Communism was so good in Romania that half my family died
I’m a social democrat
Some of this comment section is appalling to me. Some of you have no idea what you’re wishing upon yourselves and how unhinged communism can get. The only way to stay safe is to separate power as much as possible. You can’t have your government owning everything and you can’t have the private sector owning everything. Either one can turn shitheel. Them not turning shitheel is a fantasy.
Nothing is black or white. Reality is nuanced. Life isn’t fascism vs communism or capitalism vs communism. Politics isn’t sports. The fact of the matter is politics “never ends”. Adjustments have to be made constantly. There is no single permanent solution. Sure, everyone would like to have that peace of mind, but it’s just not the way things work.
I will not respond to any comments on this, since there’s always at least one "something something your family deserved to die
Go ahead and downvote. You’ll never win an election anyway. I don’t even care.
Was it a state? If yes, it was not communist
I am sorry for your family. Marxism-leninism has polluted communism
You can’t have your government owning everything and you can’t have the private sector owning everything.
There is a third way: cooperatives. Houses are owned by the people who live in them. Factories are owned by the people who work in them. Municipal infrastructure (water, electricity, internet, etc) is owned by the citizens who use them.
This removes the current need to maximize profit and ignore all other metrics. Nobody is going to vote for maximizing profits if that means the service they are using every day is getting worse.
There is no centralized government who controls everything. You still have market forces. But the people in control are not regulators or investors on the other side of the world, they are very close to the product and therefore have much better insight and more vested interests in the product succeeding aside from profit maximization.
Marxism-Leninism*
Might wanna spruce up on anarchist and council communism, those are anti-authoritarian
communism ≠ socialism
The problem is that people think of the URSS as a comunist country when it clearly wasn’t, they literally made an aristocratic class but whatever
don’t let .ml hear you say that or the screeching sound they make will be ear splitting
Already happened when i was on my old instance xD
The US just turned neo-nazi for a full two years. We’re totally putting on the reich right now. We even have fucking concentration camps.
And we started a stupid war putting the entire global economy into an energy crisis. And we’re in an affordability crisis with skyrocketing inflation. Americans can’t afford food and fuel and are skipping medications.
And the US is betraying its NATO allies and sucking off Putin. America is a Russian asset right now.
So let’s back up a bit. We’ve been making late-stage capitalism noises since the beginning of the century, after the dot-com bubble. Then came the subprime mortgage crisis. We passed some laws to prevent financialization shenanigans, then we repealed those laws. With quality of life in the shitter, young whites put Trump into office. Then COVID-19, and then since things still weren’t better, racism was back on the menu, again.
But now, billionaires – who got rich through financialization (that is fancy fraud-flavored rent-seeking) – are trying to dismantle democracy and create an authoritarian state while fast-tracking the automation of the entire workforce. And they’re not yet finished plundering the US treasury and its credit line, yet they’re already starting after the rest of the developed world, long softened by (you guessed it) neoliberal capitalism.
Capitalism has fucking failed. We can try to reconstruct a market economy, but so long as we allow for a plutocratic class, it’s going to fail, and eventually the aristocrats will succeed to contain the rest of the workforce, and work us to death like slaves at a sugar plantation.
So maybe we don’t want to do what the Soviet Union did, exactly, but we don’t really want to do what the US and colonial Europe did either.
(And to be fair, every time someone tried to create a democratic Leninist state, colonial forces, usually the US, were right there to topple their government and erect a puppet dictatorship that allowed business interests to plunder natural resources. Heck, Wilson called the international community, a lot of it still colonial monarchies, to sanction USSR as soon as the Red Army won. Capitalism is a plague of parasites.)
Maybe pull together some Keynesian economists and build a social strategy? I don’t know. I’m not an expert, but I listen to Paul Krugman, Richard J Murphy and Robert Reich. They have ideas.
But to quote the hairdresser recently on Last Week Tonight (on YouTube, ~23:43), At this point what do we have to worry about? Anything but what we have. We’re on our way to Hell.
Well stated.
Anarchist add that the state works in concert with capital to protect property rights which are state enforced theft. Socialism can only be acheived by dismantling domination heirarchies i.e. capital and the state. Anything less will result in “aristocrats will succeed to contain the rest of the workforce, and work us to death like slaves at a sugar plantation”.
