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Rather, the USSR criminalized being homeless and not being engaged in socially-productive labor; people that were homeless ended up in prisons and were labelled as parasites.
Swap USSR with USA and the statement remains true. Though Im sure the degree of severity was much greater in the USSR.
That’s kind of true in some parts of the US, indirectly. Some places criminalize not being homeless but all the things that are the result of being homeless like sleeping outside or in public places. But there are a lot of places in the US that do provide for the homeless. New York City has a right to housing provision, for example.
That’s the problem with generalizing the United States. Every state has a different approach to the problem.
And it fucking shouldnt be the case. Ensuring basic humanity and human dignity should be a key matter of the federal government and not delegated to the whimps of states opinions on waht constitutes human rights.
Well, shelter is not a human right that our government recognizes.
If we set a national policy today and didn’t allow local governments to set their own policies, I’m pretty sure we’d have a national policy of no help for the homeless at all. Be happy the places that do have support are allowed to because of states’ rights.
If homeless people go to prison in this country, why have I never seen one arrested? Why are they … not in prison but rather sleeping on the street?
I’m not sure what you’re trying to claim here, as what you’re claiming is obviously false based on my day to day experience in the US
If homeless people go to prison in this country, why have I never seen one arrested?
this is selection bias, obviously
You have a very simplistic view of what it means for something to be criminalized.
Sure are a lot of homeless people not in prison for what you’re claiming.
I was homeless and police literally made up a reason to put me in jail and label me as a felon to make me be cheap labor when I plead guilty just to get out. No fair and speedy trial during COVID. I live in the US.
What the law tells you it’s doing and what they’re actually doing are very different. Don’t try to tell me different because I’m a first hand example. If you’re interested in the full story, let me know and I can do a Discord call or something.
Prison would be a step up for a lot of them. They receive other punishments, like having all their belongings confiscated wherever a cop or some bureaucrat decides they’re getting in the way too much.
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How many homeless people in the USA do you think can work but refuse to? Hint: a lot of them.
Oh yeah, it’s super easy to get a job that pays enough to afford rent and food when you don’t already have a permanent address. /s
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.
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
A phenomenal resource.
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.
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.
Bullshit it doesn’t happen in the west. 12.8% of US households were considered food insecure in 2022, with 5.1% of that being considered to have VERY low food security(Source). Over 20,000 Americans died of malnutrition in 2022, more than double the number in 2018(Source).
There’s also nearly 30 vacant homes for every 1 homeless person in the US, so there’s plenty of room, too. Nobody needs a 2nd home when over half a million people don’t even have one.
Show me one photograph of a person starving in the west.
In the west, the main cause of malnutrition isn’t a lack of calories, but a difficulty in access (from availability or price or other factors) to healthy foods with the required nutrition for a healthy life or from an excess of certain nutrients. This is often manifested as conditions such a obesity and type II diabetes. So malnutrition does impact people in the west.
Maybe you should have actually read that article before linking it. It discusses in detail the reasons for malnutrition being an issue, and none of those reasons is being unable to afford food. The problems are typically due to age and diseases.
I’ve been unable to afford food before, and I didn’t go hungry. People just gave me tons of free food.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
How can a stateless, classless, moneyless society have a 1%?
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.
If you want to fight a class war, you’re a communist
Not even slightly
What ideology is it, again, that champions working class people to take their power back? It’s certainly not right wing.
If you think the world is fucked because of the greed of the 1%, and you want those people to pay for their crimes through class war, you’re communist.
What ideology is it, again, that champions working class people to take their power back?
That sounds like a free market to me. When people have the power to determine their own fate, and how they engage with others for economic coordination.
When everyone has the ability to choose how they engage, that’s called a free market. The economic system based on free markets is called capitalism.
That sounds like a free market to me
A free market means zero regulation, so I hope you like drinking poison because “ain’t no gubmint telling me how to bottle my soda!”
When people have the power to determine their own fate, and how they engage with others for economic coordination.
This requires kicking capital out of the economy. That would be defeating capitalism.
When everyone has the ability to choose how they engage, that’s called a free market
No, it’s called voluntary participation. Free markets inevitably trend toward monopolies and concentrations of power, because the supply side is not held to any standard.
The economic system based on free markets is called capitalism.
And look where it’s gotten us - with a 1% bleeding the rest dry.
Take their power back and give it to the ruling class government you say?
Lol no, I do not say. No ruling class. No government. That’s communism.
It’s bonkers to me that you talk a big talk about class and class conflict, yet are opposed to left wing politics. Where do you think those terms come from?
