For context: The thread was about why people hate Hexbear and Lemmygrad instances
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One for communists is hardly any different [to one for nazis] as far as I’m concerned.
What do you expect to happen when you call a group of people “hardly any different [to nazis]”?
Communism does not advocate genocide any more than capitalism does. A capitalist society may commit genocide, a communist society may commit genocide. Neither are required to by their economic systems.
National socialism directly advocates for genocide.
It’s a ridiculous statement to compare communists to nazis and it’s not surprising that insulting communists like that will get you banned.
(Adding islamism to the comparison just makes the statement even more bizarre.)
Yeah, it’s not a fair comparison. You can say it’s a dumb ideology but at the end of the day it’s close cousins with big-L Liberalism, and often has been first to the social ideas we hold dear today.
They got banned because lemmy.ml is also a communist-run instance. The mods could have taken the high road and just replied, I guess, but that would have been extraordinary patience. So, they banned the person calling them a Nazi, and I don’t think that was an unreasonable choice on their part.
Communism does not advocate genocide any more than capitalism does.
So “eat the rich” is just edgy humor or what?
Weird, because somehow, every time that every time communism has been tried, it involved massive genocide, though perhaps one could argue that the majority of it was the result of incompetency, because the majority of the victims starved to death as a result of disastrous agricultural policies.
The Holodomor in the Ukraine killed about 3.5-5 million people. The Great Leap Forward killed somewhere between 15-55 million. The Khmer Rouge killed about a million. And I’m not trying to make excuses for National Socialism here, but you have to admit that even when taking to low estimates, communism’s death toll is far higher than that of the Nazis. OP is correct, they’re all evil ideologies.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
I’m pretty sure “eat the rich” is not comparable to “kill 5 million Ukrainians.”
And I’m also pretty sure ‘rich person’ is neither an ethnicity nor a nationality.
I’m pretty sure “eat the rich” is not comparable to “kill 5 million Ukrainians.”
Well, that’s the thing, that’s actually almost exactly what happend. The Soviets basically labeled all the (relatively) wealthy farmers as class enemies and started deporting them en masse in order to seize their lands and turn them over to collectivized farming. The problem was that along with those farmers, they also got rid of the knowledge they had about how to work the land effectively, and as a result, the following harvests were increasingly poor, which is what caused the mass starvation.
The same thing happened during the Great Leap Forward in China.
And I’m also pretty sure ‘rich person’ is neither an ethnicity nor a nationality.
Are you saying that because they went by income instead of by race, it technically wasn’t genocide, just mass murder? I’m not sure that makes it any better. Also, don’t forget that a lot of the poor people died as well, so it didn’t even help those it was supposed to benefit.
Do you really think when people say “eat the rich” they mean “eat farmers?”
This is a ludicrous comparison. The top 1% of the world’s population causes the vast majority of problems. That is what people are talking about when they say “eat the rich.” Not millionaires, not even multimillionaires. Billionaires. People whose entire wealth was built on the exploitation of others.
Getting rid of them will definitely not “get rid of the knowledge” because the only knowledge they have is how to buy the right financial advisors.
Do you really think if Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all died today that the world would be worse off?
Do you really think when people say “eat the rich” they mean “eat farmers?”
No, I brought that up because that’s what historically happened. And in light of that, continuing to use a phrase like that at least seems to be somewhat poor in taste. But that’s besides the point.
Do you really think if Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all died today that the world would be worse off?
I honestly don’t know, but what makes you think the world would be better off if they were dead? Unless they had pledged all their money to charity (which I believe Gates has actually done), what would their deaths really change for you and I?
Getting rid of them will definitely not “get rid of the knowledge” because the only knowledge they have is how to buy the right financial advisors.
That might be true for people who inherited all of their wealth, but if that’s what you’re trying to say, you picked some piss poor examples, because all three of them weren’t born anywhere near as wealthy as they are now and took some considerable risks in order to get there, and they all created literally tens, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process, most of them rather well paid (though we can certainly argue about Amazon).
Just to be perfectly clear, I’m by no means saying that things are okay the way they are, and that all we have to do is let rich people continue to do whatever they want. All I’m saying is that things aren’t as simple as we want them to be and the easy solution is rarely the correct one.
what makes you think the world would be better off if they were dead?
They provide no value and pay almost no taxes. Without them hoarding their money, it would get circulated.
All billionaires are money hoarders. They have more money than they can possibly spend in a single lifetime. And if you think their charities are truly benevolent, you should look into them a little deeper.
Please, though, name a multibillionaire who is essential. Who the world will not be as good if they won’t be around. Just one. One billionaire that provides value to more than shareholders.
This isn’t about whether or not billionaires are essential, but whether getting rid of them would substantially change anything.
Assume, for instance, that we make owning (or earning) more than a billion dollars (per year) illegal by putting a 100% tax on every dollar afterwards. Then billionaires would simply move most of their assets abroad or find some other loophole that lets them avoid this, like setting up a bunch of smaller companies that each have $999 million. Unless the whole world follows suit, it won’t change anything, and that’s not going to happen because any country that’s willing to give them a safe haven would make a killing by doing so.
Also, if this DID happen, what makes you think they’d continue to work trying to make more money and not just spend more time playing golf instead? Whatever revenue you’d expect in taxes would simply not occur because once there’s no more incentive to earn more, there’s no more incentive to produce. Ironically, it would probably lead to far more quasi-billionaires because other multi-millionaires would likely pick up the slack where the big guys throw the towel, but I don’t see how regular people would benefit.
But perhaps you can explain what you have in mind?
