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In what communist country was housing a problem?
This is a trick question, the real answer is that there weren’t real communist countries
That’s true.
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Soviet Union? It was uncommon for a family of 6 to live in a small apartment. You can even see it in old soviet movies where apartments would be separated by curtains (common comedy trope).
I’m sure there were extra houses after all those people that starved to death.
In Communist countries people starve to death because of famine, in Capitalist countries people also strave to death because of famine while still starving to death after famines are over because they cant afford groceries.
Not a tankie, but the USSR had mostly solved this problem, despite all its other issues. There did exist some homelessness, but nowhere near the extent of current USA.
Well, I’m from a post-USSR country and a substantial part of this was the criminalization of homelessness. Can’t have homeless people, if you lock them up (be it in a prison or asylum).
Then again, just about anyone, who did not conform to the party’s message got locked up. Getting your place bugged at the slightest hint you might be up to something disagreeable and all that good stuff. The secret police could disappear and or beat you up without any real justification.
I hate late-stage capitalism as much as you, but coming from a country that’s been through this, I am extremely reluctant to give the rotten and frankly repugnant USSR regime any credit.
At least they tried. Our homelessness is an intentional feature of our capitalist system. A constant threat and extant punishment for those among us who aren’t fortunate enough to be born with a silver stick up our ass.
Sure, you could get a piece of land in Siberian tundra at any time, I would not call that housing.
Moving to a city was way more complicated than in capitalist US. You could not simply buy an apartment. You had to be allocated an apartment by the government. And you needed connections for that. Or bribes. Ideally both. If you think your local rabid Republicans do not care for little wage slave men, you never experienced USSR, it was like that but 100x worse.
If you got a new job in a different city, they gave you a new flat, at least in Romania
The real communist solution to homelessness was to put them in jails. True story.
From a Legislative Perspective, it is Illegal to be Homeless in Virtually Every State in the USA, Except for Two – Oregon and Wyoming I think you are confusing Communist countries with Capitalist ones. Lol, lmao even.
As someone who has been homeless before, I’ve never been arrested for it.
So what? America is a shithole, that’s nothing new.
Woohoo both systems suck. You can actually believe that just because one system is bad, what is considered the opposite is also bad. Marx was not some omniscient doctor manhattan. He had some ideas. Some were good critiques on capitalist culture. Others were fantasy that do not function in the real world.
Notice how the folks arguing in favor of Communism have sources and receipts, while the folks arguing against it have done nothing but regurgitated Capitalist propaganda. Also note folks who are opposed to Communism and Marx’s philosophy are always forced to admit that it only works on paper, because his logic is irrefutable if you address it with a modicum of intellectual honesty…
It’s funny how upset it makes people when you point out the elephant in the room.
Truely
You link stuff, but ignore the actual accounts of human beings who fucking lived it.
Bruh, almost every old person I’ve heard talk about Communism that lived under it talks about it fondly. Lmao
I have a whole fucking family, who lived through the USSR. Not a single one of them misses it. Being spied on every step you take, my grandma has the “you never know who’s watching” mentality to this day.
That’s not to say they don’t hate the current regime, but it’s nothing compared to the absolute atrocities of the USSR’s secret police.
Doubt that very much, liar
Love how all your sources are NATOpedia and all their sources are actual sources.
The holodomor narrative surrounding the ussr wide famine of 32-33 was literal nazi propaganda from open nazi collaborators and was used as a justification for the mass murder of jews in Eastern Europe during the holocaust.
It was debunked in the literal 1930s in the US and now it re-emerges like a zombie during an era where fascism is on the rise. Even anticommunist academics like Applebaum, Davies, and Conquest say it wasn’t a genocide.
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Yeah but some guy I once met had a grandpa who lived in Europe for a year, he said Russia was great
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The joke is that Capitalism DOES NOT have a solution to homelessness because there is zero profit motive to solve it. And facts dont care about your feelngs, you cant refute Marx’s philosophy while being intellectual honest. Capitalist Economists study Das Kapital because Marx was so fucking spot on.
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No need to refute Marx, reality has already proven time and time again that communism doesn’t work in practice.
Btw your argument only applies to “pure” capitalism, without any government interference. Homelessness is not really an issue in many European countries.
Typical projection 😂
That’s what a lot of red states are doing now. Make homelessness illegal. Arrest the homeless. Make them do slave labor in jail. Profit.
Yeah that’s called late stage Communism, which we have never achieved as humanity. Late stage Capitalism is currently pushing more and more folks into dangerous housing situations like the bottom right quadrant of this meme. Capitalism and Utopia are oxymorons while Communism and Utopia are synonymous.
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Call me old fashion but no one living on the streets and having their basic needs met sounds pretty utopian to me.
They don’t call you old fashioned for that, they call you tankie. It’s because they’re mad that you don’t buy the bullshit they push. Look at all the claims they make about the USSR here while providing no evidence or context for the situations they claim people were living in.
They compare apples to oranges when it’s communism they are criticizing and stick their fingers in their ears while screaming when it comes to criticizing crapitalism.
Ah yes because there was no one living on the streets, yes because a propaganda told me that it must be true.
I guess killing literal millions of your own citizens is better than being homeless, huh?