What’s even more bonkers is that you seem to think communism has never said anything about the 1%, when that is the biggest problem communists won’t shut up about!
Now you’re literally saying that I’m saying or thinking something
Huge issues with that kind of projection
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.
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.
EXACTLY!!!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I think a lot of people don’t want to admit that most political ideas ranging from communism to capitalism are half baked labels we stick onto a collection of beliefs about what works best to solve certain problems. If you got rid of the labels you might just ask the question of what works and where the money will come from
I’m a big fan of capitalism, but I appreciate your comment nonetheless. To me there’s nothing anti capitalist about sharing or wanting to take care of the people around you.
Well that’s just wrong. Capitalism is about profit, it’s anti capitalist to take care of others unless you’re profiting off of them. I’m not saying that I’m for or against capitalism, I’m just correcting your assertion.
Capitalism is about free markets. The arrangement of wage labor is an emergent result of allowing people to enter only into economic relations they consent to.
To take care of others for free is entirely fine, if it’s what you want to do. That doesn’t conflict with capitalism at all. The only difference is that under a free market people do that when they choose to, not when they are compelled to.
And what actually happens is that people choose to a lot.
That’s the cartoon version of capitalism just like how “socialism is when the government does something” is the cartoon version of socialism. Capitalism just means that the means of production in a society are owned and controlled by private owners instead of by workers or the government as a proxy for workers. It says nothing about whether people are compelled to be greedy or anti-sharing or something.
Capitalism is about taking everything you can, to act as a balance against everyone else doing the same, because the fundamental assumption is that greed is the natural state for people and we shouldn’t try to fight it. Under capitalism, competition doesn’t just apply to businesses in markets, it extends to everything: people must compete with those around them for resources (be it jobs, or food, or retirement investments), making human connection a primarily adversarial relationship.
Now nothing says that you must apply capitalist principals to every aspect of your life if you live in a capitalist society, but it slowly becomes the norm. Eventually, the reason people take care of eachother because is indirectly benefits themselves, rather than because its a good thing to do… And when that’s your justification, it’s easy to stop doing it.
It’s all about establishing norms about how people should treat eachother. Under capitalism the norm is adviseraial by design, but under communist it was supposed to be cooperative. It didn’t even up working that way, but that is the ideal we should strive towards.
Edit: fix typos
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
I don’t believe you. This sounds like the sort of thing a person could say to poison the well against someone else, unless someone demands proof.
So where is this statement of purpose?
Also, some of his other greatest hits include denying that the holocaust was so bad because “not all the jews died”, outright claiming that “Fossil fuels are recyclable” in a single sentence comment in a debate about why he thinks evs are bullshit, and laying out an explicit violent fantasy about magdumping into a theoretical person who might strike him for any reason.
One of his most recent comments just says, “violence has never not worked”
Do go read some of his exchanges for yourself and determine if I’m just poisoning the well.
I was born into this world for no other reason than to be intolerant towards self righteous idiots like yourself who do more harm than good with their naive infantile worldview.
Also if you pulled your head out of your ass, you’d notice I’ve been pretty tolerant of your stupidity, but it can only go so far. I’m not trying to sound less shitty either, I simply added more to my reply, the reasons as to why that you made up in your head aren’t my problem to deal with.
In the end, people like you end up full fascist psychopaths who kill people they don’t like because that’s better than allowing people to say things you don’t like.
The self righteous part in question that he’s born to be against, is literally just claiming to be tolerant. Not bludgeoning people with tolerance, not using tolerance as a weapon to silence people as he claims. Just labeling oneself “tolerant”, and the general idea of tolerance. He also spent several comments doubling down. Maybe go read the exchange and see for yourself?
Noted!
It’s not so much the existence of bad communism that indicates communism is a structurally bad thing, quite so much as the utter lack of good communism that indicates communism is a structurally bad thing.
That’s certainly enough to form a hypothesis, but far, far from proof against it. There aren’t any “good” developing countries either.
I’m just laughing to myself about the thought of Reddit being primarily capitalist. Lol
It’s a for-profit, Capitalist business that runs it, ergo its Capitalist. The user base is largely liberal, which is still pro-Capitalism. You tend to see more Anarchists and Communists on Lemmy by proportion.
This community is on lemmy.ml, which explicitly leans hard left. Maybe a memes community on another instance would be less like this
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.
Right, which would also hold true for capitalism… Thus mooting the original point.
Capitalism is sadly doing exactly what it’s designed to do there’s just a lot of propaganda to mislead you such as the infamous trickle down economics idea
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.
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?
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.
Grass is greener on the other side
What Country?
‘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.
While they wont even tell us what country they are talking about.