Sad Finnish noises
Could be Polish.
Could be finish.
No I can keep going if you can
Finnish*
Yup I’m sorry, you’re right.
Also, aside from what other commenters pointed out: communism ≠ marxism-leninism
anarchist & council communism also exist!
Yayyy 2 of my favorite communisms mentioned (anarcho and council)
Ancoms unite! Non-hierarchically!
Syndicalists
uniteunionize!There’s dozens of us!
It can be forgiven when people overlook anarchist-communism - the anarchist-communism community is so busy setting up competing wikis that explain the difference between them and libertarians, them and anarchist-socialism and them and other anarchist-communists that they have no time to do any actual outreach.
Speaking of which, anyone want to help moderate my lastest wiki? This time it’s federated, which I think is really a reflection of the greater beliefs which we should all […]
Isn’t there AnarWiki? That one’s pretty good.
Holy shit there's another one.
I will never get tired of seeing calls for moderators on anarchist wikis…
This is so true, anarchy is when you don’t have content moderation on your website
The more spam and low quality content you allow on your website the anarchier it is
Lmfao I didn’t even think of that aspect. I was just riffing on the stereotype of the anarchist community - online anarchist spaces have more ideological schisms than the fuckin’ Baptists and they’re constantly trying to find enough people that they can effectively maintain a space. It’s exhausting to the point of hilarity to slog through.
Eh, I think you’re overestimating. Most left wing anarchists generally get along from my experience, both offline and online.
Plus the screenshot that was shared here had like one actual anarchist wiki, the rest were memes (polcompball) and an actual Minecraft mod.
Ok, i really have to insist that Anarchy Online does not count towards the amount of wikis about Anarchy. (was nice to play back in the day tho)
I will confess I had never heard of it. Sigh. It’s a sad yet accurate reflection of the times that a video game from 2001 is in the top 10 results for “anarchy wiki”
Polcomp communities often lean alt-right, wouldn’t count those.
Antarchy, never heard of that one.
Antarchy is a Minecraft mod lmao.
And impossibilism etc.
I suppose lots of people had grandfathers in the Wermacht.
Or finns, or poles, etc etc etc.
I agree, communism is a nice idea, but it doesn’t work because it didn’t factor in the greediness of people, so the system isn’t protected against people abusing it. That’s why most communist states were/are dictatorships with corruption and oligarchy. It only works if everyone wants it and no one abuses it. So it doesn’t work on a large scale.
Imo the best we can get is capitalism but capped (so no billionaires, no monopoly companies etc.), combined with a shit ton of socialism. Everyone will benifit if we pull up the lowest part of society. A group is as fast as the slowest member. Let’s just make sure everyone runs a bit faster, instead of just a few at the cost of the rest.
The best I want is anarchy. Fuck borders, states and world leaders, fuck hate and greed.
But most of all: Fuck fascism, that is the worst.
a communist state doesnt exist. Marxism-leninism ≠ communism
The workers didn’t really own the means of production so far but they often had strongly improved lives during socialism. Look at the healthcare system of cuba or the rapid improvement of living conditions in the ussr after lenin took over.
A lot of the concepts capitalism is based on are deeply flawed which is why a weakened version of it will still lead to some of the same problems.
Look at the healthcare system of cuba
Yeah but at the same time LGBTQ were prosecuted, so it’s healthcare is not for everyone.
or the rapid improvement of living conditions in the ussr after lenin took over.
Yet the system wasn’t protected against someone like Stalin. And also under Lenin things were grim for many.
Again, the idea of communism is great, it just doesn’t work in the form we’ve seen. So far the best form is (and I hate to say this) China I think, with a partially open market and the average lives improved significantly. But also China has a one party system with one leader with too much power who can stay in office as long as he wants, also known as a dictator. Next to that they have workers with 7 day work weeks and no holidays, concentration camps and an insane amount of corruption.
Coming back to Cuba, they are also not doing great.
Maybe Cambodia is an example of a functioning communist state, although the wealth gap there is also insane and they had a dictator not too long ago (Pol Pot) with a pretty severe genocide. And with the recent whistle blowers on Chinese scam centers in Cambodia and Myanmar (which got it’s slave workers through Cambodia), also a vast network of corruption came to light reaching as far up as ministers. And also Cambodia isn’t a proper communist state, even though they do identify as communist.