Yeah those soviets sure got rid of the homeless problem. Can’t be homeless when you were intentionally starved to death.
Why is this shit always communist vs capitalist, like we’ve only got 2 answers avaliable. You fuckers never set foot in a communist country and worship this shit
Fucking communist countries have killed how many millions of their own citizens? Don’t really think showing a picture of some buildings is enough to prove that they actually solved any issues. They may have solved those issues for some who were lucky enough to get an apartment, but don’t be a hexbear and pretend they housed everyone.
And no, I don’t want a response with a link about hurr duer capitalism bad, yeah I know, but I live in capitalism so I already know that.
This is not “one or the another” situation, communism is the next qualitative stage in development of society. It solves the primary contradiction that we experience in capitalism, that is socialized production being privatized by individuals, aka capitalists.
You can’t just declare communism by signing a document, because it is a process of development in which small quantitative changes in production (socialism) lead to a qualitative change (communism), thus to achieve the communism stage you have to achieve a certain level of development.
This is why China is considered a communist country by marxists-leninist even though qualitatively it is a capitalist country. They are actively working to develop communism, this can be clearly seen throughout their rhetoric (i.e. “The Governance of China”) and their material results.
The problem with China being that it’s authoritarian, not that it’s capitalist or communist. There’s no choice other than the Communist Party, so when the party is wildly corrupt, you have no recourse at all short of revolution. And we all know what China does to counter-revolutionaries.
If the party was corrupt they wouldn’t be executing the rich and powerful whenever they did a financial crime. Come on.
Funnily enough, this has been succesfully framed as a bad thing by media.
Can you link to some of these trials where they tried these rich people for the financial crimes?
And that is a problem to whom? Every single state is authoritarian, the question is whose interests are they protecting.
China is clearly a dictatorship of the proletariat and they use authority to protect the interests of the proletariat. Yes, sometimes their policy is wrong and does harm but ultimately they work to improve their policies, governing is a learning experience after all.
What does “authoritarian” mean? Shouldn’t we reserve that word for the country with the largest police force, biggest military, and the highest prison population per capita in the world?
I wonder, do you think that the people that are being “re-educated” are counted as prison population…?
I suppose that when you simply kill or disappear people that are political dissenters that you don’t have to worry about that prison population
People don’t have much recourse in the US either. The two party system just obfuscates that reality. I’d actually argue that because revolution is the only alternative to the communist party in China, the government has to be more responsive to citizen demands than the US.
Fucking communist countries have killed how many millions of their own citizens?
Bruh, centuries of capitalist exploitation of its citizens and treating them like a disposable commodity would like to have a word on the whole ‘citizens killed by their own country’ topic.
How many thousands or millions of citizens die yearly because they can’t afford to live in this fucked up system?
So whataboutism really is the only argument for communism lmao
“I’m presented with a single argument that refutes this claim, better setup a strawman that this is the only argument available”
Lmao, at least try to sound intelligent
Asks for link that doesn’t say “hurr durr capitalism bad
Gets a link from Marxists.org
I made this comment without looking at the website but WHAT THE HELL IS THIS WEBSITE
It’s communist innovation (not innovative)(no incentive to update that UI from the 90s)(communists find lack of progress calming)
A phenomenal resource.
It actually is a decent resource as long as it is not your only context for history and political science.
The state of commies, laughable
Lmfao not at all, the dude literally said whataboutisms are the only arguments for Communism, so i linked him a copy of Das Kapital. Unfortunately you clearly lack the reading comprehension to consume it.
None? People don’t starve to death in western countries. And where they do the issue is lack of infrastructure. A communist government couldn’t conjure the resources needed to build that out of thin air either.
None? People don’t starve to death in western countries. And where they do the issue is lack of infrastructure.
“This thing doesn’t happen, and when it does, it’s not the fault of capitalism itself” is a monumentally stupid argument. Especially when talking about the homeless population, which absolutely does have people that starve.
A communist government couldn’t conjure the resources needed to build that out of thin air either.
And the capitalist economy chose not to build it because it wasn’t profitable, or after it was built, it was too expensive to be used.
Not to mention that the people in the global south starve because their food production literally goes to the west. What a fucking moron.
Where is your great communist country ?? Oh wait, it’s not there. It doesn’t exist and it never will. Capitalism works. Not perfect but it works. Your idealized version of communism is great but so is my idealized version of capitalism where everyone has a shot at the American dream!
I said it doesn’t happen in the west, not that it doesn’t happen anywhere. Please learn to read.
Have you ever been outside your basement?
spoiler
no
They are on lemmy.world which AFAIK isn’t federated with lemmygrad, so I don’t think they can read you.
echo chamber
saying that “people don’t starve to death in western countries” without understanding in the slightest the actual harms of food insecurity and how it leads to death is a very accurate representation of the scientific ignorance and sociopathic lack of empathy that capitalism supporters bring to the table in these kinds of discussions a hundred times out of a hundred
Remind me, how many capitalist countries have killed millions of their own citizens?
Germany, pre-communist China, Japan, Armenia, pre-USSR Russia, Pakistan…
Edit: if apparently this isn’t the point, why so passionately call out the communist killcount?