Nowhere in your link is it said that “knowledge and efficiency” was lost by getting rid of the farmers deemed “kulaks”. What is mentioned though is that grain was being massively taken out of Ukraine, and the borders being sealed so that starving Ukranians wouldn’t leave, and that even after the famine started, the USSR kept exporting grain rather than use it to feed the people.
The holodomor was a targeted weakening of Ukranians that could’ve been prevented if Stalin wanted it. Painting it as a story of commies taking away from the people that became rich because they were the best at what they do and that caused a collapse is sickening, and I really hope you try and reconsider whether the source where you got that is worth your attention and what were the motives behind twisting something as horrific as the holodomor into a cartoon story about evil commies and honest efficient workers.
Okay, so let’s say that “eating the rich” wasn’t the problem. Then what was? Corruption in the government? Who would have thought that a government that disowned and deported people by the trainload would turn out to be corrupt? suprised_pikachu.jpg
Same thing happened in China BTW. People were starving in front grain depots filled to the brim because the government had sold much of it abroad in order to create the appearance that their plans were working out perfectly. I think the moral of the story is likely that you can’t murder your way to a fair and just society.
Yet for some reason, people keep thinking that if only they put the right person in charge, things would be different the next time and it would work out for sure. Which is funny, because Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all shared the same belief — that they had figured out the secret sauce of how to make communism work.
And no, I’m arguing that unrestrained capitalism is the answer either, but rather, that a mix of capitalism and socialism that dominates much of the world, even if imperfect, appears to be the best we can do. If you look at successful “communist” countries like China or Vietnam, you’ll find that they both adopted elements of capitalism into their economies, and they weren’t doing all that great until they did.
Basically, there has to be an element of risk and reward, because people don’t make an effort if there’s nothing for them to gain (yes, that’s the old joke that communism doesn’t work because nobody works under communism). People will always strive to maximize personal gain. If they can’t make more money by working more, they’ll make more free time by working less, unless you punish them for slacking off, in which case you’ve just created forced labor. See, no matter how you try to approach this, you can’t force people not to be selfish without tyranny. It’s been tried time and time again and it always ended in bloodshed.
Wait til you find out how many people were killed by capitalist governments
Whataboutism is not an argument. If communism is so great then it has to be able to stand on it’s own. If it’s good only when compared to something worse then it’s actually not good.
It’s perfectly fine to use “whataboutism” to counter tired talking points that do nothing to advance actual discourse. Like yea, people died in capitalist countries too, how is that in any way advancing a discussion about these differing economic systems. Go a step further, ask why these things happened in communist countries. Think about how they differ from similar situations in a capitalist country. Engage with the ideas and then we can have honest discourse.
Okay, please send some links where I can read about this. I’ll wait.
Okay, so genocide in the past justifies genocide in the present? That means genocide in the present will justify genocide in the future. I’m not sure how we’ll ever get to a better world that way.
Also, most, if not all of these things happened under colonialism. I’m not sure that it’s accurate to blame capitalism for that. Rather, the problem appears to be concentration of power in the hands of government. The lesson appears to be that if you give a small number of people enough power to solve all your problems, they’ll either murder their way to a solution or decide that you are the problem that needs to be solved. Doesn’t matter if their coats are red, yellow, or blue.
What I don’t understand is why communists don’t spend more time trying to build decentralized networks. Lemmy is actually a good example of the kind of infrastructure there should be more of. But that’s hard, thankless work, isn’t it? And there’s no guarantee of success either. I can see the appeal of mass murder, I really do, but do you really want to face your children one day and explain to them how murdering our way to a better life is just what we do, and if they don’t do it first, someone else will murder them? I don’t.
At least in capitalism, we try not to murder people systemically, because as you might now, that’s kinda bad for business when it’s found out. Not bad enough, you might say, because it keeps happening, but as it turns out, whenever it happens on a larger scale, it usually involves the government in one way or another.
No, the only way to ensure a future without government sponsored mass murder is to focus on decentralization. That’s the only way the people can take power back into their own hands, by resisting the urge for any quick, and dare I say, “final” solutions, and working to educate others on how to be more self-sufficient instead.
You asked for a link talking about how capitalism was responsible for genocide. I gave you the link. The appropriate thing to so would be to say thank you, not make the spurious claim that colonialism and capitalism are two different things.
Okay, thanks for the link, but you act as if that was all I said, and I didn’t just make a whole point about how the common denominator in every genocide is almost always the government.
I’m not sure if you realize this, but my goal isn’t to win a debate on the Internet, it’s to make people realize that any “us vs. them” mentality always inevitably leads to murder and bloodshed, and that any future generations will inevitably look back on it and be horrified, and then they’ll be caught in the same dilemma that we are right now, which is figuring out whether violence in the past justifies violence in the presence.
Obvious troll is obvious. Eve your name is just a sad right wing le epic troll.
Go outside and get a life dude.
every time communism has been tried, it involved massive genocide
This argument is so frustrating, because it totally ignores the fact that the common thread, both for communist countries and capitalist countries, and both for intentional genocide and crises through incompetence, is the consolidation of power in a small set of individuals or group that prioritises their own self interest over the common good.
The big issue with “trying” communism is that it historically has only really occurred through violent revolution. The political instability in these situations gives a perfect opportunity for the seizing of power by exactly those kinds of people.
Never mind the fact that genocide is absolutely not limited to communist countries, and that genocide goes against the actual fundamental principles of a communist system, which is centred on equality.
Yes, the USSR committed genocide - so did Britain and America, and so are modern capitalist Russia and China right now.
There’s loads of good reasons both for and against every economic system, communism included. But “communism=genocide lalalala” is just a cheap excuse to totally avoid considering the merits of a different economic system. Doing that denies yourself the opportunity to genuinely consider how a different economic approach, whether that’s communism or just using concepts from the ideology, could improve the lives of citizens in a healthy democracy.