I wish there was a new version of communism in which there are protective measures against tyrant leaders and corruption.
After the fall of the USSR most states who became Independant kept the system of the USSR. They continued with corruption and a non-functioning system (as the vast network of the USSR wasn’t there anymore). Estonia did not. They completely rewrote their entire system, switched to digital and became the world leader in cyber security and low running costs while having a properly functioning system. Maybe we could make a state built on that, but then out of communism?
But I prefer no states at all and anarchism.
The marxist form of communism abolishes states as well, but the workers have to take over the means of production first before they actually have power over the owning class.
Cuba had a very hard time due to the US sanctions and the CIA. But they showed that it was possible to be communist without losing quality of life.
East Germany for example had great LGBTQ rights much earlier than most surrounding countries. Probably because they had a much easier situation than cuba.
China is just capitalistic in their doing. You can see that from the way housing is managed there and how they sacrifice quality of life for the good of the owning class.
No states is also the final goal of marxism, it just describes a way to get there. We have seen that striking is very effective if done properly, so it makes sense to connect the power of the ruling class to their ability to control the workers.
What we need to learn from existing socialist/communist nations is how they achieved the revolution and what went well. We should also learn what causes undesirable outcomes and how we can prevent them from happening.
There really isn’t a need for a new form of communism if marxism already exists and matches a lot of the things you are asking for.
I hate to be that guy, but without workers owning the means of production there is no socialism period. There may be socialist policies, but that is something completely different.
Capitalism is only somewhat efficient at distributing wages during the small market phase. The problem is of course no one has been able to reel in selfishness or corruption under any current system whether it is communism or capitalism (socialism on a large scale has never existed). And just to be clear, governments identifying as socialist do not fucking count without workers owning the means of production.
Dismissing past socialist projects is not very helpful to actually achieving socialism/commumism. Even though they weren’t always ideologically clean they still had a lot of aspects of a socialist economy.
Socialism can also be laid out it different strategies making the definition not always be completely accurate. Cuba and the USSR were big steps in the development of socialism and its theory.
When has any country obtained the simple ideals of socialism.
Socialism and its wanna-be special ed cousin communism are DOA at this point to me and I would wager most other people as well. I fully believe they can be reborne into a new system and philosophy for our more modern era learning from the mistakes of the past and I look forward to this.
I agree, communism is a nice idea, but it doesn’t work because it didn’t factor in the greediness of people, so the system isn’t protected against people abusing it.
Greediness of people isn’t something inate to the human condition but one created and fostered by capitalism and systems of private property. Most of human history before agriculture was lived under a system of primitive communism where resources were shared by the tribe with little to no hierarchy.
Individualistic selfishness was a behavior created by the sectioning of private property for agriculture and the accumulation of surplus. It is a learned behavior, which means it can be unlearned. Unlearning it will require a drastic change in culture and ideals, but it is not impossible.
There are times in history where the people have freed themselves from domination like Barcelona in the Spanish civil war or the paris commune, only to have it snuffed out by authoritarians. The system can work, there’s just a group of people with a lot of resources who will do anything to stop it from doing so.
Most of human history before agriculture was lived under a system of primitive communism where resources were shared by the tribe with little to no hierarchy.
Yeah, but those were small and primitive settlements. We don’t live in those times anymore, we don’t have small settlements but large states with millions of people. We’re not the dame as humans back then, so it’s comparing apples and pears.
Communism so far only really worked in small communities where people lived by choice.
I think that, the larger/less tightly-coupled the societal unit, the easier it is for people to take advantage of others. Utopian ideologies only work if almost everyone sees the benefits and no one can subvert them, and even then only if there is cultural continuity over time.
Private property exists under communism and socialism. I think you mean workers owning the means of production which is something different.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
/- Karl Marx
Marxists distinguish private property and personal property. Personal property is stuff you own to use, eg. Your home, your car, your phone etc. Private property is stuff you own to make money from the labor of others, eg. Rental homes, factories, stocks, bonds etc.
Seizing the means of production doesn’t fully capture the goals of communism as it would leave other forms of exploitative property, ie. Rental properties, in the hands of the rich.
Private property is personal property except in definitions from Marxists. I am not one, but I recognize the concept of the workers controlling the means of production.