Not to mention all the fascist militaries supported by the US that regularly engaged on mass murders of “communists”. Indonesia, brazil, chile, south korea, south vietnam, etc… Ultimately they dont care, they just want to discredit communism by whatever means possible.
See, this is what the fuck I’m talking about.
You’re so dense. I’m not advocating or simping got capitalism here. That’s what I’m trying to communicate, but you’re too fucking dense to even see that when I lay it out.
Both are bad. Just because I say these turds who worship an imaginary and propagandized version of communism are dorks doesn’t mean I’m arguing in favor of capitalism. For fucks sake learn to read
You are 100% correct in your assertion, my anti Mario sex toy friend, and I love your passion. I worry that the minute you call someone’s intelligence into question, they’ll take a defensive posture and stop thinking critically. Critical thinking is what we need more than anything else in this world right now. That’s what’s in short supply. It’s why the news is constantly being flooded with new things, and why there are so few media outlets that don’t have a slant. If I can get you outraged at team blue, or team red, or team US, or team THEM, your anger overrides your reason and you stop thinking about who benefits from the distraction provided by us arguing over whatever this new bullshit thing is we’re arguing over. Hopefully that last statement makes sense.
fucking communist countries have killed how many millions of their own citizens
Most of these articles cite the Black Book of Communism, which goes to absurd lengths to inflate the death toll of Communism, for example counting all the millions of nazi and soviet soldiers killed on the eastern front as victims of communism, counting the entire death toll of the Vietnam war, and even counting declining birth rates as deaths due to communism.
Noam Chomsky used the same methodology to argue that, according to Black Book logic, capitalism in India alone, from 1947–1979, could be blamed for more deaths than communism worldwide from 1917–1979.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160921084037/http://www.spectrezine.org/global/chomsky.htm
It’s even worse than that. Most Lemmy commies are aggressive sectarians who cling to a very particular form of the ideology, while rejecting all forms of moderate leftism and Marxist revisionism. It’s extremely obnoxious, and their bizarre, outdated philosophy is a primary reason why people are skeptical of leftist politics.
I’m still confused and alarmed that the only alternative brought up is communism, not socialism. So far as I know, the core difference is transfer of power - one is peaceful, one is violent.
So in communism, your home might be six feet underground because “It is necessary to achieve the revolution, comrade.” Absolutely zero chance of a leader that wants the best for their people, apparently.
That’s incorrect.
Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. There sre many, many forms, such as Anarcho-Syndicalism, Marxism-Leninism, Democratic Socialism, Market Socialism, Libertarian Socialism, Anarcho-Communism, Council Communism, Left Communism, and more.
Communism is a more specific form of Socialism, by which you have achieved a Stateless, Classless, moneyless society. Many Communist ideologies are transitional towards Communism, such as the USSR’s Marxism-Leninism or China’s Dengism and Maoism.
Whether by reform or Revolution, the form doesn’t change.
Personally Star Trek is my favorite form of Communism.
Pretty sure that’s everyone’s ideal, across all forms of leftism, except perhaps Le Guin’s Anarchist societies she writes about.
Holy shit. That makes so much sense as to why I hated those books as a kid. Thanks for that insight. I knew something wasn’t working properly in Earthsea.
Wrong series though.
Not to shit on child you, but that kid has terrible taste
Which political ideology is Responsible for capitalizing random Words?
German
My phone’s autocorrect, apparently.
Nationalise essential needs and create State corporations, let capitalism have fun with non essentials. If don’t care if private producers make wine or funky clothing or big houses, the government should make sure everyone has food to eat, basic clothes to wear and a place to live.
On that last part, buildings with 8 living units or more should be ran by a non profit State corporation, charge people based on the cost of maintenance and the salaries required, send a check if people were charged too much at the end of the year.
You left out, healthcare, education, higher education, and Internet access. While we are covering basic human rights, let’s make sure we cover all the basic human rights.
Outside of internet access these things are already nationalised in first world countries (I know exactly what’s implied by what I’m saying). I didn’t feel the need to enumerate every single thing.
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But we need free markets to handle the essentials because free markets consistently provide while governments consistently fail.
We need the systems that work connected to the most critical needs.
State corporations are private companies whose profit go to the government instead of an owner or investors. The place in North America that has the cheapest electricity is Quebec and that’s because it’s a State corporation producing it, it still makes billions in profit that is then reinvested by the government.
So no, free markets isn’t necessary. Heck, the free market is what makes it so the US government is the one that spends the most per capita for healthcare even if it only covers part of the population.
Real socialism leads to communism. I want to call what I am advocating for as cultural marxism, but unfortunately that term has antisemitic connotations, while also perfectly encapsulating the gradual shift in the publics perception of Marxist ideology I am advocating for with memes such as this. I am not advocating for a violent revolution, but I wont deny the fact that when the powers that be make a peaceful revolution impossible, a violent revolution is inevitable.
The problem is that a leader who wants the best for their people isn’t sufficient to actually achieve that. What you need is for everyone to be making decisions about what’s best.
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You’re also taking a snapshot of the most regulated industry in the US. Building high rises is illegal in huge swaths of urban areas. Before we say the free market isn’t providing an answer cab we actually try it? I’m talking removing exclusionary zoning, speeding up the permit process and reducing the power of local action committees, and reforming the broken heritage process that’s used by rich people to keep their areas from densifying.
