While the communism +/- debate is all very interesting, I feel like a brief history lesson is needed (to get the “joke”).
The nations that “fought in WW2 against communism”, were at war with USSR, as in they wers “the Axis Powers.”
Primarily: NAZI GERMANY.
So “rainbow stop the orange fascist”, is, in fact, PROUD of their ancestor’s support of the (OG) fascists…
Funny stuff, irony.
The problem is that people think of the URSS as a comunist country when it clearly wasn’t, they literally made an aristocratic class but whatever
don’t let .ml hear you say that or the screeching sound they make will be ear splitting
Already happened when i was on my old instance xD
The US just turned neo-nazi for a full two years. We’re totally putting on the reich right now. We even have fucking concentration camps.
And we started a stupid war putting the entire global economy into an energy crisis. And we’re in an affordability crisis with skyrocketing inflation. Americans can’t afford food and fuel and are skipping medications.
And the US is betraying its NATO allies and sucking off Putin. America is a Russian asset right now.
So let’s back up a bit. We’ve been making late-stage capitalism noises since the beginning of the century, after the dot-com bubble. Then came the subprime mortgage crisis. We passed some laws to prevent financialization shenanigans, then we repealed those laws. With quality of life in the shitter, young whites put Trump into office. Then COVID-19, and then since things still weren’t better, racism was back on the menu, again.
But now, billionaires – who got rich through financialization (that is fancy fraud-flavored rent-seeking) – are trying to dismantle democracy and create an authoritarian state while fast-tracking the automation of the entire workforce. And they’re not yet finished plundering the US treasury and its credit line, yet they’re already starting after the rest of the developed world, long softened by (you guessed it) neoliberal capitalism.
Capitalism has fucking failed. We can try to reconstruct a market economy, but so long as we allow for a plutocratic class, it’s going to fail, and eventually the aristocrats will succeed to contain the rest of the workforce, and work us to death like slaves at a sugar plantation.
So maybe we don’t want to do what the Soviet Union did, exactly, but we don’t really want to do what the US and colonial Europe did either.
(And to be fair, every time someone tried to create a democratic Leninist state, colonial forces, usually the US, were right there to topple their government and erect a puppet dictatorship that allowed business interests to plunder natural resources. Heck, Wilson called the international community, a lot of it still colonial monarchies, to sanction USSR as soon as the Red Army won. Capitalism is a plague of parasites.)
Maybe pull together some Keynesian economists and build a social strategy? I don’t know. I’m not an expert, but I listen to Paul Krugman, Richard J Murphy and Robert Reich. They have ideas.
But to quote the hairdresser recently on Last Week Tonight (on YouTube, ~23:43), At this point what do we have to worry about? Anything but what we have. We’re on our way to Hell.
Well stated.
Anarchist add that the state works in concert with capital to protect property rights which are state enforced theft. Socialism can only be acheived by dismantling domination heirarchies i.e. capital and the state. Anything less will result in “aristocrats will succeed to contain the rest of the workforce, and work us to death like slaves at a sugar plantation”.
Sad Finnish noises
Could be Polish.
Could be finish.
No I can keep going if you can
Finnish*
Yup I’m sorry, you’re right.
Also, aside from what other commenters pointed out: communism ≠ marxism-leninism
anarchist & council communism also exist!
Yayyy 2 of my favorite communisms mentioned (anarcho and council)
Ancoms unite! Non-hierarchically!
Syndicalists
uniteunionize!
I agree, communism is a nice idea, but it doesn’t work because it didn’t factor in the greediness of people, so the system isn’t protected against people abusing it. That’s why most communist states were/are dictatorships with corruption and oligarchy. It only works if everyone wants it and no one abuses it. So it doesn’t work on a large scale.
Imo the best we can get is capitalism but capped (so no billionaires, no monopoly companies etc.), combined with a shit ton of socialism. Everyone will benifit if we pull up the lowest part of society. A group is as fast as the slowest member. Let’s just make sure everyone runs a bit faster, instead of just a few at the cost of the rest.
The best I want is anarchy. Fuck borders, states and world leaders, fuck hate and greed.
But most of all: Fuck fascism, that is the worst.
As Marx points out in Das Kapital, the capitalists will always capture government, defang the regulatory bodies, and then use financial shenanigans (fraud) for rent-seeking to make themselves insanely rich, but bringing their own economy crashing down.
This has happened across history multiple times.