Because they hate the system they live in and communism is the only modern alternative that has ever existed.
When someone comes up with an alternative to both, humanity will move forward.
how old were you when the USSR fell? Did you experience communism, or the capitalist takeover after communism fell?
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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“They took my father’s slaves!”
Shut the fuck up, colonizer.
What ? Why do you have need to bring hostility to a peaceful conversation, where did he say that his father had slaves ?
My parents grew up in communism, and its true it did ruin some countries but it helped out too, its important to not keep this conversation black and white and use communism or capitalism as the ultimate solution to very difficult problem.
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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…
We have never seen an actual communist country. USSR for example was a fascist dictatorship which runs directly counter to the first property of communism, it must be stateless.
Facists like the Nazis like to claim they are for the people and sadly the only “communism” we’ve seen so far has been carried out by their hands. This is similar to how Nazis were supposedly progressive… Hopefully we can agree that is obviously not the case.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
Don’t call communists fascists please. This is an article from a mainstream holocaust historian that explains why a related equation between the two is harmful.
I would also recommend reading “economy and class structure of german fascism” so you have a better idea of what fascism actually means.
I’d say the fact that leftist socialist or communist movements keep decaying into authoritarian dictatorships is a pretty big weakness of communism, actually. I think Western capitalist countries are not perfect by any means, but they’re winning the quality of life game, even of poor people.
Not decaying. The Nazis were always fascist they put on a front of being progressive to ganrner support which worked quite well as we can tell from history. By the time it became obvious they weren’t really progressive they were already in power.
The Cuban people literally joke that the government should be less democratic because of how much they consult the people, I dont think it is an authoritarian dictatorship and it is under immense pressure as it is 70 miles away from the imperial core and has been effectively blockaded for 60 years or so.
Sure, different ones have different levels of dictorshipness. To be clear, democratic and authoritarian are not opposites at all. Chattel slavery in the US was extremely authoritarian and awful, yet it was democratic. Abolition was a minority viewpoint until around the time of the Civil War.
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.
Name checks out lol
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 important part is it’s not an authoritarian running the show and calling it “communism” or " democracy" when the reality is it’s just a plain old oligarchy with a new title applied.
100% couldn’t agree more.
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
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.
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)
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.
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?
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
Actually, the problem is homelessness.
The solution is either housing (ethical) or genocide (unethical).
Provision of housing for the poor can be achieved by means of social housing programs. These can exist in both communist and capitalist societies. E.g. the Netherlands is capitalist, but there is almost no homelessness thanks to its social housing program. The few homeless that are present are choosing this way of life and are therefore not part of problem.
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.
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”.
Those houses were built by state-backed actors to support growing urbanization and create a housing surplus for that urbanization to give the workers more power since they no longer have to deal with aggressively rent-seeking private landlords.
Wait, isn’t that communism?
This is often neither cheap, nor does it reduce homelessness.
If we are talking about cities, humant colonies are cheapest housing. Buuut kinda crap.
And it’s also not the goal of that kind of rental homes to reduce homelessness.
Don’t look like rental homes to me.
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
Those were not built for homeless people.
No duh, they were built to be very affordable so you wouldn’t have as many homeless people. It’s incredible that you thought that answer was somehow insightful
They were built to be affordable for working class and had nothing to do with homelesness… Communists/socialists did not acknowledge existence of homelessness because it would mean party admitting of making a mistake or system being flawed.
Affordable and available housing has everything to do with homelessness though, it’s one of the best ways to actually keep people from becoming homeless in the first place. If more people can afford a place to live, less people will be homeless. Won’t fix all of it but a huge chunk anyhow
I have no idea if or how much old Eastern Bloc countries lied about the number of homeless. I wouldn’t be surprised at all, but I haven’t seen any studies or statistics about this so I can’t assume they were all lying or that the situation was universally worse than in Western countries.
But that was no goal of communist party at all. It is only your justification for this meme and proving your point about current capitalism.
They were built for the Prolitariat, which homeless folks are quite literally a part of.
That is some good mental gymnastics there…
So if one person picks 1000 apples per day and the second picks 2 apples, then they split apples 501 to each. Good luck convincing the first person that this is good for them
Except we aren’t talking about two people, are we? We’re talking about entire populations of people.
And when people have their needs met, they are more able to be productive. And they are more likely to believe in the good of the system that supports them, as they can see the tangible results of that system in their daily life. They can see how their contribution to the system benefits them. Making them more likely to be happy to contribute.
Will some percentage of people under-contribute because of laziness? Sure. But who cares? That percentage is small. And we have the technology to compensate many times over now.