It’s simple… If you convince the communists that the capitalists are trying to destroy them, (and vice versa), they fight each other, distracting them from the real enemy: the 1% with enough money to directly influence the folk that make the rules that keep them in the 1% club. We’re fighting culture wars so we won’t fight class wars, my friend.
… capitalism is the ideology that lets the 1% be the 1%.
This is like the one fight that isn’t part of the culture war.
No the 1% definitely exists in communism.
The 1% exist in every form of government, my friend. Billionaire capitalists == Russian Oligarchs. The name changes based on the audience, but the idea is money influences politics. The folk with the most money to do so are the 1% who actually rule, not the interchangeable talking heads who take their money to live a comfortable life acting as the mouthpiece (or scapegoat) for that group.
…do you think Russia is still Socialist? The Russian oligarchs are Billionaire Capitalists.
The USSR collapsed in the 90s, buddy.
Is there even a non-capitalist government in existence? Even the communist nations generally have a currency and tiered income based on position.
Couple things: tiered income would likely exist in early stages of Communism, and certainly in almost all forms of Socialism. Marx makes it exceptionally clear that both intense and skilled labor are represented as condensed unskilled labor.
Either way, there are examples of anti-capitalism. Chiapas and Rojava are more Libertarian Socialist. There’s also countries like Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos, who appear to be attempting to reject Capitalism still and still operating on some basis of Marxism-Leninism Socialism. China relies on Capitalism as their dominant mode of production, but claims to be Socialist by 2050, though that remains to be seen.
The nations you think of as “Communist” are typically Communist in ideology, but are building towards it through Socialism. Just as Feudalism gave way to Capitalism, so to do Marxists believe Capitalism is a necessary stage before Socialism, which is a necessary stage before Communism.
Tiered income does not mean capitalism. Capitalism is not at all defined by inequality. It is defined by free market activity.
Exactly! This is exactly what I’m saying. The 1% is still the 1% calling the shots… No matter where they are or what you want to call the type of government they influence.
The Russian Oligarchs you speak of are a result of the fall of Communism in Russia.
Yes, so you’re proving the Communists and Socialists in this thread correct. Across all Capitalist systems, the bourgeoisie are still the ones calling the shots. Therefore, a better system would be a more decentralized, worker owned system, perhaps along the lines of Socialism or Anarchism, to reach an eventual state of Communism in the far future.
What exactly do you take issue with Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism here? You appear to be advocating for a more top-down system like Capitalism, than a bottom-up system. Your argument appears to uphold your criticism.
Oh! I see. No…I’m only saying the minute you start talking any “-isms”, you trigger feelings of tribalism that exist in all of humanity. We want to be on the “good team”. No one wants to be on the bad team, and that feeling is what the Uber wealthy uses to keep us busy. Debating all of the “-isms” is the problem. Let’s figure out how to take care of the masses so basic human needs are met, allowing humanity to prosper, and figure out what the hell to call it later. Otherwise, we just quibble over semantics and nothing gets done.
Do you think the Russian oligarchs, who by the way pen a FAR larger portion of the Russian economy than their American counterparts, appeared from nowhere after the collapse of the Soviet Union? The Soviets had an extremely wealthy and influential elite
The 1% are the Capitalist and they are trying to defeat the Communists and surpress/continue to exploit the Prolitariat with every tool at their vast disposal. The folks in the comments defending Capitalism are all members of the Prolitariat brainwashed into thinking they are down on their luck Millionaires.
Look… It’s all tribalism, in the end. We can argue semantics, but doing so it’s exactly their point. It keeps us busy with pedantry, while they continue to enjoy their wealth from on high. I am not educated enough to debate the pros and cons of each group, but I am intelligent enough to smell an attempt to distract me from the point. To know there’s some sleight of hand fuckery happening right in front of my face.
Yes you are intelligent, and so close to getting it, the cultural warfare bullshit is all a distraction to keep you from noticing the class warfare being waged against the working class by the 1% who continues to rob value from us to horde weath far beyond our comprehension. I cant recommend Marx’s writings enough, there is so much slight of hand fuxkery going on and it SHOULD rightfully piss you off!
Help me understand how I’m close in what I’m saying, my friend. It feels like we’re saying exactly the same thing.
EXACTLY!!!
But he has to be right, it’s not about agreeing he has to be RIGHT and you have to be WRONG
Bruh if I HAD to be right I would still be a devoted Libertarian simping for the free market. I love being proven wrong, its how people and ergo society are supposed to evolve and grow.
Right. Communism vs capitalism is just more centralization. There are plenty of decentralized options to balance things as too much centralization, no matter the political system leads to corruption.
What do you figure is centralized about capitalism?
All the increasingly large corporations that are constantly buying their competition and making it hard for anyone else to compete.
That is the death of capitalism. That’s capitalism (based on free markets) devolving into oligopoly (based on regulatory capture and tightly-restricted markets).
Capitalism doesn’t last any better than any other institution. It degrades into something else. The thing it degrades into is a centrally-controlled market, similar to what you find in socialism.
