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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.
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.
Finally an anarchist meme. I've had it with all the tankies on Lemmy.
You'd think a decentralized network would have more anarchists
I think that for this to be an anarchist meme, it would point out that the USSR wasn't communist. If the workers, not the State, don't own the means of production, it isn't communism.
Me and the boys looking for a single communist country that wasn't a totalitarian hellhole:
Me, looking for a single communist country.
I hate being that person but communism has essentially been exclusively used as a campaign promise by corrupt/evil groups attempting to seize power from the population.
Broadly speaking, people don't understand communism and assume it just means "you own nothing and share everything. And starve."
Just like people argue that crony capitalism isn't capitalism, totalitarian communism isn't communism. Corruption is the real problem.
The problem isn't really "corruption", but systens which allow and even encourage corrupt actions.
That's why these countries turned into totalitarian hell holes, the system was set up for a small group of people to rule over everyone else.
Which is diametrically opposed to what communism is supposed to be. They just stole the name.
Corruption is the real problem and all systems must develop a tolerance of it to some degree.
It seems to me, when looking at the history of communism, that it has a particularly low tolerance for corruption and that things go to shit quick.
It's not that true communism hasn't existed, it's that it simply cannot exist.
It's like a shitty cake recipe that looks good on TikTok, you can tell me how great the cake looks all day, but I saw you add a cup of salt to the batter
Here I go fixing communism again...
First up, just because it hasn't worked, there's no reason it can't work - or is there? I'm all ears. You missed that bit.
Beyond that, the most common issue is the fact that communism is typically achieved abruptly, with little to no pre-work. If you don't address the centralisation of wealth (and by extension, political influence), of course power is going to collapse back into authoritarian hellishness.
Transition via social democracy, taxing away the inequality, getting the populace on board with world-class social services, providing more services over time, as you transition from worker representation on boards and equity stakes to full worker ownership and workplace democracy over time.
Taking the benefits of the people fuelling the economy - workers, and handing it to wealthy shareholders that contribute nothing as they consolidate into monopolies, creating market failure in an economy fundamentally built on markets makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There's a better way - it just takes a bit of work.
You are correct, but that is because no one has ever applied communism IRL as it should be. It has always come along with a dictatorship type of leadership sadly.
Capitalists are going to oppose communism and socialism no matter what anyways because it threatens their wealth. They are doing well under the capitalist system but the ones who have real power and wealth wouldn't have it under other systems, so they will use whatever words to prevent it, and if that fails, whatever force they can muster.
Whether or not communism can work is a seperate debate, but IMO it's important to realize that those who benefit the most from the current system will go to great lengths to protect it, resulting in many bad faith arguments that don't make sense. Trickle down theory was another one of these.
The only way to create a functioning communist state is to enforce it. It is inherently totalitarian in it's very Inception.
It is also assumes that all involved work for the greater good which is so woefully naive and makes any honest attempt at communism vulnerable to the most malevolent.
Blatantly untrue. The state controls the monetary policy and can restrict capitalism through lack of available currency. No force is needed. Barter opens up communal valuations of labor to set a price for a person's time based on what they can personally contribute. Want to hire someone to rewire your house? Better have equivalent skills or time to compensate the electrician.
Capitalism has conditioned people to think that violence is the only alternative to it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_money
Would you mind explaining how any state could prevent this? Whenever money became worthless, people resorted to using something else as a currency. Want someone to rewire your house? That's 5 liters of gasoline / 20 cigarettes / whatever.
Barter opens up communal valuations of labor to set a price for a person's time based on what they can personally contribute.
Soo... money?
Barter is the model we are given for a non-currency centric society... It is also not how money less societies work. In a general sense the most common purely non-market socialist societies of the past and present (Communism alocates resources and property on a more rigid basis of "need" as artificially determined by an authority ideally (ideal being the operative word) democratic in nature, socialism just holds specific properties or services as common trust and can be split into multiple ideologies based on what should be considered public trust) had more like a running tab where people aren't really keeping track of how much they are benefiting.
Like if I come over and ask you for some of the wheat you're growing you'll probably say yes because we're neighbours and I helped you build your house and will give you a share of my apple harvests later on. If all of our group keep supporting each other this way and helping each other out we can get everything we need. People do still notice and socially reject shirkers in these systems but it is more like you recognize their stingy behaviour over a longer period. There are still theives who take things they are not welcome to and there does exist a sense of personal property. Trade straight across for roughly equivalent goods still has a place in these societies but in a limited way for people they don't see very often or people they have cause not to trust to hold up their end.
Barter still frames things in money centric (though technically not capitalist) veiw of labour. That it sounds inconvenient is largely the point. It's vaguely propagandist to give you nothing to imagine but a society obsessed with personal ownership of all property that is individualistic in nature.
Not to say that the end goal gor socialists is to revert to these systems. Market socialism basically combines capitalist systems into a blended system as most socialists agree that there are advantages to capitalism worth keeping around, just that unchecked it's a monster that partitions off what should be held in public trust to parties who erode the public good for personal gain that never fully returns to the system.
Common currency has existed since civilization began for an excellent reason: what you just wrote. The goal of communism is to make sure people aren't unduly exploited for their labor by a ruling class.
There are aspects of human society where some ideologies make more sense than others. Adherence to communism or capitalism exclusively is antithetical to a healthy society.
Sincerely, A mostly socialist
For everyone going, show me an example for non authoritarian socialism Autonomous region of north eastern Syria .
If you think capitalism is democratic in any way, or just generally the natural order of things you've not been paying attention.
ITT liberals who think they understand communism because they've seen a lot of memes about it.