.
Communism is shit based on facts… not opinion.
What “facts?”
Look you dirty Marxist, I’ve looked at your bio. Pushing for the extremes you push is crazy. Why don’t you dial it back from 11. Why push past socialism. That’s the way to go if anything.
Communism is just a later stage of Socialism, ie Socialism of a more developed character, similar to how the Capitalism of today is a more developed version of what it was in the 1800s. All Communists are advocates of Socialism, because Socialism is a necessary prerequisite. There’s nothing “crazy” about that at all.
Further, “dirty Marxist?” Is this the 1950s? Yes, I am a Marxist, there are a lot of us on Lemmy, including the developers. I don’t hide being a Marxist-Leninist, I put it on my bio because I want to make it available information for those who want to know.
If you don’t mind, what country are you from? An d how old are you?
I’m going to look into the developers of lemmy… if that’s true, I won’t be staying on lemmy.
I’m a working adult, not doxxing my exact age. I live in the US Empire. Neither of those detract from the hard data and historical texts I read regularly as a part of my continued self-study.
As for the devs, yes, they are Marxists. Here is a list of essays and compiled resources from the lead developer of Lemmy. You’ll find FOSS projects in general have many Marxists and Anarchists, and few liberals.
Haha
Because at then end ,power over the people is given to the state. When you give the state the means of production and that state falls under the sway of humans with power, you get corruption and death.
Once a place has enough people, anonymity happens. We stop knowing our neighbors and leaders. We don’t see the corruption they can now hide. Communism gives an easier way to leverage that corruption and power more easily
Socialism, more specifically forms of democratic socialism ( and with today’s tech it can be one vite one person), is far more scalable and stable
We need a new constitution with more power given to the people and LESS to the state
Communism gives no more anonymity or room for corruption than Capitalism or Socialism. Further, Communism is Socialism developed to a higher stage. Socialism itself is an economy where public ownership is the principle aspect, ie has control over large firms, key industries, and the state. All Socialism is democratic, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, I don’t see why you say it’s more scaleable when Communism is a global and fully publicly owned version of Socialism, ie Socialism developed to its natural higher stages. Even further, the government is made up of the people, assuming proper measures are in place, you can’t give more power to private interests and keep it democratic.
I’m sorry history has proven you wrong. You’re glossing over so many issues in this statement, I really don’t know where to begin
I sincerely hope you have a great day. I’m not disengaging because of anything you said, I just don’t have the energy. Please. Have a great day
History has proven me correct, from the data I’ve looked over and the books I’ve read. If you specify, then we can go over what I think is relevant to the conversation, rather than me just regurgitating facts and book recommendations. I am oversimplifying, but it was a response to an oversimplification to begin with, specificity helps direct conversations.
Hope you gave a good one too, but for future reference, disengaging right after saying “you’re entirely wrong” isn’t really disengaging, I still have to respond to what I think is a directed attack. You don’t have to respond if you don’t want to, but disengaging while doing so is ceding the last word, so to speak.
Stop. I don’t have patience for bloviation and self aggrandizing I sincerely wished you a good day. I do not care at all what you think of my disengagement. That farewell was your hint that I don’t have patience for this fantasy that has been tried , failed and regurgitated.
Please honor my wishes and simply go Have a good day. If you have to get the last word, so be it. I won’t be responding
Insulting me then telling me to have a good day is childish behavior. If you don’t want to have a conversation, don’t try to exit it by trying to suggest whatever I have to say is devoid of value.
Communist parties have successfully built Socialism throughout the world, and this continues to this day. The PRC is now the largest economy on the planet when adjusting for Purchasing Power Parity, and has seen the greatest alleviation of poverty in human history. The USSR may have dissolved, but during its existence it brought a doubling of life expectancy, tripling of literacy rates to 99.9%, dramatically lowered wealth inequality while rapidly growing the economy, provided free healthcare, education, and childcare, and dramatically improved women’s rights.
No Socialist state has been a mythical wonderland, all have faced great struggles both internal and external, but we know it works because we can track metrics and gauge trajectories. Facts and history do not align with your assertions.
As cowbee said, you can’t disengage and then continue to engage. Either disengage and do not include your arguments against what the other has said, or continue to engage.
i want memes, not politics
Found the capitalist!
find something better to do than name calling. besides dont capitalists own the factories or whatever? you dont even know what ur saying
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When did Meredith at Dunder Mifflin become a vampire?