Agreed. Whether it is Capatalism, Communism, Socialism, democracy, dictatorship they all have centralizion in them even if their intent is otherwise. We need to support more decentralized services and governance as it balance the poor and returns it to the people. We just need more people to get on board, it it seems like we prefer to give our power to power hungry companies and regimes instead. Not saying we need to have zero centralization as it has its place, but it needs to be kept in check and the only to force to do so is decentralization. But it is all so much more complicated and above the human condition to manage. Hopefully AI will be able to help for better or for worse.
It’s almost like there’s a middle ground that’s the best of both worlds.
Except there isn’t. we tried that then the capitalists bought the weaker willed politicians and used them to undermine any regulation. Capitalism is a cancer and must be excised as such.
I don’t disagree that Capitalism doesn’t work in its purest form, but we’ve hardly had a success with communism in its purest form either.
We literally have. Look at the massive literacy, life expectancy, and political rights increases under literally every single communist government compared to what came before them instead of comparing them to some utopian ideal that capitalism compares even less favorably to.
life expectancy, and political rights increases under literally every single communist government
Are you not aware of the massive incarceration, labor camps, starvation, conscription, etc?
Have you read about the Battle of Stalingrad? Do you seriously not know the stories of how life expectancy and political rights were totally and utterly squashed many times by communist governments?
Are you not aware of the massive incarceration, labor camps, starvation, conscription, etc?
Are you aware the gulags never reached the same scale as the current US prison system? Are you aware that under the Soviets and under the CPC previously periodic famines under the previous governments stopped after initial industrialization?
I will leave you with this quote, ironically about a liberal revolution against monarchists
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
The enlightened centrists never fail to amuse us. 😂
This is capitalist solution to homelessness
People tend to argue that commie blocks look depressing and dystopian but you can actually make very pretty neighborhoods with them.
This is where I live. It’s called Oyak Sitesi in Turkey/Antalya and it’s a beautiful place with an actual community. Very affordable too. We just did a stability test and they were also very durable to earthquakes.
Just because you’re making blocks doesnt also mean that they have to be 20 stories tall either. Here is my old house.
The important parts are paint and maintenance.
Give a commie block a fresh coat of paint every decade or so and they can look good (though I just don’t like flat roofs. But that’s personal taste.)
But while a somewhat run down european style house can still have some charme for longer (guess I’m biased here) a run down commie block in gray and with cracks in the facade will quickly start to look depressing.
And as they are often chosen for cost reasons inside capitalistic environments, they are often neglected.
So, the problem is not commie blocks, but how they are maintained. And as often we tend to search for the extreme examples if we (dis)like something.
I happen to live in a city that’s primarily blocks (or as we call them: Plattenbauten) and honestly, they’re pretty good houses. The structure is sound, after some renovations in the 90s and 00s, insulation and comfort are perfectly fine, and the surroundings are usually very green and pleasant.
The only real problem is, that these buildings are somewhat away from the city center due to superior socialist planning, so they are not super attractive for younger people.
I should probably take pictures of freshly-paited commie blocks in my district and post them on lemmyy.
Why do you call them “commie blocks”??
It wasn’t communists who came up with the idea of that type of building and it’s a common sight in many European countries, for example, which are not communist.
guess who built those, genius?
These discussions on communism vs capitalism that devolve into comparing the US with the USSR are like discussing feudalism vs liberalism in 1825, when the only perceptible legacies of the French Revolution were the Reign of Terror and Napoleon’s degeneration into monarchy.
If you’re sensibly anticapitalist, for the love of Marx do not argue in favor of states that rejected all pretension of wanting to let the economy be democratically managed, ultimately turning into party-controlled hierarchies rather than socialism. If you’re a liberal in 1825 and rather than arguing in favor of ending serfdom and enfranchising everyone you keep going on about how Robespierre wasn’t really that bad, you’re politically useless.
Please, not this again… Personally, I am a lot in favour of communism. But some people, especially US Americans, have a fundamentally wrong idea about the housing shown in the upper picture.
This is often neither cheap, nor does it reduce homelessness. And it’s also not the goal of that kind of rental homes to reduce homelessness.
That is just normal homes of average people in many places.
It’s not “cheap housing for everyone”.
Why a lot of people on Lemmy like communist so much? As a person who grow up in a country which is almost destroyed by the communist party in the past I don’t know what to say just why?, capitalist or not it’s depends on your own country’s government, at least you still can talking shit about them without getting arrested and torture to death, have we not learn from the past or other communist country, why don’t you live in North Korea or China and see how’ve you like it
I’m going to take your question as genuine and answer in equal.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. Most leftists will agree with you, the USSR and other Eastern Europe countries that were communist did a lot of damage and most likely more harm. They committed atrocities. They were authoritarian. It was disgusting.
The leftists who still prop those countries up on their shoulders are what many call tankies. Today they sing praise about Russia, China, and North Korea, but your observation is correct, they won’t ever move there. These are individuals who repeat propaganda and are, ultimately, just red fascists. When you actually dig into their ideals they parallel and sometimes mirror Nazis.
I believe leftism cannot have an authoritarian element to it. I think most social hierarchies need to be destroyed. I think the only way to have a socialist society is through democratic means. Democracy in the workplace and national level. I think most of us can agree workers need higher wages and there is a wealth gap that needs to be dismantled. I think most of us believe healthcare needs to be universal, food and shelter and water, education, information (internet), speech, and much more should be free and readily available. There is this element of freedom that needs to be achieved that isn’t found the countries that are “communist”.