Simply put, using this terminology conflates two different concepts in 90%+ of people heads and is counterproductive.
i’ll never understand this take. Socialism doesn’t work because of corruption and greediness so the best thing we can do is capitalism, which literally is based on corruption and greediness.
What about laws against corruption and greediness on top of a democratic system designed around production for human needs instead of the profit motive?
I mean on the one hand you have a system that breaks and ruins lives for most people if people work against it and corrupt it and on the other hand you have a system that benefits only a few and fucks over everyone else when it works as intended.
Saying socialism doesn’t work because of a few failed attempts is like the coyote dismissing every single of his ideas immediately after the first try and directly going to the next one except in this case the “solution” is to keep the system that has been shown for hundreds of years to work so badly that it is literally driving humanity towards extinction.
I meam you are not wrong in principle. What you mean with “capitalism with a shit ton of socialism” IS socialism. there is no capitalism with socialism because those two contradict each other. It is all about who controls the means of production. It is either a few rich assholes control production or the production is democratically controlled by society as a whole. The latter is socialism.
If you want markets and commodities etc on top of that, thats cool, can still be pure socialism though.
edit: outed myself as german “usw” == “and so on” 🤦
and of course 100% agree regarding fuck borders fuck states fuck fascism … that is communism btw 😁
i’ll never understand this take. Socialism doesn’t work because of corruption and greediness so the best thing we can do is capitalism, which literally is based on corruption and greediness.
Ah, but I didn’t say that. I said communism didn’t work. I do think socialism works. Communism is just one form of socialism.
Indeed capitalism is a form of greed, that’s also bad (way worse) and I’m against it. I’m all for socialism, just not communism the way we know it. Maybe communism 2.0 which would have to be made with protection against corruption and bad leaders. So far both capitalism and communism have (had) corruption and bad leaders.
I myself am an anarchist.
Ah i see then we were talking about different things. When i think of communism, i think of Karl Marx’s definition. A stateless, moneyless, classless society. According to him, socialism is the transition phase between capitalism and socialism and if socialism is implemented correctly, the concepts of class, state and money just vanish over time. As far as i understand it, anarchists and communists completely agree about the end goal there.
That’s why i purposely talked about socialism, not communism. Those former projects were socialist projects as well (or at least tried to be that, however you wanna see that).
I think this newer definition of communism vs. socialism largely stems from red scare anti communist propaganda and politicians with progressive agendas that try to distance themselves from those failed socialist experiments due to said propaganda. After all proudly proclaiming yourself to be a communist completely disqualifies you from any kind of political career. I would assume the label “anarchist” would have a similar affect 😅 . Even saying you are a “socialist” is still difficult. That’s why the term “democratic socialist” emerged. I think that term is completely redundant. Socialism cannot be socialism if it is not democratic.
About communism 2.0 and protections against bad leaders. Supposedly that is what china is doing with their concept of promotions in the party purely based on how well they do on different objective metrics. If that is actually what is happening there, i don’t know. At least in theory that seems better than being able to get into a position you are wildly unqualified for purely based on populism.
Strong enforcement of Anti-trust laws. Higher tax for the rich. Start-up friendly environment.
Country without borders - Only someone who can’t be invaded would say that buddy.
Country without borders - Only sometime who can’t be invaded would say that buddy.
No no, I’m against countries in general. No countries means no borders anywhere. I think smaller communities with their own rules and laws are better than a giant landmass with rules and laws for everyone, based on what’s best for the people living in the big city while the country is so much larger. If there are no countries, there are no wars between countries. No nations means no nationalism.
Only sometime who can’t be invaded would say that buddy.
Everyone can be invaded these days. There’s a war 2000km from here. It’s in our backyard and soon we might be part of it.
Strong enforcement of Anti-trust laws. Higher tax for the rich. Start-up friendly environment.
And leaders, politicians and other figures with positions of power should be held responsible and reprehensible for lying and causing harm with their words, actions and policies.
People for positions of power should not want that position at all, and people who do want these positions should never hold any form of power.
Positions of power should have extensive medical, psychological and intellectual tests. Never one person should have total control, no single leaders.
They might just be Finnish. Which wouldn’t make it any better since they did learn strategy etc. from Nazis.
The geopolitical realities of the time were… well, let’s put it this way: everyone in Europe that was interested in maintaining stability and discouraging war fully shit the bed.