The big issue with “trying” communism is that it historically has only really occurred through violent revolution. The political instability in these situations gives a perfect opportunity for the seizing of power by exactly those kinds of people.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that violent revolution is exactly what Marx said was essential in order to bring about the communist utopia he envisioned. That’s precisely why communism has such a bad rep among anyone but edgy teenagers and college students. Are you telling me Marx was wrong about this? If so, please elaborate.
Okay - I shall do so.
You are wrong.
If you’re going to base your disdain for the entire concept on a single work by a single author, then it would help if you actually read the work itself, rather than deciding what it says based on, I can only assume, something someone you know said offhand that one time.
So as a starting point, here’s the whole work. Why not do a quick search through for the word “violence” and see if he ever advocates for it (spoiler: he does not). https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/theoryfromthemargins/manifest.pdf
However, in his conclusion, he does say this of communists:
They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions
This is an interesting passage to interpret - the use of the word force in this passage is fairly vague, for example, overthrowing the status quo via legislation enforced by police would be considered “by force”, regardless of whether the police use violence. This is because it is done not by allowing what Marx calls the bourgeoisie to decide to switch to communism, but by enforcing it through law.
Now, there’s more to unpack here, so I’ll break it into a couple of sections…
Revolution
Marx does use the word “revolution” a lot in his manifesto, however typically not in the meaning you’re envisioning (ie an overthrowing of government) but instead the meaning a fundamental shift in distribution of power and wealth within a society.
Is violence ever acceptable?
As a thought experiment, imagine a country ruled by a purely evil autocrat. This theoretical autocrat abuses their power, harms innocent people on a whim and takes whatever they please from their citizens. There is no allowance for dissent, no democracy for the people to represent their interests.
Would it be acceptable for the people of this nation to use violence to remove this dictator from power? I think most people would probably say yes in this context.
So we have determined that in some scenarios, violence may be acceptable when it is the only possible way to overturn an oppressive system of government.
That’s not to say that it’s the only way any system can be changed, or that violence is acceptable when it can be avoided.
The consequences of violent revolution
While violent revolution will change the distribution of power, it also provides an chance for opportunists to abuse this power vacuum to consolidate it around themselves, under the guise of being part of that movement.
Good examples of this are, of course, Stalin in the USSR, and, as a non-communist example, Putin consolidating power in Russia during the USSR’s collapse and its transition to oligarchic capitalism.
The geopolitics of 1840s Europe
Europe in the 1840s was not like it is today, especially in a political sense. The continent was made up almost entirely of absolutist monarchies, with no democratic systems to allow the voices of the citizens to be heard.
There was a wave of failed revolutions against the feudal systems under these monarchies across the continent, which, with few exceptions, were brutally crushed by the states with almost no change.
Understanding these circumstances, it is easier to understand why the idea of transitioning to an equal distribution of both political, and in communism’s case, economic power through peaceful means would be considered not just difficult, but laughably impossible.
Many of the seeds of the modern democracies we enjoy today were planted during this period of turmoil, in part in response to Marx’s manifesto.
Communism and revolution under modern democracy
Now we have the privilege of living under modern democracies across much of the world, we have an unprecedented opportunity to actually consider Marx’s ideas for a different societal structure, and implement changes that would be for the benefit for all citizens through democratic systems.
But we need to actually have reasonable discussions about these ideas and their impact, and “communism=genocide” is not only wrong, but takes a hostile stance against the concept before even understanding what the ideas are.
Edit: wrong link
Straight from the manifesto, page 12:
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
Accuse me of picking and choosing the most salient passage, but I would say this doesn’t leave too much room for interpretation about what the word “forcible” means. And no, you don’t get to talk your way out by saying ‘overthrowing the status quo via legislation enforced by police would be considered “by force”, regardless of whether the police use violence.’ Isn’t ACAB a quintessentially leftist term? Or does it not apply when the police work for you instead of against you?
Also, just to give a counterexample to your “evil autocrat” problem: Gandhi managed to get rid of British colonial rule without ever advocating for or using violence. So no, the idea that violent oppression justifies a violent response is flawed. Violence always begets more violence, there is literally no exception. You can’t murder your way to a fair and just society, it always ends in oppression.
That quote isn’t saying “we should go start some violence for a bit of fun”.
It’s talking about the exact revolutions that were ongoing during that period (see the section on 1840s geopolitics), and noting that the ongoing revolutions give an opportunity for citizen centred political system - ie a democracy.
ACAB isn’t some international stance the left takes. It’s a reaction to the frequently racist, violent and corrupt policing specifically in the USA. And it certainly doesn’t mean there should be no law enforcement whatsoever - you’d be extremely hard pressed to find anybody who would take that stance.
Violence always begets more violence, there is literally no exception
Counterexamples: the British suffragette movement (which was notably extraordinarily violent, despite its common modern image as a quiet, polite disagreement), the American civil war, the Swedish coup of 1809, the Ukrainian defensive resistance in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war.
Gandhi was a fantastic and principled man, and had an enormous impact. But, whether or not he liked it, violence was absolutely a part of the end of British colonial rule, and would have been even if every revolutionary was exclusively nonviolent, because the violence by the British was not conditional on violence by the Indians.
But all of this is separate to the key point - regardless of whether one considers it an effective method of revolution, violence isn’t the aim of a communist system, and it’s use is only considered acceptable in a scenario where that is not the current system, and when it would be the only possible method to overthrow that system.