Last year
Yeah communism isn’t any better so the both can fuck off
Communism is absolutely better 👍
yeah all of the mates I have from Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary… they really lived through it and tell me is shit so I’m just going to go ahead and believe those who have lived under it rather than a random dude on the internet who’s just a lumpen
The vast majority of post-Soviet citizens believe they are worse off now than under Socialism, which makes sense because the reintroduction of Capitalism resulted in skyrocketing rates of poverty, prostitution, drug abuse, homelessness, and an estimated 7 million excess deaths around the world.
Don’t know why you’re calling me a lumpen, tbh.
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Ah, the good 'ol “facts and data don’t matter, actually, because I said so” special. The fact that Socialism was better than Capitalism is today isn’t just in some studies, but repeated over and over again. It’s thoroughly well-documented.
Further, you have no real proof of anything. Why on Earth would the sharp increase in poverty, prostitution, drug abuse, crime, wealth inequality, homelessness, and starvation occur because of the previously stable system? The dissolution of the USSR was driven instead by numerous complex factors:
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Liberal reforms that gave the Bourgeoisie power over key industries
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A firm dedication to planning by hand even as the economy grew more complex and computers too slow to be adapted to the planning mechanisms
-
A huge portion of resources were spent on maintaining millitary parity with the US in order to dissuade US invasion
-
80% of the combat done in World War II was on the Eastern Front, and 20 million Soviets lost their lives, with no real economic support from the West in rebuilding despite taking the largest cost of war
-
An enclosed, heavily sanctioned economy relied on internal resource gathering, closed off from the world market
Countries like the PRC have taken to heart what happened in the USSR. As an example, the PRC shifted to a more classically Marxist economy, focusing on public ownership of only the large firms and key industries, and relying on markets to develop out of private ownership. This keeps them in touch with the global economy without giving the bourgeoisie control of key industries, and thus the bourgeoisie has no power over the economy or the state.
Further yet, your casual queerphobia, assertion that I am both somehow lumpen and bourgeois, the incorrect claim that I’m a college student, and more baseless insults really just adds to the fact that you have no counter to the hard data, so you resort to personal attacks.
The fact is, under Socialism, necessities were taken care of, and luxuries were shorter in supply. Luxuries increased for those who could afford them after Capitalism came, while many of those who couldn’t enjoyed their new “freedom” starving to death. You insult them.
Unsurprisingly, you defend the fascist Bukele here. Entirely unsurprising, the anticommunism from you suddenly clicks when we see what makes you cheer.
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Did you make this account just so you could spam this image over and over?
Yes it’s my favorite image
Greed is the evil.
is the evilit’s their driving force.
I agree, capitalism is just one way greed manifests itself. Greedy opportunists figure out how to exploit any system. The people douchevoting you are binary meme-brains who think you’re saying capitalism is the greatest thing since Betty White because you didn’t explicitly say the opposite.
Sad to say, but humans are the root of evil. Atrocities have been done in the name of all sorts of things, but it’s always humans carrying it out.
So maybe we should switch to systems that represent everyone equally, with equal and fair democratic representation, so that when evil inevitably arises it can be squashed.
Amazing! (commenting so there aren’t 88 comments 😤)
🫡
I don’t get why every Reddit alternative needs to be filled with these weird political ideas. Communism, Fascism and every other form of extremism only leads to misery.
I’m sure capitalism is flawed, but you can make it work better. Any of the Nordic countries works as a great example. And no they aren’t perfect but nothing ever will be.
Reddit is state controlled media. You’re seeing weird ideas outside of it because you’re allowed to now
Capitalism is a form of extremism
For your first question, Lemmy is developed by Communists, and is an answer to the Capitalist failings of Reddit. Simple as that.
For the Capitalism bit, you’re waving away the fact thay the Nordic countries are Imperialist. They shift all of the suffering and worst exploitation to the Global South. At the same time, worker’s rights and safety nets are being eroded, because Capital controls the state, not the people.
Please explain the way in which the Nordic countries are imperialist and exploitative and which country you personally look for moral guidance? And if there is none what makes you think we are capable of building a system that wouldn’t be exploitative by your grandiose unrealistic standards? Workers rights and safety nets are far beyond any other country in the world and in fact they’ve essentially never been better. The only change is that populists like you have given up on building and improving the system which in fact does require everyone to commit to improving society together, not just whining in a basement about some socialist utopia that is never going to happen.