There was no credible alliance or mutual defense pact that the Finns were able to rely on to defend against the Soviets trying to, you know, fully annex them - the UK made supportive noises, but ultimately couldn’t get their shit together to make any difference whatsoever in the Winter War. Thus, when Germany, basically the preeminent land force in Europe at the time, ultimately offered an alliance to them to deter the Soviets, it was the only offer in the table; faced with such existential threats and only one choice that wasn’t effectively an eventual full capitulation to the USSR… they chose the pragmatic option. Honestly, I see the alliance of Finland and Nazi Germany around WW2 as a very direct result of the abject failure of the League of Nations, and more pointedly, the severe lack of credibility of French and British foreign policy, political will, and military strength at the time.
That’s not to say it was a good choice; it was simply the least bad choice Finns had in front of them.
It was harm-reduction on large scale, yes. Even before the Winter War we have a long, negative history with Russia being the aggressor. So knowing it is either them genociding you, or allying with Nazis, you do what you can… Does not make it Good in any way.
Lest we not forget that the Scandanavians were also being mugged by Germany for their iron. If the Soviets had broke through the Germans would have invaded in full force to keep the iron flowing to the war effort.
Indeed. Many people don’t realize how harrowing of a balance of power the Scandinavian countries had to deal with, between the Soviets and the Nazis - again, due to the complete uselessness of the League of Nations, and how much the other European powers at the time fumbled their responses to the Anschluss and broader German expansionism and expeditionary campaigns (read: the Spanish Civil War, in which the Germans basically proved out and refined the initial concepts of Blitzkrieg / combined arms warfare) at the time. Not to mention, the German occupation of Norway during the war. It’s not a theater that has ever been strongly represented in WW2-oriented media (in the States, at least).
Edit:
On a completely unrelated note, Sisu is a banger of a film
a false equivalence almost on the level of nazi apologia
Didn’t say they were a raving bunch of antisemitic genocidal maniacs. They weren’t by a good enough measure. You shouldn’t discount the lesser told story for it is uncomfortable though. The defense of Finland against Soviets can still be a victory, but wear the stains with awareness and context and be ashamed of what shame the is if any.
I think they were saying you aren’t being hard enough of the finnish, not the other way around
I’m getting mixed signals here. First you say Finns were not any better than the Nazis, then you say that they “weren’t a raving bunch of antisemitic genocidal maniacs” (as opposed to the Nazis, presumably).
The finns weren’t without sin. I meant it wouldn’t change that they may be guilty of war crimes. Note that there also were Wehrmacht soldiers without particularly large individual guilt.
Cutting awfully close to the clean Wehrmacht myth there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht
I said these might have been some. E.g. doctors treating syphilis etc. that doesn’t mean most of all were innocent. But not everyone bears the same guilt.
I mean the US also put people in concentration camps but nobody’s making an equivalence between the US and Nazi Germany…
People do that all the time lmao. The Nazi concentration camps were even inspired by the US prison system, and then after the war we took in a bunch of Nazi scientists.
Yeah but people are not saying fighting for the US in WWII was the same as fighting for Nazi Germany because both had concentration camps.
The point though is that at one point Finland was allied with the Nazis against the Soviet Union, that’s the difference. That’s not to entirely absolve the Soviet Union invading Finland, but either way Finland was an ally of the Nazis for at least a point.
Also, see Geopolitical status in Northern Europe in November 1939 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War#/media/File:Northern_europe_november_1939.png
That’s not to entirely absolve the Soviet Union invading Finland, but either way Finland was an ally of the Nazis for at least a point
Yeah, and any implication that it would is crazy.
The situation in American KZ was heinous and a key factor in why many Japanese Americans fought in the war: to get out of there. This was highlit in the museum in the aircraft carrier Hornet, I can recommend a visit if you ever are in SF.
The scientifically accurate language really gives you faith in america being on a good path. You could really tell that there are compassionate and honest and good people who want to live in a good world.
If by strategy you mean lots of amphetamines
More importantly they started the Continuation War in a full alliance with the Nazis after the Holocaust was ongoing and Germany had asked them to turn over Jewish people for extermination.
Which they did not do at scale. Doesn’t mean they didn’t learn from them.
Oh, they only handed a few Jews over before joining the war to kill or enslave every Slav on the planet, very understandable.