The problem is barbed-wire. Barbed-wire is an early technology that allows large numbers of people to be controlled and contained by small numbers of people. We’re developing all sorts of other tech intent towards the same goal. You’ve seen some already, with the mass surveillance state, ALPR and the recent move to take down Flock cameras.
China and EU are also buying big into mass surveillance technology, as a means for the capitalists to keep the working class from organizing.
That is to say, so long as we allow for a plutocratic class, and don’t actively prevent it, it will pose a threat to democratic, rules based society. And eventually they’ll win permanently, right before civilization collapses, they retire to their apocalypse shelters and humanity dies off.
Capitalism is non-viable. We may struggle to find something else that cannot be corrupted, but the consolidation of wealth and political power is baked into capitalism.
We need something else.
a communist state doesnt exist. Marxism-leninism ≠ communism
Marxism-leninism ≠ communism
I never said it was.
In fact, Marxism and anarchism have more in common than Marxism and communism.
The workers didn’t really own the means of production so far but they often had strongly improved lives during socialism. Look at the healthcare system of cuba or the rapid improvement of living conditions in the ussr after lenin took over.
A lot of the concepts capitalism is based on are deeply flawed which is why a weakened version of it will still lead to some of the same problems.
Look at the healthcare system of cuba
Yeah but at the same time LGBTQ were prosecuted, so it’s healthcare is not for everyone.
or the rapid improvement of living conditions in the ussr after lenin took over.
Yet the system wasn’t protected against someone like Stalin. And also under Lenin things were grim for many.
Again, the idea of communism is great, it just doesn’t work in the form we’ve seen. So far the best form is (and I hate to say this) China I think, with a partially open market and the average lives improved significantly. But also China has a one party system with one leader with too much power who can stay in office as long as he wants, also known as a dictator. Next to that they have workers with 7 day work weeks and no holidays, concentration camps and an insane amount of corruption.
Coming back to Cuba, they are also not doing great.
Maybe Cambodia is an example of a functioning communist state, although the wealth gap there is also insane and they had a dictator not too long ago (Pol Pot) with a pretty severe genocide. And with the recent whistle blowers on Chinese scam centers in Cambodia and Myanmar (which got it’s slave workers through Cambodia), also a vast network of corruption came to light reaching as far up as ministers. And also Cambodia isn’t a proper communist state, even though they do identify as communist.
I wish there was a new version of communism in which there are protective measures against tyrant leaders and corruption.
After the fall of the USSR most states who became Independant kept the system of the USSR. They continued with corruption and a non-functioning system (as the vast network of the USSR wasn’t there anymore). Estonia did not. They completely rewrote their entire system, switched to digital and became the world leader in cyber security and low running costs while having a properly functioning system. Maybe we could make a state built on that, but then out of communism?
But I prefer no states at all and anarchism.
The marxist form of communism abolishes states as well, but the workers have to take over the means of production first before they actually have power over the owning class.
Cuba had a very hard time due to the US sanctions and the CIA. But they showed that it was possible to be communist without losing quality of life.
East Germany for example had great LGBTQ rights much earlier than most surrounding countries. Probably because they had a much easier situation than cuba.
China is just capitalistic in their doing. You can see that from the way housing is managed there and how they sacrifice quality of life for the good of the owning class.
No states is also the final goal of marxism, it just describes a way to get there. We have seen that striking is very effective if done properly, so it makes sense to connect the power of the ruling class to their ability to control the workers.
What we need to learn from existing socialist/communist nations is how they achieved the revolution and what went well. We should also learn what causes undesirable outcomes and how we can prevent them from happening.
There really isn’t a need for a new form of communism if marxism already exists and matches a lot of the things you are asking for.
I agree, communism is a nice idea, but it doesn’t work because it didn’t factor in the greediness of people, so the system isn’t protected against people abusing it.
Greediness of people isn’t something inate to the human condition but one created and fostered by capitalism and systems of private property. Most of human history before agriculture was lived under a system of primitive communism where resources were shared by the tribe with little to no hierarchy.
Individualistic selfishness was a behavior created by the sectioning of private property for agriculture and the accumulation of surplus. It is a learned behavior, which means it can be unlearned. Unlearning it will require a drastic change in culture and ideals, but it is not impossible.
There are times in history where the people have freed themselves from domination like Barcelona in the Spanish civil war or the paris commune, only to have it snuffed out by authoritarians. The system can work, there’s just a group of people with a lot of resources who will do anything to stop it from doing so.
