Know the difference.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

Wow they sure got a lot of landlords

People are starving every damn day under Capitalism and there is no famine going on. This isn't the dunk you think it is.
- No it isn't, but it does highlight the main issue:
  Communism would work if it weren't for people trying to co-opt it for power
  Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism is the end goal (since, it being automated, means there should effectively be no way to hijack it), but we ain't getting there for a long time. Let's go for socialism first and work from there
- I've been to Capitalist countries, I've been to Communist countries.
  Guess which system has their people immigrating to the other system on rafts with their children, just to try the other system. Guess which system builds walls to keep people IN, guess which system has beggars asking for milk for their children instead of money.
  Your comment isn't the dunk you think it is when it brushes up against the harsh truth that is reality.
Those famines happened every 10 years before communism, they happened ONCE during in each location and not again since.
In the meantime capitalism had that death total due to forced starvation every 7 years on average.
Famines happen regardless of political system.
And here's the list of 3.3 million landlords killed by communism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin

Do the people saying that communism is bad think capitalism is good?

you knoe there isn't only 2 choices right? Thay can both have good and bad sides. Maybe try some mix of it fisrt
- Dialectical Materialism. Right now, they are. You either work towards communism or capitalism moves towards consolidation of capital. Those are your choices.
- Yes. It’s just those are the two mentioned, and I’m slightly communist. So there’s some bias.
- We did that already. We could do it again.
Some do
As usual the best answer lies somewhere between the two extremes
- Yes, we must have a middle ground between having parasites and not having parasites. Thank you enlightened centrist.
- Can’t we just nuke people we don’t like….like my neighbour or Elon Musk?

I was in my early 20s when the Soviet occupation collapsed here, the victims here were everyone not high up in the party.

Sure, capitalism fucking sucks but pretending the USSR was anything other than just bourgeoisie rule is delusional. The oligarchs were just called the communist party then.

- Yea, no shit, nothing to do with what I said though.
I don't understand why anything anti capitalism these days is automatically communism. It's such a large swing from one side to the other. I just want my taxes to pay for healthcare, infrastructure, and education instead of wars and prisons. I want to stop getting fucked by corporations that have infinitely more money than I can ever imagine. I don't think that makes me a communist. I'm just anti-fucking-the-people. Capitalism can fuck people. Communism can fuck people too. I support Corpo-Politico-Celibacism. Stop the fucking.
Edit: Okay, fuck the people. You guys must have this figured out.

Bruh i see people starving in the streets of America every damn day.
- Ukraine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
  Russia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921%E2%80%931922
  China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
There's never be a full communist or capitalist society. What wears arguing over how far towards either we should go. Also, FYI for those that don't know The USSR and China are not communist. Both are/were dictatorships that call themselves communist.
- Look up dialectical Materialism. China is 'communist' as they are progressing along the roadmap Dialectical Materialism provides towards achieving communism.
- The problem is that you won't ever get a full communist country, at least not for a very, VERY long time, because you always get those few fartweasels who end up hijacking it and turning it into a dictatorship. You need to eliminate that problem first, and with how the world is sliding into fascism, it doesn't look like we're any where near close to solving that dilemma

Theoretically, anyway

Yeah. Nobody’s ever done real communism on a national scale. As in, not just being a dictatorship in charge of everything that funnels money and power to the top while giving communism lip service and the people get screwed.

Ah yes, my grandparents, the landlords. Wait hol' up, they were working people, not landlords. GDR fucked them regardless.

"bUt tHAT wASn'T rEaL ComMunIsM" If neither the USSR nor China could achieve true Communism, then maybe it isn't so much a realistic goal as a utopian ideal, a convenient justification for all kinds of crimes against humanity that occur in its pursuit.