Oh, just took some Karelian land, and refused to attack further, and it was to “kill or enslave every Slav on the planet”? Perhaps you should read some history, from multiple sources. It was essentially “they are occupied elsewhere, quick, lets grab back what we can, before they try another invasion”. Allying with Nazis was horrible, yes, but not knowing anything of the history between Finland and Russia (or just believing the Russian propaganda) really shows.
Hey look, it’s a genocide apologist so much of a modern bigot he can’t even say “yeah that was pretty fucking bad but we don’t do that anymore”
Most likely because he’d do it again.
So, you think fighting against an invader is genociding? Do you support Russia invading Ukraine perchance? Of course it was fucking bad, I did not claim allying with damn nazis is a good thing, nor fighting a war. History is not black and white. Throwing around classic Russian propaganda accusations of genocide, tells me of an acute lack of historical knowledge, of geopolitics of the area. Either that, or another propagandist.
My grandfather also fought the soviets, in two distinct wars.
Sure but the only people fighting them in WWII were the Nazis edit fair
The Poles fought the Soviets when the SU jointly invaded Poland with Nazi Germany at the onset of the War, and as others have mentioned, the Winter War in Finland can also be somewhat considered part of WW2
Ah, but Finns weren’t literal nazis themselves, just an allied partner. We even had to fight an extra war against the nazis in Finland after the soviets were fed up with their second attack into finnish soil. And the fuckers burnt all of Lapland on their way back to Norway.
Yeah, we backstabbed them lmao. It was a pretty shameful ordeal, in a different way. Looking back, it is a better look now, though.
Full throttle here. I’ve been accused of being a Russian agent by Zionists thrice already. If you’re going to belittle me this much, at the least be accurate and call me a Palestine Regiment.
من المياه للمياهI looked over your account since you mentioned it. I agree with most of what you say. The only weird thing is absolutely zero hate for Republicans. This is very suspicious. Perhaps you can clarify?
DNI: Authoritarians
I dunno chief, you think Republicans are antiauthoritarians?
Seriously, why do you only focus on Democrats. This is very typical of Russian propaganda, which is my immediate guess. I would like to hear it from you though, in case I am wrong.
only
Then you haven’t followed my account for very long. Both Russia, China, & Seppo Republicans are authoritarians. The seppo brand has a name I call them all the time, that they hate. Maybe lurk longer. blåhaj already knows the term I call them with. Libs hate it too, because they know compliance & collaboration with Nazis makes them Nazis.
Oh okay it is a lib hate thing. I get that.
Of course I hate descenders of fascism.
Amekkkants are just easier to piss off than class traitors.
communism failed because it turns out that people weren’t as productive when there isn’t a clear personal advantage for themselves that they work for. the western system was more productive largely because it had the “wage” mechanism to motivate people to work.
You know that people in the Sovier Union also faced consequences if they didn’t work, and did in fact get paid wages, right?
What makes people put in effort is a complicated mix of material, social and psychological incentives, and I don’t think sweeping generalizations like that are very helpful to understand anything.
Yeah that’s why the soviets were able to turned an agrarian backwater into one of the largest industrial economies in the world after like 40 years despite being decimated by multiple invasions. They just weren’t productive smh
There were plenty of issues with the Soviet Republic, just like with any other government at that scale. Production capacity itself wasn’t’t really one of those issues.
That sounds like conjecture rather than evidenced fact. Now I’m not gonna claim that communism is undoubtedly better (idk), but history has shown the USSR and China go from poor 3rd world countries with poor quality of life to 1st world superpowers with world-class production and vastly improve quality of life. At the same time, we can find examples of capitalist countries that have poor productivity, innovation, and living quality. So clearly it can be comparable.
This really just seems like the classic thought-terminating cliche of saying people are inherently best motivated by money, which is just demonstrably false. People do tons of unpaid work, even under capitalism, like helping their community or partaking in hobbies.
While I agree with the point you are making I just want to point out that neither the USSR nor China ever were first world countries. That term merely defines a countries’ relationship with and position to Nato and the Warsaw pact members and has nothing to do with economic output or the development index. 1st world means being Nato aligned, 2nd world means Warsaw pact/USSR aligned and 3rd world were the unaligned countries. Sweden was technically a third world country in the cold war.
That was true back when.
Nowadays the terms are used in regards to economic output and the development index.