Edit: as an aside, even Gandhi accepted that violence can be necessary:
Even though Gandhi considered non-violence to be “infinitely superior to violence”, he preferred violence to cowardice. He added that he “would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor”
ACAB isn’t some international stance the left takes. It’s a reaction to the frequently racist, violent and corrupt policing specifically in the USA. And it certainly doesn’t mean there should be no law enforcement whatsoever - you’d be extremely hard pressed to find anybody who would take that stance.
Right. As usual, when you press people on it, they’ll end up admitting that none of their principles are really absolute and they’re always willing to make an exception as long as it’s in their own favor.
Counterexamples: the British suffragette movement (which was notably extraordinarily violent, despite its common modern image as a quiet, polite disagreement), the American civil war, the Swedish coup of 1809, the Ukrainian defensive resistance in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war.
Not super familiar with examples 1 and 3, but would you say that violence against women remains an ongoing problem in the UK? Has there really been no political violence in Sweden since 1809? I don’t think I even need to point out that America remains an extraordinarily violent society according to leftists (and even many people on the right) or that there literally still IS war in the Ukraine to this day.
“Violence begets more violence” doesn’t mean that violence will always continue to escalate (if it did, we’d clearly all be dead already), it means that violence never ends violence. At best, all of its victories will be temporary. All you ever get is a momentary truce once everyone is tired of fighting, but as soon as they recuperate, violence is back on the menu.
And just to be clear, I never claimed that violence was the goal of communism, just that communists seem to universally agree that violence is acceptable in order to reach their goals.
As far as the Ghandi quote goes, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time thinking about what he could have meant by this, and the best explanation I can come up with is that he may have sought to differentiate between non-violent action and non-action (which is nonviolent by definition). In other words, if you are being demonstrably mistreated, it’s better to stand up and do something about it (even if violent), but it’s better yet (even infinitely superior) to do something that doesn’t involve violence (like protesting peacefully). Violent resistance in the face of injustice takes some courage, but non-violent resistance takes far more courage yet.
No, Marx advocated for action to bring about a socialist state. Marx advocated for a variety of solutions, including violence when necessary, but also general strikes, reform, and negotiation. Marx wasn’t particularly married to any single way of overthrowing previous capitalist societies - he simply knew he wouldn’t be a easy journey.
Every time capitalism has been tried, it also involved massive genocide.
Funny, but it turns out that every economic system invented by humans has massive genocide in its history.
Wild, its almost like the genocide was a power grab tactic, and not something inherent to these economic systems.
Okay, but that’s excusing one genocide with another genocide.
The difference is that capitalism doesn’t require genocide in order to establish itself, even if it sometimes occurs in the pursuit of it. Or are you saying that when people first figured out to, say, use sea shells as a method of accounting and facilitating trade, it involved killing a bunch of people before anyone was convinced that it was preferable to trading goods against each other?
Capitalism (or free trade, rather) can evolve naturally and spontaneously among a group of individuals who seek to maximize everyone’s utility. When the currency had collapsed after WW2, people traded with cigarettes instead of money, even if they were non-smokers, because it was practical and convenient, no one forced them to. And yes, there was genocide before that, but it didn’t happen in order to get people to start trading in cigarettes.
Again, I’m not saying that capitalism is by definition non-violent, or that violence in pursuit of capitalism is more acceptable than it is in the pursuit of communism. Absolutely not. All I’m saying is that it can be non-violent, whereas communism always seems to make violence a prerequisite in order to get everyone on the same page.
Also, I think it would help any further discussion if we could make a distinction between capitalism and free trade, as the two are often conflated. There certainly is a case to be made about usury being bad, because it helps to increase and accelerate the divide between rich and poor, and always leads to wealth and power being concentrated in the hands of a few. The word “capitalism” kind of implies that it’s the capital doing the work, i.e. usury is part and parcel of the system, and then people tend to focus only on the predations of banks and neglect the advantages of free trade over forced association and planned economies as it is common under communism.
But there’s a reason the founding father of the US were so vehemently against the creation of a central bank. And it seems that they’re proven right by the fact that ever since our government decided to create one anyways, the gap between rich and poor has risen much faster than it used to. So maybe, just maybe, “capitalism” isn’t the root of our problems, but state-sponsored usury is, because when the government is in control of the money supply, they can always simply choose to arbitrarily inflate everyone’s wealth away, which always tends to hit the poor much harder than the rich, because they don’t have easy access to inflation-proof investments.
Ill be honest, Im not reading a wall of text from someone who reads “genocide happens under every economic system, meaning its not the economic systems causing genocide” and hears “genocide is ok because other people do it”
You clearly cant follow the convo, this isnt worth reading
Okay, that was always allowed.
So “eat the rich” is just edgy humor or what?
Yes. Most people don’t want to eat other people. I would expect the explicit cannibalism to clue you into a level of irony there.
Weird, because somehow, every time that every time communism has been tried, it involved massive genocide, though perhaps one could argue that the majority of it was the result of incompetency, because the majority of the victims starved to death as a result of disastrous agricultural policies.
Genocide has to be at least a bit deliberate, and generally they just fucked up their economy bad enough agriculture was negatively effected. In the USSR’s case at least, the starvation affected the republics pretty equally, too. As Ukrainians were starving so were Khazaks. Some parties have tried to make it sound like a targeted thing for political reasons, but it just wasn’t, and it certianly wasn’t on purpose.
but you have to admit that even when taking to low estimates, communism’s death toll is far higher than that of the Nazis. OP is correct, they’re all evil ideologies.
This is the part where the communists come out with capitalism’s death toll. Dumb ideology, maybe, evil ideology no, at least not on it’s own.