Why the hell do we make society more miserable for everyone, forcing everyone to live under the threat of poverty if they don’t work, just to force this small percentage to work against their will? Not to mention completely screw over anyone who cannot work for reasons beyond their control, because we subject them to this insane level of scrutiny because we’re paranoid that they might just be lazy.
We can choose a cooperative system, or the antagonistic one we currently have, where we are all at each others’ throats because of suspicion that someone might be getting something that they “don’t deserve”.
You still have the problem of misaligned incentives together with the fact that the only way to mitigate it is through coercion. This is why all communism inevitably leads to authoritarianism. The strength of capitalism is that it can absorb and indeed is designed to allow for the fact that humanity’s cooperative impulse --due to the fact that we evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to live in small bands of about 30 to 150 people-- cannot work at the level of the modern nation state.
You still have the problem of misaligned incentives
Not really sure what you mean by that. Socialism leads to better alignment of incentives. If everyone is benefitting from the system, contributions to the system are incentivised.
That is the opposite of capitalism, where the individual tries to gain any advantage they can, even at the expense of everyone else. And broad advances and contributions of work benefit very few people, by design. That leads to lower trust, which further entrenches the idea that the individual has to look out for themselves, and is thus incentivised to game to system.
together with the fact that the only way to mitigate it is through coercion
I reject that premise.
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In your example, I’m assuming the first person is a worker and the second person is the boss. That’s usually how it goes
This is under the assumption that there is a surplus in society that can satisfy the needs of everyone. Marx’s point is that technological development and industrialization could make this possible. As such, the need to motivate people to work harder is not necessary.
Prior to such a surplus existing, the distribution of goods would be more akin to “From each according to their ability, to each according their contribution”. That ensures people are motivated to maximize their productivity as long as that’s still necessary.
This is disingenuous: the fundamental principle of socialism and Communism is democracy. And, credit where credit is due, capitalism forced us to socialize the production of goods and services (it now takes many people to “produce” anything). Currently, there is no discussion about who gets the profit of socialized labour, it goes to the people who own the workplace, which are rarely the workers.
So, to make your example realistic, you and this other person are part of a community that grows apples (pick any rural community). Together, you all own the fields.
How do you decide what each person gets? You come to a consensus. There are so many variables; is the other person injured?young?sick?old? Or really bad at picking apples? Maybe you are on some apple picking super serum. How do you decide who gets what? The same way people usually do; you decide together.
In your example, having a blanket rule as you suggest would never work, and would be unfair, but it is what happens now in our advanced capitalistic economies. If you pick 1000 apples for a company, how many do you keep? Or more realistically; once the apples are sold, how much of the.profits go to you? You have no choice. You work, get paid, and go home. You work harder and you end up with just about the same amount at the end. The only saving grace is if you work hard enough, one day you might be promoted by the generous owner to a position where you are no longer the poor schmuck who does all the work. But that poor schmuck will always still exist, it’s just no longer you.
…I need to write less lol
The fuck you on about?
Yeah, is a bad deal.
But that’s not the point, the point of this approach is that like in cooperatives, there are minimum productivity goals and many roles to play, and so on. Obviously like you point out, no one is that stupid.
Now, consider the needs of people who are old or need help. Like helping your old man, I’m sure you don’t mind getting more apples. I wouldn’t. Like you, I would get angry if I’m the only useful one hahaha, but that what productivity and organization is for. No one lives in a bubble.
Now… What you said, I’ve seen it happen in capitalism. Not in small businesses, normally the owner is in the store too. I mean when we talk about the big bucks like a better example. They expect you to handle of those apples, and ain’t offering you a comfy home neither.
And yet they still would affect the rate of homelessness.
So they affect shit volume produced on a toilet.
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.
Finland is capitalist and kind of solved homelessness, with there being around only 1.3k homeless people in the entire country (population: 5.6m, which means the rate of homelessness is around 0.02%).
I don’t think that communism or any ideology is an answer to homelessness, it’s pretty much the job for the government and what kind of systems/reforms they implement.
Finland hasn’t really solved anything, as social democracies just push the problems elsewhere
For example?
i reccomend watching this video from 5:53 to 8:31 to see the problems with social democracy https://youtu.be/TRq3pl17C8M?si=Cml7fql--qiRgFT_
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/TRq3pl17C8M?si=Cml7fql–qiRgFT
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Wow, three minutes with that vlogger changed my entire worldview! Thanks, grandpa! /s
You should instead read “Riding the wave” which is a serious book that explains why social democracies rely on imperialism using one case study (Denmark I believe but I haven’t read it in forever)
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?
