It’s reasonable for someone who doesn’t specifically learn about Communism to think that. The only examples of countries that claim they were Communist were USSR, North Korea, and China. In all three cases it was actually just authoritarian dictatorships where the elites got richer and fatter while the “little people” starved.
Yes, turns out that dictators are dictators regardless of whether they use communism as an excuse or made their money through capitalism first.
There were more examples than that. Unfortunately, in all, while the unterlying economic model was centralized in a manner like communism, human nature still prevailed to install an authoritarian government on the political side.
The problem is authoritarianism, whatever path you take there. Maybe there’s a government type that minimizes the odds of a rise of an authoritarian leader, but I don’t know what it would be. If somebody knows, please tell me.
The problem is Bolshevism. With workers controlling the means of production and strong gun rights, communism could have worked. Instead, party members became the new bourgeois.
Communism sounds great but it assumes that the people who rise to the top and run the government are going to share the wealth. Humans aren’t like that, we are too selfish. The ones who reach the top will always take more and give less to the ones at the bottom
I get what you’re going for but communism isn’t synonymous with Marxism-Leninism even if it eventually became the dominant ideology under the communist umbrella. I mean the term even predate Marx’s birth
Some of the tendencies you see i attribute to vanguardism and somewhat to democratic centralism. Lenin proosed the need for a disciplined revolutionary party (the vanguard) which differs from marx’s ideas that the working class will organize itself organically and eventually seize power which would be the dictatorship of the proletariat. How democratic the dictatorship of the proletariat would be differs from who you ask but essentally it refers to the rule of the working class as opposed to the bourgeoisie which does not necessarily translate to a dictatorship but rather who holds the dominant political power.
Marx did have a lot of beef with anarchists during the first international and how often he engaged with them in good faith is uncertain so take the following with a bit of salt. But i find it interesting that in his engagement with anarchists or specifically with a text Sergey Nechayev wrote he mockingly responded claiming it to be a display of crude and authoritarian form of communism (barracks communism) and critized it for what he claimed to proposing a very unaccountable system beholden to a overarching comitee. While he used this as an excuse for the expulsion of the anarchists in the first internationale, I find it very interesting how the man who the soviet union claims to take from even critized an anarchist for being authoritarian. In general i personally find very much interest in socialist ideologies that do not take from more authoritarian tendencies. To name a few, orthodox marxism, council communism, anarcho-communism or libertarianism (not the lassiez faire kind the older kind) I believe to find very much contrast in compared to to more authoriarian ideologies. BTW thanks for reading all that. I know that was kinda disproportinally long but its very interesting and does get complicated fast.
Communism sounds great but it assumes that the people who rise to the top and run the government are going to share the wealth. Humans aren’t like that, we are too selfish. The ones who reach the top will always take more and give less to the ones at the bottom
Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that’s true…
The response should not be to lean into that and make taking more and giving less the foundation of your society. Nearly every improvement in the organization of civilized societies for the past 3000 years has been based around increasing rigidity of redistribution of wealth and decentralization of power, not its concentration.
An imperfect solution is better than a decision which honestly claims to be no solution at all.
“Socialism won’t solve our problems” is a legitimate argument, perhaps, against utopian types. But those of us looking to make life less shitty by 10%-20% by implementing a socialist system are less impressed by the appeal to imperfection.
Ok but now you’re mixing up socialism and communism, I’ve lived under communism and it was not pleasant. So I’ll never ever like it in practice. And your response
Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that’s true…
Like come on really? You’re debating me on the FACT that humans are selfish at their core and will always help their own first? I had no idea this was even up for debate
Ok but now you’re mixing up socialism and communism, I’ve lived under communism and it was not pleasant. So I’ll never ever like it in practice.
No?
Communism, as the shorthand for the ideology, refers to any worldview with an end-goal of a stateless, moneyless, classless society. Communism, in common usage, often refers to, specifically, Marxist-Leninist interpretations (which are ironically not very Marxist) like the Soviet Union.
However, these Marxist-Leninist interpretations themselves did not claim to have reached communism, the end-goal of a stateless, moneyless, classless society. They claimed to have reached a socialist workers’ state, and I can quote any number of official statements from the USSR and PRC to that effect.
They reached nothing of the sort, of course, but when most people are discussing what next step we should take, various forms of socialism are what’s being discussed, not the end-goal of communism.
Like come on really? You’re debating me on the FACT that humans are selfish at their core and will always help their own first? I had no idea this was even up for debate
The idea that selfishness is humanity’s foremost trait ignores man as a social animal and the immense amount of self-sacrifice - even for strangers - people are capable of even without a firm ideological basis.
People are selfish. People are also selfless. ‘Human nature’ is not something that can be boiled down to simple platitudes to justify an ideological view.
Communism sounds great but it assumes that the people who rise to the top and run the government are going to share the wealth.
You just described capitalism.
The idea with communism is that
- there is no “top” to rise to
- there is no “government” that we would recognize as such from our reference frame
which would make this impossible to happen.
Ok forget capitalism for a minute and look at communism on its own merit. Jumping into a shit system cause the current one is also shit isnt a solution
There are many systems that reduce the risk, but none so far that eliminate it.
All systems are made up of people, and all rules are only relevant insofar as people are willing to follow and enforce them…
Wow, feels great to see someone who sees this. Thank you
Mandatory note: Fuck the elites of red fascist nations, this is just pointing out the immense hypocrisy of conservatives. When it’s painted red, it’s bad - when it’s painted gold, it’s apparently Just Good Business.
… also, secondary mandatory note, the elites of many Soviet-style nations lived worse lives than Western proletariat, other than the potential for managerial-style exploitation of subordinates (both practically and sexually), and achieved that standard of living only by import of massive amounts of Western consumer goods. Kings of the Ashes…
Yeah, while I’m not a fan of central planning or command economies, if you’re going to criticize something at least understand it first.
💪💪💪 Decentralized planning
I prefer “emergent self-organization”.
It’s not as much the system but the attitudes and ideology that need to change pretty much entirely.
Same system, same results. Some structural changes are desperately needed, if the system deserves saving at all. These days it is an ‘if’.