Edit: Also, I take issue with not counting all of WWII as part of the Nazi death count, since they very deliberately made it happen. Also consider this was in the space of just a few years, vs. an entire human lifetime for the Soviets.
Well I’m glad we can at least agree that genocide isn’t ideal and generally a suboptimal way to solve any problems.
No, you can’t count all of WWII as Nazi death count, that would be quite unprofessional. Count the WWII deaths caused by Axis powers if you want.
For a war historian, maybe. From an ethical culpability perspective I think it’s fair. Hitler started that thing and dragged everyone else along kicking and screaming.
Maybe WWII would have happened “spontaneously” the same way WWI did eventually, but Europe was still getting over the first one, and so it was a couple decades away at least.
Rich people are not a race. So “genocide” doesn’t really make sense there. “Eat the rich” does not mean “kill the rich”, necessarily, either. A lot of people just use it as a metaphor for ending the massive wealth inequality through economic reform.
Maybe I’m missing something. How is wealth related to death? We all die when we get old.
I’m my town even the homeless are fed and clothed. This is a strong contrast to people starving to death because the food can’t get to the table
Yes, I understand that, and I already answered that argument here:
Are you saying that because they went by income instead of by race, it technically wasn’t genocide, just mass murder? I’m not sure that makes it any better. Also, don’t forget that a lot of the poor people died as well, so it didn’t even help those it was supposed to benefit.
I don’t think any sane person really wants to just kill all of the rich people. It’s more about wanting their wealth to be redistributed fairly. I don’t think that most of these kind of revolutions start with violent ambitions. They start with demanding the wealthy to give up their excess wealth. The problem is that some people will defend their money to the death, and respond with violence when their wealth is threatened. So they do tend to turn messy pretty quick just thanks to greed, mostly. Some people would literally rather die than have to live like everyone else.
Anybody who thinks that every rich person should be murdered is definitely unhinged and on the extremist side. I think those kinds of people are few and far between for the most part.
Right. I believe that idea is called socialism, not communism. Unlike communism, which demands a complete overthrow and reform of the system in order to be established, socialists are generally happy to bring about reform within the system by just passing laws requiring various amounts of wealth redistribution.
I’m certainly not against it as long as it doesn’t remove too many incentives for people to be able to improve their standard of living by working harder. Having a reasonable social safety system that ensures nobody has to live on the streets unless they absolutely want to certainly seems desirable. And yes the US could probably improve in that area.
That is not the distinction between Socialism and Communism. Communism can be achieved via reform (theoretically), and Socialism can be achieved revolutionarily.
Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production.
Communism is a post-Socialist “Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society” achieved via abolition of Private Property.
Communism does not remove incentives for people to be able to improve their standard of living by working harder, this is just a false statement due to a lack of understanding.
Hope that clears things up!
They’re all fringe extremists groups.
Not everything outside the Overton Window is equally bad
No one has claimed they’re equally bad
Besides you
deleted by creator
You literally did that in the photo of the post
Then you can quote me the exact sentence where I literally say that.
“…is hardly any different as far as Im concerned”
Its highlighted in green in the pic for you bud
And it doesn’t say what you claim it does. I really don’t know what to tell you.
You did, that’s why you got banned. Equating an ideology centered around improving everyone’s lives with an ideology centered around ethnic dominance and genocide is Nazi apologia, implying Nazis had people’s best interests at heart rather than pure malice.
Red scare
Honestly that’s whats happening on lemmy right now. Its literally a battle in ideology.
On the one side you have people who don’t want to see irrelevant communist propaganda and on the other side you have people who are convinced that the top of society is determined to destroy the bottom.
It really doesn’t matter as people aren’t going to be convinced to change from lemmy. Let’s just stop arguing and agree to disagree
gets down voted
Communism died and hopeful it stays dead
People hate hexbear and memmygrad because they are annoying.
I prefer shittygrad
[insert my very cool and funny meme sticker reaction here or whatever it’s called]
I left lemm.ee after a mod told me not to use profanity.
What? I assume you mean admin.
They haven’t told me anything and I use profanity all the time.
It’s also not in the instance rules.
Admin/Mod whatever. This is the message I got after reporting a troll and telling them off.
This isn’t meant to be a shit on lemm.ee comment. They operate the instance to be PG, that’s fine. It’s just not for me.
There are no rules on lemm.ee about profanity. There is one about abusive language which your comments might have fallen under, dunno.
I think there are a few NSFW communities on here.
I switched to lemm.ee because sopuli.xyz is prude instance and defederared from the biggest NSFW instance. Soon I’ll need to spin up my own instance since every instance has some issues hah
A mod? It’s not like changing instance will do anything in that case
Hey! No throwing shade on lemm.ee in my thread!
Well fuck your thread.
/s
Don’t use profanity, it makes me horny
Well then don’t click this (nsfw i guess)
Damn dude.
Don’t become horny, it makes me use profanity.
Yeah no shit if you go to the communist instance and say communists are just as bad as nazis, you’re gonna get banned. You even admit to doing this specifically to get banned in your own comment.
Like even though I’m a socialist, I think the guys at lemmy.ml are a bunch of nutjob tankies, but banning people that come to their instance just to be a troll, insult people and purposefully try to get banned isn’t actually a bad thing.
I have never said communists are as bad as nazies. That would be ridiculous thing for me to say because I don’t think that. Nazies are legitimately insane and scary. Communists are just naive idealogues.
“One for Communists is hardly any different as far as I’m concerned.”
Bruh.
Account for the context. I’m talking about lemmy instances. I don’t think echo chambers of any kind are good because it radicalizes people and causes more harm than good In my view.