Most of human history before agriculture was lived under a system of primitive communism where resources were shared by the tribe with little to no hierarchy.
Yeah, but those were small and primitive settlements. We don’t live in those times anymore, we don’t have small settlements but large states with millions of people. We’re not the dame as humans back then, so it’s comparing apples and pears.
Communism so far only really worked in small communities where people lived by choice.
I think that, the larger/less tightly-coupled the societal unit, the easier it is for people to take advantage of others. Utopian ideologies only work if almost everyone sees the benefits and no one can subvert them, and even then only if there is cultural continuity over time.
Strong enforcement of Anti-trust laws. Higher tax for the rich. Start-up friendly environment.
Country without borders - Only someone who can’t be invaded would say that buddy.
Country without borders - Only sometime who can’t be invaded would say that buddy.
No no, I’m against countries in general. No countries means no borders anywhere. I think smaller communities with their own rules and laws are better than a giant landmass with rules and laws for everyone, based on what’s best for the people living in the big city while the country is so much larger. If there are no countries, there are no wars between countries. No nations means no nationalism.
Only sometime who can’t be invaded would say that buddy.
Everyone can be invaded these days. There’s a war 2000km from here. It’s in our backyard and soon we might be part of it.
Strong enforcement of Anti-trust laws. Higher tax for the rich. Start-up friendly environment.
And leaders, politicians and other figures with positions of power should be held responsible and reprehensible for lying and causing harm with their words, actions and policies.
People for positions of power should not want that position at all, and people who do want these positions should never hold any form of power.
Positions of power should have extensive medical, psychological and intellectual tests. Never one person should have total control, no single leaders.
I suppose lots of people had grandfathers in the Wermacht.
Or finns, or poles, etc etc etc.
communism failed because it turns out that people weren’t as productive when there isn’t a clear personal advantage for themselves that they work for. the western system was more productive largely because it had the “wage” mechanism to motivate people to work.
You know that people in the Sovier Union also faced consequences if they didn’t work, and did in fact get paid wages, right?
What makes people put in effort is a complicated mix of material, social and psychological incentives, and I don’t think sweeping generalizations like that are very helpful to understand anything.
There were plenty of issues with the Soviet Republic, just like with any other government at that scale. Production capacity itself wasn’t’t really one of those issues.
That sounds like conjecture rather than evidenced fact. Now I’m not gonna claim that communism is undoubtedly better (idk), but history has shown the USSR and China go from poor 3rd world countries with poor quality of life to 1st world superpowers with world-class production and vastly improve quality of life. At the same time, we can find examples of capitalist countries that have poor productivity, innovation, and living quality. So clearly it can be comparable.
This really just seems like the classic thought-terminating cliche of saying people are inherently best motivated by money, which is just demonstrably false. People do tons of unpaid work, even under capitalism, like helping their community or partaking in hobbies.
While I agree with the point you are making I just want to point out that neither the USSR nor China ever were first world countries. That term merely defines a countries’ relationship with and position to Nato and the Warsaw pact members and has nothing to do with economic output or the development index. 1st world means being Nato aligned, 2nd world means Warsaw pact/USSR aligned and 3rd world were the unaligned countries. Sweden was technically a third world country in the cold war.
That was true back when.
Nowadays the terms are used in regards to economic output and the development index.
They might just be Finnish. Which wouldn’t make it any better since they did learn strategy etc. from Nazis.
The geopolitical realities of the time were… well, let’s put it this way: everyone in Europe that was interested in maintaining stability and discouraging war fully shit the bed.
There was no credible alliance or mutual defense pact that the Finns were able to rely on to defend against the Soviets trying to, you know, fully annex them - the UK made supportive noises, but ultimately couldn’t get their shit together to make any difference whatsoever in the Winter War. Thus, when Germany, basically the preeminent land force in Europe at the time, ultimately offered an alliance to them to deter the Soviets, it was the only offer in the table; faced with such existential threats and only one choice that wasn’t effectively an eventual full capitulation to the USSR… they chose the pragmatic option. Honestly, I see the alliance of Finland and Nazi Germany around WW2 as a very direct result of the abject failure of the League of Nations, and more pointedly, the severe lack of credibility of French and British foreign policy, political will, and military strength at the time.
That’s not to say it was a good choice; it was simply the least bad choice Finns had in front of them.
It was harm-reduction on large scale, yes. Even before the Winter War we have a long, negative history with Russia being the aggressor. So knowing it is either them genociding you, or allying with Nazis, you do what you can… Does not make it Good in any way.