I don’t want to explicitly say those communist countries wasn’t “real communism”, but fascists, authoritarianism, always appropriate from progressive movement. There is no freedom, especially of workers, under a dictatorship. If workers are starving, dying, being outright black bagged and killed, i don’t think that can be considered communist.
Hello, I’d like to speak for people I disagree with
As a leftist whose platform doesn’t seem to include a word about abolishing capitalism, any time I am challenged by someone to the left of Bernie Sanders, I turn into a right wing crank telling people ‘if you don’t like it get out’
And today I’d like to tell you about horseshoe theory
If you actually believe in horseshoe theory then I have a bridge to sell you. Are you going to tell me you’re a centrist?
context clues
Yes, anti-Tankies are verry simmlar to Tankies. However, I think the commenter is coping by being an anti-tankie. Both groups can becone and come back from crazy. People can also safely hold tankie and anti-tankie like beleafs but (like a lot of ideology) run the risk of becoming crazy.
amaricentric peoples perspective (wrough draft probably wrong)
“Tankie” nationallists fail to see the raising over time evil and fantisize the good and the ones who passionately hate Tankies (im guilty of it) fail to see the good slowly rotting away. Then we say the whole country never changed throuout its lifetime, one points to the beginnigng the other points to the end.
Places like the Soviate Union from my limited knolage seem to be a nation with slowly growing leadership alignment problems, slowly using things like nationalism and subverting democracy to flip who should be masters and who should be slaves.
Can we just go back to saying communists please?
Absolutely, internal divisions suck. (What people are calling) Tankie and anti tankie ideas have the potential to be useful if and when its not an ideologial snare.
The last paragraph comes across as about “no true Scotsman” as it gets. Maybe true IRL communism is as much fiction as the star trek depiction of it is.
That’s the point of my concluding paragraph. I am acknowledging that fallacy. So I ask, if freedom is an actual component to socialism, communism, or anarchism, then is the USSR actually a communist state? I can easily argue North Korea isn’t. China and Russia aren’t socialist at all. Russia is an oligopoly and China is just state capitalism.
So what is “true socialism”? I don’t think we can ever achieve. We can’t have a “perfect” society, but I do think we can get close enough having workers been more in control of their labor, be more democratic, and not live in an authoritarian state. We may not 100% be able to live in a Star Trek universe but I think we can get quite close.
The former is operating illegally amidst intense violence that they have as much responsibility for as the Mexican government and the latter have committed ethnic cleansing. So I’m not sure why you think they are good examples. Unless you think socialism means people must be killed.
National socialism of course.
See how these people aren’t even engaging you here? That’s because you’re not trying hard enough.
You can do better my troll friend. I believe in you
sing praise about Russia
I have never seen a communist claim that the modern Russian government is good or communist, only that it opposes western hegemony, to the occasional benefit of poor nations in the global south.
In the “capitalism did better than communism/socialism” debate i still feel a great lack of historical context. Eastern Europe has been largely destroyed by the Nazis. China has lived through brutal Japanese occupation and a genocide of 10 Million people. Korea has been subject to a war emplyoing terrible new weapons such as Napalm to bring great destruction.
Meanwhile the US homeland has been faring without any destruction, France surrendered quick enough to avoid most damage and the UK sucessfully fended off the Nazi attacks so the damage was limited.
Purely economically speaking the Western allies were off to a much better start than the Eastern countries. So i would argue that for the economical question, it remains impossible to claim capitalism to be superior to socialism. Otherwise authoritarianism is always to the detriment of the people.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. Most leftists will agree with you, the USSR and other Eastern Europe countries that were communist did a lot of damage and most likely more harm. They committed atrocities. They were authoritarian. It was disgusting.
Most leftists are literally marxist leninists or some derivative of ML in socialist countries. I think you mean most white leftists in the imperial core when you say most leftists.
Are there any statistics on where the most (convinced) leftists currently live? Just wondering. Not talking about people who are forced to adhere to authoritarian systems to survive or further their career.
There are literally 100 million members of the CPC. If .1 percent of them earnestly believe in communist thought that is more than the total members of communist orgs in the US.
I think you might call me an FDR New Deal socialist. I’m in favor of things like social security and government public works projects.
It has been my experience as a lifelong American that “capitalism” is just feudalism, or a desperate attempt to return to feudalism. “Capitalists” aka the ruling class have all the “capital” aka enough resources to actually accomplish anything. When any normal citizen wants to start a business, they have to beg a capitalist for a loan of some type, possibly selling “stock” aka a loan that never pays to term, allowing the capitalists to leech off of your profits basically forever. Wages get lower, costs get higher, all to funnel as much wealth to a small upper class. The myth of the meritocracy, where he with the best ideas, the best inventions, the most innovation, the product most in demand is he one that succeeds…doesn’t hold up in a world of patent trolling or felony contempt of business model we’re currently in. Doesn’t stop them from parroting it to keep the little people quiet though.
