this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Give me one example of a communist country that didn't immediately devolve into totalitarianism.
That's the problem. Patch Communism to remove the dictator/elite class exploit please. I wanna like this game but I can't support a movement that just reshuffles the elite class. Classless. No hierarchy. Nerf ambitious psychopaths. Nerf people's tendencies to simp for them.
The problem with communism is that Russia was the first to try it and their culture revolves around corruption so much that it is unable to separate "us vs them" and the idea of personal gain from the ideals of communal wealth, which is the core of what communism is.
Russia then exports their flawed model to countries flipping due to frustrations born from the system capitalistic imperialism. The world has only ever had Russian style communism - either Lenin or Trotsky. No one uses German communism, like what Marx was proposing, ACTUAL communism.
Right. And now most (loud) internet communists simp for the hammer and sickle and act like Stalin did nothing wrong but from my POV there's no actual difference between Nazi Germany and Soviet Union or CCP. The end result is identical. Oppression.
I honestly don't think humanity is capable of true communism because somebody somewhere with a high CHA score and a complete sociopath is gonna herd the sheep into yet another bullshit dictatorship. And people can't help but simp for these people. To me it's completely crazy and when I bring this up to people IRL they look at me like I'm the crazy one.
This is not a defense for the status quo however.
I don't see anyone simping for Stalin in this thread and rarely do tbh.
Not only is simping for sociopaths with charisma completely possible under capitalism, it's pretty much required lol. All the better if you can be sociopath yourself; as long as you get money you'll have won by every metric that matters in the U.S.A., that's the sad part.
Simping for charismatic sociopaths is a HUMAN trait not specificly capitalist or whatever. Everyone does it.
To invoke Bill Burr: why don't Stalin's kills count? He'd be sitting up at the top of the scoreboard with Mao if you counted them.
Political murder isn't inherently better than ethnic murder. Stalin and Hitler both murdered out of malice, the fact that you're clearly more comfortable with political murder shows a dangerous bias
Killing "counter-revolutionaries" was just Stalin putting a different label on whatever enemies he wanted killed. It's no different. Because the USSR was ostensibly a revolutionary and progressive government they just used more palatable phrasing and staged sham trials, but it amounts to the same.
I would actually argue the opposite. Hitler and Stalin both clearly killed out of paranoia or something approximating it. Hitler didn't just hate the jews, he thought they were involved in a collective conspiracy to take over the world. He had a hero complex, and he thought he was saving the world. Stalin was more worried about personal immediate danger, so you can see why he made those close to him out to be the "other" rather than some minority collective
I don't think that contradicts what I said. I also don't think it's a particularly hot take, Hitler was very open about his conspiratorial ideas about the Jews, it's a huge aspect of what motivated his desire to take them out in favor of his people, his master race. The ideas don't contradict, they go together like peanut butter and jelly
It is not promoting Nazi apologia to suggest Hitler thought the Jews were in a conspiracy to take over the world. How could you possibly interpret that as apologia? Do you deny this is true? He literally did that, it's an important piece of his history.
I also didn't equate them. You're confusing comparison to equalization. People can compare things, that's allowed. Stop conflating the two things, I did not equate them, and it's okay to make comparisons. Saying they were similar in one aspect does not suggest they were equivalent in all aspects. That's just such a vastly different thing, and it's a thing I didn't do.
What standards do you think I'm holding communism to differently than fascists? How did your brain go from equating Hitler and Stalin, to holding completely different standards towards the states they ruled? I didn't even mention Communism or Nazism or how they function in my comment, it was about Hitler and Stalin as individuals.
There is non-state communism. This whole state or national communism thing is the new creation. With which Lenin shit the bed on multiple fronts. Centralizing power, to be wielded by a somewhat benevolent dictator. A thing that generally does not exist. And in the small instances it ever did was short-lived. Counting that they would be good judges of character and would never let control fall into the lap of monsters like Stalin Etc. Lenin may have had good intentions. But he is the Bad Luck Brian of good intentions. And his road to hell was definitely paved with them.
Traditional communism, of the variety Marx discussed was a significantly different beast. That's why the Soviets, China, and North Korea are all specifically classified as ML Communism. The L being for Lenin. Anarcho communist are anti-totalitarian. They are also anti-government structure in general. Well at least at the extremes. There is a bit of a gradient. But communism isn't what a lot of us have been educated to think that it is.
All this ML and vanguard theory is designed to buff the corruption / exploitation tendencies. If you start from and accept flawed theory, you get a flawed state.
I agree. My only point was that there are other types of communism than the ones we are propagandized and indoctrinated with. And that not all of them are flawed. Like Lenin's monstrosity.