Lest we not forget that the Scandanavians were also being mugged by Germany for their iron. If the Soviets had broke through the Germans would have invaded in full force to keep the iron flowing to the war effort.
Indeed. Many people don’t realize how harrowing of a balance of power the Scandinavian countries had to deal with, between the Soviets and the Nazis - again, due to the complete uselessness of the League of Nations, and how much the other European powers at the time fumbled their responses to the Anschluss and broader German expansionism and expeditionary campaigns (read: the Spanish Civil War, in which the Germans basically proved out and refined the initial concepts of Blitzkrieg / combined arms warfare) at the time. Not to mention, the German occupation of Norway during the war. It’s not a theater that has ever been strongly represented in WW2-oriented media (in the States, at least).
Edit:
On a completely unrelated note, Sisu is a banger of a film
a false equivalence almost on the level of nazi apologia
Didn’t say they were a raving bunch of antisemitic genocidal maniacs. They weren’t by a good enough measure. You shouldn’t discount the lesser told story for it is uncomfortable though. The defense of Finland against Soviets can still be a victory, but wear the stains with awareness and context and be ashamed of what shame the is if any.
I’m getting mixed signals here. First you say Finns were not any better than the Nazis, then you say that they “weren’t a raving bunch of antisemitic genocidal maniacs” (as opposed to the Nazis, presumably).
The finns weren’t without sin. I meant it wouldn’t change that they may be guilty of war crimes. Note that there also were Wehrmacht soldiers without particularly large individual guilt.
Cutting awfully close to the clean Wehrmacht myth there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht
I said these might have been some. E.g. doctors treating syphilis etc. that doesn’t mean most of all were innocent. But not everyone bears the same guilt.
I mean the US also put people in concentration camps but nobody’s making an equivalence between the US and Nazi Germany…
People do that all the time lmao. The Nazi concentration camps were even inspired by the US prison system, and then after the war we took in a bunch of Nazi scientists.
Yeah but people are not saying fighting for the US in WWII was the same as fighting for Nazi Germany because both had concentration camps.
The point though is that at one point Finland was allied with the Nazis against the Soviet Union, that’s the difference. That’s not to entirely absolve the Soviet Union invading Finland, but either way Finland was an ally of the Nazis for at least a point.
Also, see Geopolitical status in Northern Europe in November 1939 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War#/media/File:Northern_europe_november_1939.png
That’s not to entirely absolve the Soviet Union invading Finland, but either way Finland was an ally of the Nazis for at least a point
Yeah, and any implication that it would is crazy.
The situation in American KZ was heinous and a key factor in why many Japanese Americans fought in the war: to get out of there. This was highlit in the museum in the aircraft carrier Hornet, I can recommend a visit if you ever are in SF.
The scientifically accurate language really gives you faith in america being on a good path. You could really tell that there are compassionate and honest and good people who want to live in a good world.
Kazakhstan mentioned 🔥💪🇰🇿
If by strategy you mean lots of amphetamines
More importantly they started the Continuation War in a full alliance with the Nazis after the Holocaust was ongoing and Germany had asked them to turn over Jewish people for extermination.
Which they did not do at scale. Doesn’t mean they didn’t learn from them.
Oh, they only handed a few Jews over before joining the war to kill or enslave every Slav on the planet, very understandable.
Oh, just took some Karelian land, and refused to attack further, and it was to “kill or enslave every Slav on the planet”? Perhaps you should read some history, from multiple sources. It was essentially “they are occupied elsewhere, quick, lets grab back what we can, before they try another invasion”. Allying with Nazis was horrible, yes, but not knowing anything of the history between Finland and Russia (or just believing the Russian propaganda) really shows.
Hey look, it’s a genocide apologist so much of a modern bigot he can’t even say “yeah that was pretty fucking bad but we don’t do that anymore”
Most likely because he’d do it again.
So, you think fighting against an invader is genociding? Do you support Russia invading Ukraine perchance? Of course it was fucking bad, I did not claim allying with damn nazis is a good thing, nor fighting a war. History is not black and white. Throwing around classic Russian propaganda accusations of genocide, tells me of an acute lack of historical knowledge, of geopolitics of the area. Either that, or another propagandist.
My grandfather also fought the soviets, in two distinct wars.
Full throttle here. I’ve been accused of being a Russian agent by Zionists thrice already. If you’re going to belittle me this much, at the least be accurate and call me a Palestine Regiment.
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