Meanwhile I’m not aware of a “communist” nation that ever actually was. I am unaware of a nation that has ever actually operated per “to each according to his ability, from each according to his need” workers owning the means of production etc. They’ve all turned out as dictatorships with command economies. I mean, show me a country where the workers’ unions are actually the ones in power. No, you’ve got the likes of North Korea, Russia and China building empty skyscrapers, building entire cities that sit empty, demolishing brand new apartment complexes because the floors aren’t safe to walk on. The government told us to build it, so we built it. I get punished if I don’t, and I don’t get rewarded for doing a good job. The man that wrote Tetris didn’t earn a single kopek.
Neither seem to actually work long-term.
Okay, a “fdr new deal socialist” isnt a thing. FDR was a social democrat which isn’t socialist. The new deal was a social democrat policy, not socialist.
Please consider reading “the abc’s of socialism” it is a good introduction to socialist thought.
Ah yes the utopian rainbow many want, yes, #metoo
It’s an unfortunately nuanced subject, where people don’t agree on the underlying definitions of words. For instance, I think you’re confusing “capitalism” with “democracy”. You can have authoritarian undemocratic capitalist countries, where you can’t talk shit about your government.
For me personally, I think communism has too many issues to actually try, but I like some of its theoretical tennants when compared to that of capitalism. Those goals are something to strive for. The spirit of communism is helping eachother and rewarding work, and the spirit of capitalism is sacrificing others for personal gain
Though to be fair, DPRK is the way it is at least in part thanks to the Americans obliterating their cities and farm land. But we can ignore history to make a “I used to be in a communist country and it’s bad, trust me bro” statement.
And I agree, I prefer to live in a system where prisoners aren’t primarily minorities or political prisoners. And where the prison system isn’t the most populated in the world, and rife with for-profit forced labour.
I would also be curious to hear which definition of “capitalism” and “Communism” you are using. That is, if you are open to dialogue.
Not to mention NK is economically blockaded and has to endure yearly military provocations by the largest military in the world. No wonder why they take draconian measures.
Because they are reacting to living under the oppressive structures of late capitalism. Having been raised in a capitalist world, they naturally overemphasize economic systems and their alternatives and make assumptions about government.
So when they communism theyusually mean communism + some equitable government or just they mean socialist democracy.
Funnily enough, you live pretty well in China these days if you’re a good little capitalist.
“China is capitalism with beastly grin”
- Ekaterina Shulman
A number of reasons. Just like you claim a Communist party almost destroyed your country, Capitalist parties destroy and are destroying many countries as well. The existence of bad Communist parties does not itself mean Communism is structurally a bad thing, as pursuit of a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society is a noble goal for humanity.
I think it’s fair to say that decentralization is a good check against Authoritarianism, and as such, this should be extended to the workplace, not just government.
As far as why Lemmy leans left, the founder is a Communist, and principles of decentralization and federation tend to appeal far more to leftists, while Capitalist-inclined individuals have Reddit.
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Heads up, this guy is a troll. His sole, self declared purpose is to be an asshole and pick fights. Not worth engaging
This community is on lemmy.ml, which explicitly leans hard left. Maybe a memes community on another instance would be less like this
how old were you when the USSR fell? Did you experience communism, or the capitalist takeover after communism fell?
‘in the past’
How old are you? If your claim to authority here is that you grew up being told history by the winners, what should that mean to us?
What was done in South America for a century was done in a decade in Eastern Europe when the west finally won the cold war. Read Shock Doctrine.
“They took my father’s slaves!”
Shut the fuck up, colonizer.
What Country?
Saying that any existing communist party looks like what we, or theory, want(s), is like saying that North Korea is a Democratic Republic because it’s part of the name. Authoritarians love corrupting the meaning of words so they can keep people ignorant.
NK’s highest legislative body is a multiparty parliament elected directly by the people.
“Oh but the communists dominate”
Yeah, because they do popular things and have a popular political program compared to the other parties.
Is it more democratic when no one party is popular because all of them don’t help the proletariat and power is a hot potato passed to whatever bourgeois party fucked the people the longest time ago?
Right, which would also hold true for capitalism… Thus mooting the original point.
Not really. The US has completely unchecked capitalism if you aren’t wealthier than $100,000,000, as does the rest of the world thanks to a court that the IMF set up. If your country has a resource the capitalists want to exploit, and the people or government don’t allow it, they will sue you in this international court and use the US military to impose fines of billions of dollars per year in “lost revenue.” Much of Africa and South America can tell you all about it.
Capitalism and communism are economic systems not political theory.
ah yes because politics (the management of people at large scale) and economics (the management of things people need to live at large scale) are totally unrelated and have no intrinsic links
You need to tell your story more, and include the feelings, and include how the communist policies did that destruction.
People like communism because they don’t know your story.
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So you think that The Christ was a moron? He is the literal archetype bearded, sandal wearing, tree
huggingcursing (ok that one is weird), hippie. Hell, he told his followers to go live in communes…
What if, and hear me out on this one, the problem isn’t which “-ism” is prevalent. The real problem is that ANY form of power or society needs checks and balances. If those are missing or not enforced, then everything goes to shit. It’s a balancing act, not just a matter of black or white.
But I want to defend my -ism
Sir please put your -ism away, you’re scaring the children.