It's weird, we tried having a small group of people control the flow of capital and it was unpopular each time. Let's try it again but call it something different or say it was something else when we tried it before.
The thing is, both USSR/China and USA don’t fit the ideals of Communism. While in USA suffers from the gap between rich and poor, USSR/China suffered from the difference between the people and the government. Just because you get rid of economical suppression doesn’t mean you can’t have political suppression. Sure these countries had economical problems but a lot of their problems could have been avoided if the government would have actually worked for the people and not for themselves.
- Neither the USSR or China fulfilled Dialectical Materialism yet either. That's a prerequisite for the ideals of communism.
it WAS real communism and ur grandparents probably deserved it. absolute worst case senario no system is perfect and good people still get fucked over sometimes for no good reason, difference is under capitalism it is constant under socialism it is rare.
- As I understand it, "real communism" is supposed to be some kind of stateless society. As the GDR was, well, a state, it clearly did not achieve that. Nor would it ever have been likely to, as actually doing what was ideologically promised would have required those with power within that system to relinquish that power, which is incredibly rare as it conflicts with human nature.
- Take it from a self-identified pinko commie and someone born in one of those regimes, it was not real communism. It was authoritarianism with a strong (but at times selectively applied) social safety net. To say that their grandparents deserved it when you know nothing about them is fucking absurd. You're not helping your point or cause. You're just being a child.
- it WAS real communism
  I mean, it wasn't, at least not according to the actual people who ran those governments. The USSR and the CCP were/are revolutionary governments, real communism happens when/if the revolutionary governments succeeds and transitions the means of control back to the proletariat.
  and ur grandparents probably deserved it.
  Really working hard to build those bridges of mutual respect and cooperation I see. This is one of the key reasons the USSR imploded in the first place.
  The expansion of Soviet influence happened under the influence of Russian chauvinism, a major contradiction with the more successful maoist ideology today. Instead of allowing communism to be shaped by individual ethnicities or nations they did their best to russify or simply purge the base of power in the country, bolshevists or not.
  Stalin and Beria did a whole bunch of purging of leftist to secure their control over the party. If you actually think everyone the Soviets killed deserved it, please go read about the Makhnovist, the Mensheviks, the Georgian bolshevist, hell go read what the Soviets did to the original leftist leader in North Korea.
  difference is under capitalism it is constant under socialism it is rare.
  Unfortunately that's just not true. Revolutions are highly hierarchical due to their inherent need to react to militant reactionaries. As they begin to solidify their revolution and take over the responsibilities of the state, this hierarchy gets transferred from the the state.
  Authoritarian governments are highly efficient, but are extremely hard to get away from once established. Often times the militant leader of the revolution is not the guy you want to be in complete control of the state after establishing a revolutionary government.
  Mao was decent enough to accept this after the failure of the cultural revolution, Stalin on the other hand......
- Just... no. Coming from an anarchist communist
It wasnt the GDR, it was the totality of global Capital conspiring to defeat the biggest threat to their power structure. What did the GDR do specifically that 'fucked' your grandparents?
It'll be different this time guys, no really, just one more time guys, we'll get it right, it wasn't even a good try, let us go again, this time for real, no way it'll be anything other than a utopia guys, the people will have the power, guys.
- Lol it sounds like someone trying to defend capitalism. "No, it's totally fine, we just didn't implement it right. There are certain laws and regulations that can fix it, we swear!"
  Yet for some reason any flaw with a communist country is endemic to communism itself, instead of the implementation, contexts of their outside conditions, or foreign influence, or general state of economic development.
Communism isn't a series of sacrifices for an eventual greater good, Socialism is definitely better than what preceeded Socialism in Russia and China. The idea of True Communism can only be achieved globally, sure, and in the far future, sure, but Communism is about building towards that through gradual improvements.
You're implying that any progress forward is useless if it doesn't immediately achieve a far future society, it's devoid of logic.
- No, I just have very different ideas what progress is.
  Progress in my eyes is made when a society becomes more democratic, and when we solve conflicts without bloodshed.
  In that sense, sure, the GDR was a step in the right direction, but nazi germany didn't exactly set the bar very high.
  The idea of socialism is nice, but you hardly have any progress if the system (be it built on free markets or planned economies) doesn't work to improve ordinary citizens' lives, but only to keep the powerful in power.
  Personaly, I don't care much about free markets or planned economies. I think the best approach, as so often, is a kind of blend, a social market economy that allows independent companies in a framework that protects workers, consumers and the environment.
  Thing is, the specifics of the economic system aren't important. What matters is that the people are the ones who decide them.
  There is nothing wrong with pursuing a utopian society, but ultimatly you have no control over what happens in the far future (neither should you, future societies need to be ruled by future people).
  The only thing you can control is the present and the near future, so what really matters aren't the ends you strive for, but the means you employ while doing so.

Stalin: "Why not both?"

Let's see: Communism A system of government where the country's wealth is concentrated into a small, ruling class of billionaires, who use the media they own to keep the lower classes fighting with each other while they . . . the rich . . . run off with all the farking money.

Oh wait. that's capitalism. I don't know how I got those two systems confused.

I'm pretty sure the leftcommunists and anarchists and worker councils requesting for power to be really handed to the soviets which were purged by Lenin and Trotsky weren't actually landlords. But you never know, people from .ml may think people unwilling to obey the bolsheviks get labeled landlords too.

- Yeah continue ww1, so fucking based
  When people complaining about your side latch onto factions that they know nothing about it is kinda really funny
- I don't think the Mensheviks were the good guys either. Mensheviks would allow a way out for the old elites to remain elites if they kept on with the times (from aristocracy to bourgeoisie), the Bolsheviks just laid the way out for new elites (party apparatus) by choosing not to empower the working class. The leninist model followed somewhat similar structures everwhere from Hungary to Vietnam, and they always ended the same way: with the party elites opening the way to privatization after one or two generational changes and the heirs of the new system realizing that they'd get more material privilege by establishing capitalism, and without an organized, conscious working class capable of stop them.