The context is that you grouped Communists with Nazis and Islamist extremists, and are arguing that all of their equally terrible views should be silenced. One of these things is far and away not like the others, and you know it.
Radicalization isn’t a bad thing. For example, the only logical solution to Climate Change is radical changes in societal structure, else we make the impending damages even worse.
Oh now I want them silenced too.
I got a 30 day ban on my .ml account for telling the little troll clowns on Hexbear that their childish meme responses were cringy and embarrassing.
I’m just not going to use that account anymore. Let them drive their own community away. There’s better instances.
Yup. They post gifs of pig shit, I say that’s not contributing to the conversation, and then I get a ban for it and they keep literally shitting up the thread.
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Its kind of sad that the social media alternatives are all extreme. I was on odysse for a bit but I left because it was filling up with literal nazis
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Good thing is that communists are such a tiny portion of the populace that as this site grows at all, they’ll swiftly be drowned out. They’ll either flee to new obscure social media, cluster in their own federation, or accept that they’re minorities anywhere that’s popular.
Most people are normal people.
I’ll just leave this here
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
Thanks. I tried to post the original link but it just says “No posts.” Weird.
It’s maybe hard to realize but these moderators wants an environment where their users never see an uncomfortable opinion that upsets their users.
As an adult, I don’t have a problem with different opinions, but my teenage son has massive issues with it. He wants to go to war with people over opinions, and if they don’t agree with him, they are stupid. So I think it’s a maturity thing.
Sooner or later, you realize that people have different opinions, and censoring them doesn’t make them go away. The ability to discuss different opinions is what makes someone mature.
Anyway, I can absolutely understand why they don’t want to moderate difficult discussions. That’s a lot of work.
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So many people here trying to argue dictionary definitions and hide behind technicalities to make their little slice of authoritarianism better than that other slice of authoritarianism.
edit
Good lord, look at the replies to this post. Even being called out on the behavior, they still cant resist slapfighting over silly technicalities and dictionary definitions.
Regardless, there is an important distinction.
You can argue all you like that political systems like communism and socialism may have lead to things like corruption, famine, wars and genocide but ultimately, the people who support those systems are seeking a fairer way to run society for all people and believe in it despite its history.
Head over to the far-right and the genocide is the point. They want “undesirables” to be killed, enslaved or completely repressed.
That’s the rub though. Many of us do support democratic socialism and social democracy, and are excluded, mocked, and banned because those forms of leftist ideology aren’t edgy enough.
I’ve tried to calmly explain the academic basis for democratic socialism on lemmy a number of times, and it inevitably results in me getting banned, mostly for being critical of the shockingly violent rhetoric favored my ML purists.
Then either make your comment and eat the downvotes or just don’t make the comment at all. You’re functionally complaining that a Facebook anti-vax group isn’t listening to your science.
There’s no need to make that argument - history has made it time and time again, and if you succeed at a communist revolution, history will again show that it was a bad idea.
The problem isn’t the motives or empathy of the communist and socialist idealists. The problem is the willingness to face hard truths.
It’s definitely better to seek a better way to run society. But it’s definitely not better to claim you are doing so while executing an old, rehashed playbook of societal failure, claiming It Just Wasn’t Done Right Before™️.
We need a better system. Communism is not it. Any system you build must be one that resolvea the ideals of communism with the pragmatism of capitalism. When that system is found, it will address the weaknesses of both.
I think that system is culturally-rooted sovereignty - that each person takes responsibility for their own life and for the sovereignty of others, because it is in their own best interest to do so. It is how I live.
The nice ring about it is that I don’t have to convince anyone else to live that way - I get the benefits of it just by living it. The difficult thing about it is that I don’t get the psychological convenience of thinking others should think as I do - everyone has their own reasons to live as they do. Until they cross a sovereignty boundary, and I’m involved somehow, I get no say.
The problem with socialist revolutions is that they reject liberalism, which is foundational to the curation of bona fide political agency. If people are not free to engage organically with political questions, then how can you possibly say their will is manifest as government? “Protecting the revolution” is not a justification for denying people agency. And honest readers of history will find much irony in Lenin’s obsession with justifying his own Bolshevik coup as such.
This is an extremely simple idea, but Orthodox Marxist are so blinded by their hatred for all things western (because they are campists relitigating the cold war) that they miss the forest for the trees. For socialism to be the true expression of the people, the people must first be free.
Solid take.
Can we just not do either? I literally don’t care to read about how you think the world is bad on a community about onions
Honestly the political extremism makes me want to leave. I’ve already left a few communities and its sad to see the hate on even basic communities.
I just need to learn to ignore it
You compared communists to ethno-staters. There’s extremist and there’s radical.
“There the same picture”
Communists can also be ethnostaters.
Can =/= are though, these words are describing with precision.
They exist. One of the best examples of a communistic ethnostate is the DPRK.
I didn’t claim they’re the same. They’re all extremist however. Wanting to overhaul the entire economic system is kind of extreme, don’t you think?
Its radical, not extremist.
It’s radical, which is one type of extremist. It would evoke a reaction from reactionaries, another type of extremist.
Meanwhile, a practical love just wins.
I’ll just put this here
Thank you. Someone had to say it. This Valentine’s Day is sponsored by Lockheed Martin.
So practical.
The comment literally reads “they would hardly be any different”. What’s your point? That sweeping change is “kind of extreme”? Is this satire?
I don’t understand what’s the point of claiming I said something I didn’t when everyone can just read the message themselves. It does not say what you claim it does. You’re misquoting me and then attacking a statement I haven’t made.
Dude, I quoted you word for word from what you posted. PLEASE re-read the text from the image you posted of your post being removed. You deserved that shit 100% you’re a psycho. If this is satire it sucks
Radical, yes. Extremist, no.