The whole point of Communism is to balance power away from the 1% and back to the masses. The fact that it is an “-ism” and has decades of propaganda demonozing it, doesnt make that any less true.
The whole point of Communism is to balance power away from the 1% and back to the masses
But there needs to be some governing body that is responsible for determining how the power and wealth is distributed. Per the OP’s point: if the proper guardrails are not in place, control of that governing body will eventually shift towards a person or party who corrupts it for their own purposes. It doesn’t matter what the “point” of a system is, corrupt people will always attempt to take the wheel.
This was legitimately a problem after ww2 where the politically active communists were more heavily involved in the war and a bunch of the human infrastructure of (especially local)democracy got killed by nazis
This is why Xi Jinping lives in a giant gilded castle and any negative thing said anywhere about him is censored, just like every other citizen. Everyone’s equal.
Citation fucking needed, do you even know anyone from China?
balance power away from the 1% and back to the masses
By installing a dictator…every time it’s attempted…
Maybe not do that next time and try doing it from the bottom up instead of top-down🏴. It’s much more work to convince people that this is a solution and have them help willingly instead of forcing them to go along with it. We tried the Marxist-Leninist way dozens of times, let’s try the anarchist way. A capitalist boot or a communist boot on my neck makes no difference to me, it’s still a boot on my neck.
Even the fucking CIA isn’t dishonest enough to say such things
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
That is a problem of how revolution works, not a problem of communism.
Create a power vaccuum, and those who had the most power will STILL have the most influence. Even if you literally killed all the old power, you would be immediately creating an authority structure with the legal authority of capital punishment, which many, MANY communists wouldn’t agree with.
The problem is horrible people exist, NOT the concept of communism. For every reason people shit on Communism, there are twenty valid reasons to shit on capitalism. Neither system works in the real world on its own. To pretend like capitalism is magical in comparison is literally failing to observe reality.
The rich and powerful constantly shit on political action because it IS effective. They do not enjoy going through the effort of retaining power through internal conflicts and ESPECIALLY not actual revolutions. Why would they EVER tell you the truth?
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Why did Napoleon take power after the French Revolution if Capitalism doesn’t have dictators every time a revolution occurs?
Because short man special!
/s (do I even need this? This one HAS to be so absurd as to make the “/s” superfluous)
HE WAS AVERAGE HEIGHT FOR THE TIME PERIOD!!! (I miss overlysimplified so much)
Maybe not do that next time and try doing it from the bottom up instead of top-down🏴.
Those have been tried, but they often tend to get liberated by the CIA. Or in some cases, the KGB / Red Army.
I’m certainly not advocating for toppling other countries’ governments, but honestly the fact that so many countries end up not being able to withstand the attacks from outside is kind of a mark against them.
Well, that’s the problem with bottom-up government, isn’t it? It is better in most ways, but the local empire will invade you at the first chance they get.
If I remember correctly, the fall of the Paris commune to a Franco-German alliance was what led the early Marxists to embrace a centralised system. Of course, that brings its own problems, as power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Rojava wants a few words.
Rojava is doing exactly as I suggested. Spreading the power out. It’s a rare bird among the many communist attempts. I was actually going to offer it up as an example.
Just look at “balance power away from 1%” in China, Ruzzia or North Corea. Do you really like it? Or you just read books and not looking at real life examples?
You should read capital volume one, it will explain how the problem actually is capitalism
Why is there so much communist propaganda on Lemmy? Could it be that reddit is actually good at filtering out state-sponsored content farms?
Decentralization appeals to leftists, as that’s the principle of the ideology, away from bourgeois interests.
I haven’t seen evidence of state-sponsored propaganda, though there are people that simp far too hard for China and the CPC on Lemmy though.
This is not communist solution, this is half-socialism humant colony solution.
Real communist solutions look like this:
I live in north-east Germany in one of these Blocks (it was firmly renovated tho). It’s actually not bad. Most of them are build in Horseshoe shape so you have small parks inside. But it’s nearly impossible to hang anything to the wall without proper power tools. EDIT: typos
Capitalism has a solution to the tent problem though
UK - The home secretary is proposing new laws to restrict the use of tents by homeless people, arguing that many of them see it as a “lifestyle choice”.
It sure is a lifestyle choice. The choice is the tent or a cardboard box, fucking insensitive assholes.
San Diego already banned camping in the city. The county board of supervisors either has proposed that they do the same or already has.
San Diego county is bigger than two states. They are trying to outlaw homelessness in an area about 65 miles north to south, and roughly the 86 miles east of The Pacific Ocean.
These are almost all Democrats, btw. We didn’t vote for Republicans.
Not in the UK. Our government is looking to ban the tents next. That’ll fix the homeless issue 😕
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Communism’s solution to homelessness is mass starvation.
What a fun imagination you have here!
Thanks, i pride myself on making innovative memes that point out the glaring hypocrisies of Capitalism in new and inventive meme formats. Thankfully the glaring hypocrisies of Capitalism have been around for decades giving me plenty of material for OC. /s
Have you tried non fiction?
Lmao what is fictional about this?! Are you saying the homeless camps are fictional? Or are you saying the soviet priotitizing prefabricated apartments to increase housing supply is fictional?