I'm sure they were able to pick themselves up by the bootstraps right?
Nice....

meme sent from my iphone

u see im very smart if u live under a society u can not criticize it, what RIGHT does a salve have to criticize slavery when they do the masters bidding and eat the food the master provides and wears the clothes the master provides.
- When you pay for a luxury brand phone it's not you master telling you too, it's you choosing. Don't come at me with the onipotent lord that control all of us. The system IS broken, captalist is NOT the best for the people but people stiil choose.
The iPhone workers designed, workers made, workers marketed, workers transported, workers sold and "landlords" got paid for. It really is a perfect illustration of the issue.
- Iphones build by communists btw
I think this is a more significant point than most people want to admit, it's not just iPhones, people choose status over fairness pretty much every time - they'd rather pay more to feel better than others.
The car market, computers, clothes, food - literally everything. It's true in all the porest and richest circles even when like iphones and a lot of fashion the more expensive product is objectively worse.
It's not capitalism inventing this it's always been a thing and capitalism simply leverages it. I move in probably the least capitalist circles as an open source obsessive and dev, people choosing to share their work free so others can benefit but the mentality is there too, its in the eco obsessive communities too - I don't think it's totally universal amywhere but it's prominent everywhere.
I've come to belive that the Marxist ideals don't cover enough of what people really need, they're idealistic and somewhat how we'd want to think of ourselves but it's similar to dieting, deciding in a serious mood to eat only kale and beans feels like who we want to be but when we try and live that way we realize that we're not that person.
We need to focus on achievable steps in the right direction which allow us to feel good about the change we're making while also letting us fill our needs, even those lazy and embarrassing ones that the idealized version of of lacks.
We need to learn to understand and enjoy other forms of status but also we need to learn to reward those status symbols in others just as we reward economic status symbols even if we pretend to ourselves we dislike them. People in expensive clothes get treated better because it symbolizes the power they have to make an economic difference - even the fact iphones are feature restricted money milking machines only plays into this, it signals that you've got enough money not to worry about them adding $500 to the price for no reason or stinging you for a dozen subscriptions and this makes it seem like you're the most likely person to be able to help them if they're in trouble or give them things they xouldnt otherwise have.
Yes this is bad greedy nasty thinking and no one wants to admit it's part of them but this is how the math in our brain works. We can't help it, and when we ignore it or pretend it doesn't exist or that we can wish it away that doesn't change reality.
I don't know what the solution is, I'd like to hope we can at least shift it from being solely economic to respecting skills too, I dont know but we need to make it socially rewarding to be a benefit to society rather and make good choices.
- Thank you. Kids here trying to justify having Iphones when they could very well have the cheepest phone workable. They screem comunism but want to be better than others. I don't thino there is a solution because humans are imperfect. No perfect solution will ever exist if a human is responsible for managing it.

Without regard for the political content (which I agree with), this is a very bad and unfunny meme.

I don't disagree but this meme is ass lmao

People fleeing communist countries en mass sure is a mystery. Who could ever know why they built the Berlin Wall or why Cuban families risk their children on rafts to get to a capitalist country

You are aware that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are coming to America from other capitalist countries right?
- This reply perfectly highlights why people who have issues with basic logic support communism.
- still
  many cases of people fleeing from communist countries to capitalist ones
  far less cases of people fleeing from capitalist countries to live under communism
  most people don't want communism, that's why there are no democratic elections in communist countries and wrongthink is persecuted
Living conditions for the majority of the population in Cuba are far better than in any capitalist Latin American country. This is despite the brutal blockade on Cuba by the burger empire. Please go make a clown of yourself elsewhere.
This might help to explain the siege mentality of socialism.
People move to areas with better material conditions. Assuming that is the fault of Socialism and not of countries being in different stages of development is immaterial and ignores the trajectory of nations, as well as the geopolitical landscape.
For example, in the GDR, education was high quality and free, but wages were lower than in West Germany. Many highly educated people in GDR attempted to leverage their free education for higher wages in the West.
As for Cuba, people fleeing are typically the people prosecuted during the revolution, ie plantation owners. People still flee from less developed to more developed countries, which is why people flee from Capitalist states to other Capitalist states.

ITT: That doesn't count!!!

Well. Stop using strawmen. Communism is defined by progress through dialectical Materialism. Has any nation finished that progression?
- 'We're only defending the imaginary ideal!'
  That's not how words work. Things mean what they are used to mean.
  Y'all understand this perfectly when describing "capitalism." That word becomes synecdoche for every level and aspect of modern reality. By definition, capitalism is only really the part where having money makes money, but nobody has any trouble understanding what you mean when you refer to its consequences and implications. Nor would you respect if libertarians split hairs about "corporatism." Like oh, this isn't capitalism, because it lacks X and Y and Z, which have never existed, so how dare you talk about bad things that actually happened.

I just got permabanned for evading ban on alternative account on reddit. |

Fuck reddit

Fuck wallstreet.