inb4 libs come to smugly tell us we are murderous fascists.
last week, i was queer tankie for interjecting on anti-chinese pink washing propaganda
fortunately, i’ve learned what to expect from the diet-reddit instance of the lemmyverse and it so bizarre that pink washing works for china, but not isreal when it comes to palestine.
Erm akshutally how is it possible to care for human life without maximizing shareholder profit, in this 10,000,000 page peer reviewed study (sponsored by megacorp™) I will prove that you are wrong and I am good
erhm i’ll let you know that the soviet onion killed six hundred million bajillion stalinnion people so ☝️🤓
Real.
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The problem is not the communist utopia, is how the means to build it will always end up in a totlitarian police state. Because we can’t have nice things.
This is just a red scare caricature of socialist societies from the perspective of capitalists. For the working classes, socialism has brought dramatic increases in freedom and democratization.
So I will admit that I am ignorant of a method of attaining Communism that isn’t at the end of a rifle, and thus authoritarian by nature (and fully accept that, to a degree, Capitalism is also at the end of a gun, but typically less overt, or often directed without instead of within). The only nations I’ve seen flying the red flag have appeared highly authoritarian (and I’m not going to get drawn into a “USSR and PRC aren’t/weren’t authoritarian, and DPRK is actually a utopia!” discussion, so if that’s the direction this is going, let me know and I’ll politely see my way out).
I’ve seen in the lower comments that Socialism would be used as a gateway to Communism, but I am unclear about the transition from “everybody’s basic needs are met via taxation and distribution” to “personal property is abolished” (as I understand Communism to mean, please correct me if I’m wrong). Plenty of European countries have had (for the west), strong seemingly socialist systems, but they don’t seem to be deliberately angling toward Communism, for example.
So I’m curious what this peaceful Capitalist to Communist timeline would look like.
The transition from capitalism to socialism will nearly always be through revolution. It simply isn’t feasible to ask the ruling class to give up the very system that entitles them to their plunder, elections are carefully controlled so as to not allow genuine socialist or communist victory. Even when communists like Allende won in countries like Chile, they are couped, just like the US is attempting against Maduro. Revolution is authoritarian, it’s the forceful will of the majority against the minority. As Engels put it:
Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is. It is the act by which one part of the population imposes its will on the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannons — by the most authoritarian means possible; and the victors, if they do not want to have fought in vain, must maintain this rule by means of the terror which their arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if the communards had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach them for not having used it enough?
Historically, revolution has unfolded the same way, as the majority enforcing its will upon the minority. The French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban, Korean, etc have all been such examples. They have been enormously liberating for the working classes, and terribly authoritarian towards capitalists, landlords, fascists, colonizers, etc. I’m not going to erase that that violence happened, but I’m not going to minimize that these were and are popular movements supported by the broad majority either. None of these countries are utopias, but all are real, with real working class victories.
Socialism is a mode of production, characterized by public ownership being the principle aspect of the economy. The western European countries don’t have socialism, they have social safety nets within the boundaries of capitalism. They fund these safety nets with the spoils of imperialism, ie international plunder of the global south, not through their own labor. The USSR, PRC, Vietnam, etc are socialist, not western Europe, and moreover do not depend on imperialism for their safety nets. Western Europe is not moving onto communism because it isn’t even socialist yet, and is under the dictatorship of capitalists.
Communism is a mode of production where all of production and distribution has been collectivized and run according to a common plan. It’s stateless, classless, and moneyless. It is post-socialist in that socialism is where production and distribution are gradually collectivized, erasing the basis for class, and the basis of the state as a consequence. Personal property remains, ie you can keep your toothbrush, but production and distribution are collectivized.
If you want a good introduction to Marxist theory, I wrote an intro Marxist-Leninist reading list. Feel free to check it out!
I appreciate the write-up, thank you! I feel like a lot of this is semantic differences. I’ve always thought of socialism as any public funds used specifically to help citizens (e.g. social security, medicare, unemployment, UBI, etc) and Communism to be the public owning and running the means of production, and distributing goods thereof, and the stateless, classless, moneyless society to be the ideal utopia it aspired to (similar to Star Trek). From your comment, I see that what I call Communism, you call Socialism (which explains a lot of confusion from discussions in the past with self-described Communists I’ve known), and the nameless Star Trek post-scarcity system you would call Communism.
Do you think it is possible to slow-roll the transition peacefully, though? If, for example, instead of the government bailing out industries, they bought out industries on the cheap, slowly growing and monopolizing like Google or Amazon have? Or do you think the rich would simply block that from happening?
5·6 hours agoThe problem here is your understanding of socialism. European countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (etc.) have not had socialism. They have had social democracy, capitalism with social safety nets.
Socialism, probably yeah. But here it’s communism thats displayed
All countries headed by communist parties have all been, at most, socialist. Communism is a post-socialist society devoid of classes and a state, where production and distribution is fully collectivized and oriented towards satisfying needs. All communists understand that socialism is the process necessary to build socialism, and that therefore communism has yet to be achieved while socialism has been.
Not true communism™
They were and are truly attempts at building communism. They were “true communism” in that sense. At the same time, they have yet to reach the stateless, classless, moneyless society stage where production and distribution is fully collectivized and oriented towards satisfying needs that communists call “communism” as a mode of production.
The “not true communism” argument more refers to those that incorrectly deny the USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, etc as validly socialist states working towards communism, not those that acknowledge them as genuine.
You literally said:
Socialism, probably yeah. But here it’s communism thats displayed
That person explained why that’s a flawed way of understanding previous socialist experiments and that the distinction you’re making doesn’t make much sense, and instead of listening and admitting you don’t know much about the topic you decided to accuse that person of a logical fallacy that doesn’t even apply.
(Looks like the comment I replied to got deleted, so mind the context was in response to “Not true communism TM”)
This is an ignorant way to respond, although I can appreciate these terms have several meanings that can be difficult to follow.
Communist parties of the 20th century knew and openly stated that what they had built was a socialist system and communism was the endgame. The goal of 20th century socialists was to gradually progress to that point that scarcity is abolished and distribution follows the principle of need. At which point they might declare communism achieved, so long as other things have happened like completing the (gradual) dissolution of the state.
It is not an attempt to distance from a bad word - we/Marxists/Communists don’t see it as a bad word.
And the 20th century movements & their states were “real communism” in that they were a genuine expression of the movement for communism, and furnish us with both positive and negative examples.
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Not even two comments in and it’s already full on white supremacist “barbaric hordes” talking points
The USSR and PRC are some of the most successful socialist states in history, and have done far better than western countries in creating equitable, worker-focused societies. Not having a western “enlightenment” didn’t stop them.
Least chauvinistic liberal
Thats moving the goal post. You’re saying communism yields benefits everyone, I tell you it hasn’t , and you’re saying those places don’t count.
Pretty much yeah