Here are some good resources others have compiled on the Nordic Model in general:
- What about social democracy / democratic socialism / the Nordic model? Isn’t Sweden socialist?
- On the unraveling of the Nordic welfare states: increasing inequality and forced austerity.
- Scandinavia’s covert role in western imperialism
Essentially, Finland (and Imperialist countries in general) operate on a principle of unequal exchange. By leveraging mechanisms like IMF loans with clauses requiring privatization of resources and industry for foreign capture, to relying on overseas production to super-exploit for super-profits, to simply relying on high interest rates on foreign loans, Imperialist countries consume more of the Global South’s value than they provide the Global South.
As for which countries I think are headed in the right direction, I like the PRC quite a bit. It’s certainly not perfect and it has a long way to go, but it’s making rapid improvements and doesn’t rely on Imperialism to provide for its people. And Socialism does exist, already, though nobody is genuinely waiting for a magical Utopian version of it.
Are you joking with China or am I talking with a bot?
China is a massive massive loan shark to emerging economies and is literally one of the largest IMF backers. Although once again you’re sound very conspiracy theorist here blaming the IMF which the entire world is a member essentially. If you look at voting power China alone has more than every Nordic country combined.
China literally exploits not only their own people but everyone who’s weaker than them. You’re seriously commenting in bad faith here.
China doesn’t operate in that way. China is a country focused on selling goods it produces, ergo it cares more to have customers. The BRI and BRICs exist purely to build up more customers, it’s neither charity nor Imperialism. Countries enter it in exchange for large infrastructural build up, in order for China to have new customers that aren’t the West, who as we observe are quite fickle to work with. As this article from The Atlantic puts it, The “Chinese Debt Trap” is a Myth.
The IMF is absolutely to blame for requiring loan recipients to privatize their key industries for foreign plundering, and the US is the worst among the biggest lenders.
No, I’m not being bad faith here. You’re stonewalling and relying on false assumptions, which I have already pointed out.
Communism is no more extreme than capitalism. They just stand in opposition of one another. The red scare is back I guess.
I would say we have seen both extremes and we like neither and some people think a third alternative is “killing everyone else” can we not?
What are you on about with “red scare”? You can simply look at the poor attempts made in the name of communism to see how well that idea succeeds in practice. Simple solutions to complex issues never work. Communism is an extreme ideology based on the oversimplification of complex like every other form of populism.
Communism is not a simple solution, nor does it oversimplify the problem. What do you mean when you say this?
Well don’t you think it’s a bit simple to pin every single problem in the world on property rights and a conspiracy theory level class divide between proletariats and “bourgeoisie”? It’s ann exhausting ordeal to hear all these complaints when humanity has never been at a more advanced point than it is now despite all its flaws.
How on Earth is it a conspiracy theory to say that business owners and employees exist? What exists in your mind palace?
Plus, Marx notes that Capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism, but has come with its own new problems that Socialism resolves.
Are you serious? Do you not understand the concept that you can be an employee today and business owner tomorrow? How do you not understand the irony that suddenly once you start your own business you’re an exploitative devil and as long as you stay as an employee you’re somehow a better person? Don’t you realize what moronic baiting that is? Humanity never learns from populists it seems, whether it’s Trump or Lenin, it’s all the same.
Marx never for a single second suggested that Class is an immutable characteristic.
The bible is also a long book, does that make it believable to you?
You said Communism was based on oversimplification, now you’re saying it’s suspicious for being long? Make up your mind.
You’re saying it’s not simplistic just because it has a lot of words. Please refer to my other post on why it’s Marxism is a ridiculous and frankly childish theory.
No, I’m saying it’s not simplistic because I’ve read a lot of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and from many, many, many more Communist leaders and theorists since them.
I call bullshit on this one
Its actually pretty smart if you think about it. Some flowers bloom at the end of their lifecycle. Nazism is at the end of capitalism’s lifecycle. But if you only hack off the visible parts of the flower, it will come back next year. So the flower is capitalism and the soviet union only managed to hack off the upper part, nazi germany, while the lower part, the capitalist empire was still there. Now 80 years later, the flower blooms again, this time as usa, and the picture suggests we rip it out at the root by destroying the whole system, instead of just hacking it off by, like, occupying washington or something.
Every -ism is bad when bad people are in charge.