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It’s only 30 days, and you clearly know nothing about the nuances of communism to be fair.
Clearly…
I think you missed the point. The point is that we don’t want to learn the nuances of communism on every single community. I just want to spend some time on lemmy without seeing a comment about how the world is ending and having a authoritarian communist society is the only solution.
Well, this is a social media site and one for nerds at that, if you can’t handle some real-world news or discourse you should probably block those instances and communities. Those features exist for a reason lol.
you clearly know nothing about the nuances of communism
Nore does anyone one lemmygrad either, but that’s apparently fine
It’s not fine, no I bet you it’s cia funded or something to have such a big presence online. Tankies are surprisingly uncommon IRL in my experience. Maybe increasingly so, but it’s still hard to deny it as a threat to real leftism. Raddle.me seems much more levelheaded if anybody’s looking for a explicitly anti-authoritarian alternative
You’re reading comprehension leaves something to be desired, I’m never saying anywhere that it’s fine, I’m saying that apparently it’s fine according to the person I was replying to, the word “apparently” is critical in understanding the sentence.
*Your
Lemmy overall is just different shades of red. Picking your instance just allows you to select pink vs. crimson.
lemmy.world mods will probably soon prove you right
EDIT: Users were quicker
EDIT: Users were quicker
that is actually really funny
I’ve always found it odd why we don’t treat communism in the same vein as Nazism.
They’re both horrific ideologies that have led to the deaths of millions, but one is considered trendy.
They are radically different but authoritarians have corrupted both to be the same brute force regime. Communism shouldn’t have any specific single leader. It should be a conference of lots of little communities that participate together to make a state work. Sadly authoritarian ideals corrupt politics and make people want to rule that should never be leaders in the first place. Those leaders install their own friends who run the government into the ground - and it’s the government model that is to blame?
communism has somehow become synonymous with marxism-leninism, it’s very sad
“Marxism” 😀
“-Leninism” 😬
The .ml suffix isn’t helping
.ml = Mali.
I know it was the haunt of scammers when it was a free domain, but the government of Mali have reassigned management now so hopefully it will be less problematic as time goes on.
afaih, one of the reasons that lemmy.ml chose their domain suffix actually was for this reason, though I am unsure how much weight it had on their decision.
@moosetwin I know that’s the rumour but I suspect they were picking out of a very small pool of free domains and the free part had a lot more to do with it.
Saying the Mali suffix “means” Marxist Leninism is a bit like saying your .com stands for Capitalism Only Mate. I mean sure it does but only in your own mind, not irl.
Understood, thank you for your response.
well, .com was already taken so 🤷.
You are spot on on just about everything. The only thing I take issue with is saying that both werr corrupted by authoritarians. Fascism doesn’t exist without authoritarians. It’s just a shame that in America, especially as well as plenty of other places in the west, we are miseducated if we are educated at all on the subject.
I think there is a model of fascism that, when a dictator is removed from the scenario, looks like a corporate autocracy. Late stage capitalism, like a corporate Cyberpunk dystopia, is what happens when power isn’t seized by a megalomaniac. Unfortunately corporations are documented to gather the psychotically inclined within its upper echelons so any and all rulings are definitely going to be corrupted. At least communism allows voting for leaders and not private decisions without review like private enterprise.
That still ends up with local dictators and oligarchs. Yes, you’re not likely to end up with one global dictator etc. but ultimately would not be all that different in the long run. It’s exactly what they want a return to. Feudalism.
If the model realized at scale repeatedly results in the same or similar effects, maybe there is something wrong with the model.
(Be those inherent mechanical flaws, flaws of ignoring parts of human nature, flaws of a model designed to work in a vacuum, or flaws of intricate and fragile necessary rules)
and it’s the government model that is to blame?
Yes, because it leaves itself so prone to authoritarian takeover. As I’ve said before, this is a feature of communism, not a bug. A single, one-party “transitional” government is intended. You might as well just put up a sign that says “Dictator Wanted.” This is why there isn’t a single instance of communism on a nation-state scale that hasn’t quickly devolved into an authoritarian state. It’s not hard to understand this. Your government model has to account for the reality that people are going to disagree on things and faction out. Your model has to be able to manage that process. Communism insists everyone adhere to the same ideology, and those that don’t just get “re-educated.” It’s a horrible ideology, a horrible government model; naïve utopian fantasy at best, cynical authoritarian scheme at worst.
Communism scales horribly and practically begs for intolerant authoritarians to take over because the structure promotes compromise and compromising with intolerance ends up with intolerance. It works well when a small group voluntarily creates a small commune and everyone is on the same page. Everyone being able to see the overall community is pretty important for them to see how they fit in.
Capitalism also scales terribly, but when approached as a competition that requires regulation at least it can scale better because everyone can be watchful of bad actors. It still scales poorly because large companies can gain undo influence over government, but at least that influence tends to be about business and profit and not ethnic cleansing of the ‘wrong people’ that tends to be inherent to large scale communism. Yeah, that can also happen for profit with capitalism too, but again the acknowledgement of necessary regulations can mitigate that for the most part.
Everything tends to fall apart at a large enough scale though.
at least it can scale better because everyone can be watchful of bad actors.
I think you’re talking about democracy there, not capitalism?
If we look at a country with capitalism and not democracy (e.g UAE) I don’t think it has any protective effect on transparency.
It’s not “considered trendy”, your understanding of communism – an economic system – is just conflated with authoritarianism – a political system. You can advocate for one without advocating for the other.
That said, capitalism also leads to the deaths of millions, but somehow that’s just an unquestionable fact of life.
