this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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I am from Eastern Europe and I share this sentiment when I see anyone from the West defending communism. The issue is complicated but, to put it bluntly:
No, Timothy, communism didn't fail in Eastern Europe because it was implemented wrongly. This is a very complicated topic but the tldr summary is "It is a broken idea, it did not work and it will never work. The natural and logical outcome of any attempt at Marxism is a bloodbath followed by autocracy."
That being said, communism isn't the only way to achieve a more equitable society. You have social democracy (in Lennin's words - communism's greatest adversary); organized labour movements; collectivist anarchism; communitariasm, etc.
Communism, as applied in the 20th century, violently fought against or oppressed all of these movements and is incompatible with any of them.
Not to mention that in most countries nowadays orthodox communists have been hugely discredited for excusing the Russian war of annihilation against the Ukrainian people.
In conclusion, if you live in the USA or Western Europe and you are unhappy with how corporate greed has ruined society, don't look to communism for answers. There are many other proposed solutions out there - go and research these. Communism is very well known, which makes it easily accessible to people who want change - but it is never, ever the solution.
Yeah, in the West, we are suffering from unregulated capitalism and it’s hurting us badly. But that certainly doesn’t mean communism is good, especially authoritarian communism (which is exactly what we have historical examples of). We need social safety nets, better taxation, and fucking choices in the west.
Communism is authoritarian by nature. If everyone doesn't subscribe to the communist ideology, then the model simply doesn't work. This means you literally have no choice in a communist society but to be subjected to it. You also need some sort of authority to enforce the redistribution. Who decides who does that, and who gets what? My opinion is that the only way it'd work is maybe with AI, but even then, those in power will likely just manipulate the technology to continue to benefit themselves.
On the same hand, even if you don't subscribe to capitalist ideology you're forced to participate.
We (at least in the U.S.) have no real safety net for people who are unable to provide for themselves for whatever reason. Capitalism is great if you're the one with the capital but if not the world can be a brutal, uncaring place and you can quite literally die on the street.
Crime is endemic to capitalism and I feel like better social safety nets would pay huge dividends in a lot of ways.
Capitalism is not an ideology though. It's just what naturally happens when humans interact with each other. Saying it's an ideology is like saying atheism is a religion. No, it's what happens when there is no religion.
Crime is also not endemic to capitalism. It happens in all societies, including communist ones.
There are many many primitive societies with no concept of capital or capitalism so I think I'd take issue with your assertion that capitalism is "just what naturally happens when humans interact with each other."
Absolutely. There is nothing "natural" about capitalism. It sprung up in some place of the world (not all) a couple of centuries ago. Thousands of years of humanity and no capitalism before that.
There is nothing natural or inevitable about capitalism. Historical determinism is plain wrong. Capitalism is just one of many ways to organize a society. Its time will pass in due course. Probably not in our lifetimes, unfortunately.
That may be accurate, but we were discussing communism, not capitalism.
Luckily this is a forum and we can all contribute to the discussion. If you read the comment you replied to you'll see they mentioned living under unregulated capitalism; I was adding to what they'd said.
At the same time I had a colleague that had to immigrate to Canada from Yugoslavia in her 40s and she told me life there even as a Serb + Catholic couple was the best she has ever experienced until things started to go bad in the 80s...
Nostalgia is huge in the eastern block. That's a separate topic of discussion, all on its own.
being from eastern Europe doesn't automatically make your position on communism any more credible, especially when statistically most of your peers disagree with you
Also it's really hilarious how you claim that communism is more accessible to westerners than social democracy, like ????
There is not a single post-communist nation in Eastern Europe that feels anything other than hate towards communism on average. Its effects were worse than WWII.