I honestly don’t see how the idea of everyone getting an equal share is an extremist idea in the same vein as a racist ideology. I’m also unsure why you’re being downvoted for pointing out the obvious there.
I honestly don’t see how the idea of everyone getting an equal share is an extremist idea
I agree.
Should I be labelled an extremist for being completely fine with, let’s say, a completely democratic business structure, where workers have equal say? A public transport system owned by the people, to serve the people? An education system owned by teachers, allowing teachers to do their best, instead of being overworked and having to pay for classroom supplies at their own cost? Nowhere does it say we’d remove the options for people to use a car, or force them into a packed subway or whatever, and nobody claims it would be a magical perfect system that solves all issues. But somehow the mere idea is extremist 🤯
This idea being conflated/confused with an authoritarian leadership style also causes a lot of problems IMO
Oh gee if only there was a single example of communists that actually acted on some of these purported principles instead of turning authoritarian the first chance they get
No, social democracies don’t count. They are what tankies SHOULD strive for, instead of sucking off… checks notes famous beacons of liberty Russia and China.
Perhaps it’s us greedy humans that’s the issue and the economic model only limits how completely we can fuck things up. Badly when it’s capitalism and really badly with communism.
capitalism also leads to the deaths of millions
Citation needed.
There’s a couple
Here’s a couple more.
20-50k due to homeless per year in just one capitalist country: https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Section-1-Toolkit.pdf
And then there’s the 250,000 expected per year and increasing due to climate change from capitalism wanting to not do anything to hurt profits of big oil : https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
That’s me lazily grabbing things. I could do this all day but it’s depressing as fuck and it won’t stop you tongue fucking a corpo’s asshole so it seems pointless. Hope that helped!
Every single person who’s died of hunger
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Wait until you read about communist famines.
Those were not on purpose. But were definitely made worse through the actions of dogmatic uneducated authoritarians much like capitalism. However, the fact that it happened to leninists involuntarily doesn’t justify capitalist doing it purposefully.
…also known as the Great Ukrainian Famine, was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians.
It wasn’t man-made lol. There were famines going on in the United States too. Dust bowl anyone? And I said they exacerbated it. You simply proved my own point for me and failed to state your case.
Let me give you some advice on debating or trying to discuss things. You should refrain from it.
See what you just wrote there. Every single person. That is so utterly ridiculous thing to say.
Every single person.
I think they were adding that anyone who has starved under these regimes should be counted in the needless deaths alongside the genocides
Would you also require a citation that the sun is very hot? The sky blue?
People who have died trying to ration insulin, due to how in the US it’s made by for-profit corporations, diabetes care requires many other ridiculously expensive supplies, and the system is set up to require expensive doctor office visits and insurance to maintain a prescription, though type 1 diabetes is life-long. Plenty of other medical examples also.
That’s because the US healthcare system is garbage.
Look across Western Europe and they don’t have those issues, despite having a lot of private involvement in their healthcare.
No kidding. But it’s specifically capitalist garbage and it’s the for- profit companies involved in it top to bottom who strongly resist reforms. They invest millions and millions in lobbying and with propagandizing the populace anytime Congress starts seriously looking at changing anything. And I mean hell, we even have TV commercials for prescription drugs.
I’m sure it would be possible to make a capitalist, private, for profit healthcare system that isn’t abusive. For a while, maybe, since the nature of capitalism is to grow to extract as much from consumers as possible. In any event, that’s not what we have in the United States, and it does cause people to die.
Because one of them promoted racial superiority in its main book, while the other equally hated everyone? Do your research!
I completely understand where you are coming from, but you got to realize that that concept of communism has been warped by western propaganda and selective education.
People hungry for power will use what ever ideology appeals to the people to gain power. Look at Donald Trump. He was historically a Democrat from New York uninterested in politics. He ran as a Democrat the first time but made no headlines. He switched parties and started talking pro-christian rhetoric. He is very obvious no Christian.
You see it with “Protect the children” anti-abortion groups. Who have no interest in actually protecting children. Groups that target trans people with the same stance have no interest in actually protecting children. Groups who are say they want to stamp out pedophilia use it to target privacy laws.
And you have groups like Nazis and Lenist who used socialism and communism as a means to an end. Those groups used those movements to consolidate power and wealth to the 1%, and used violence against others as a way to ensure their continued control, they were neither communist or socialist in practice, only in their speech.
Communism is always dictated by a few and causes harm to many. In order for communism to work you need to stop the flow of information as education makes people want to pursue there own goals at the expense of everyone else.
You talk of corrupting power but I’ve never heard of google wanting to kill.
Communism is literally not dictated by the few. Communism is anarchist in that there are literal no leaders. What you are thinking of is leninism, where a group of few used the ideas of socialism and communism to hoard power and money, spread misinformation, and destroy education. Because educated people don’t like authoritarian leadership.
Like how in the USA, education has been villianized by the right in their propaganda. They cut funding to public education. They remove what books can be found in libraries. They can keep people ignorant of ideas they find threatening to their power structures. Such as socialist and communism ideals. Any book that talks of breaking down the hierarchy is considered a threat.
Well they’re considered just as fringe group by pretty much everyone else except for the people subscribing to it. Ofcourse they’ll soon rush to tell you how their idea of communism is different and will actually lead to utopia but just imagine a neo-nazi trying that same argument.
It would do you a lot of good to actually read about communism and political theory in general instead of acting as a conduit of brain rot.
Personally I’d rather listen to the history of my country, than to the random people on the internet, that have nothing to do with communism, saying “it’s totally going to work this time bruh”
![[META] Never change, lemmy.ml](https://i.imgur.com/1pxAyiq.jpg){kind=link}