I think a little clarification is needed. No. I don't actually think everyone there is insane. I don't care about the bans so stop trying to use that. HB enthusiasts coming here and trying to call me out achieves nothing besides proving my point
Edit: Feel free to keep trying to brigade me. It's not going to scare me to take this down
No, I find socialism and markets to be a capitalist compromise that still breeds wasteful middlemen. More regulated middlemen, but still. Communism is an economic framework, not a governmental one.
For sure socialism is a step up from cpaitalism, but I don't think it's enough.
I've never heard of communism being an economic framework before, I thought it just meant a system without capitalism or a state. Do you have something short I could read about communism being an economic framework?
Assuming you're genuinely asking, Communism isn't so much a "status" as it is a strategy for reaching the famous "Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society" it is often shorthanded as. It involves smashing the existing state, and replacing it with a state-as-non-state, ie a form designed to wither away once global class antagonisms are made redundant.
Economically, it is centered around collectivization of the Means of Production, Centralization, and Central Planning.
That sounds like nonsense without reading theory, unfortunately, but if you want something short, Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme goes over what a transition to Communism may look like. Lenin's The State and Revolution also goes over what that looks like, it's roughly a quarter Marx and Engels quotes and he analyzes how Marx and Engels changed their views after the Paris Commune, and how this change was obscured by Reformists and Opportunists like Kautsky of the Second International.
Thats... kind of the opposite of socialism. Socialism, at least the ideal form, is when the 'workers hold the means of production', with no figure heads. This is closer to authoritarianism, with a charismatic leader commanding people to do things.
See this just reads as a complete misunderstanding of what communism is. The word Communism is derived from the word Commune, in which there is traditionally no standard power structure. Too much red scare propaganda. To me of the most prevalent feelings of authoritarianism in my life has been the boss/underling dynamic in the workplace under capitalism.
I'm pro communist economics and pro democratic governance. There is a reason the movement here in the US is towards "democratic socialism", because they are two separate facets of a country. The governance (democratic) and the economic (socialism).
Nothing you've said seems objectionable, I can't imagine what set them off.
Do you consider the party apparatus of say, Cuba, where every position is elected and has instant recall, and their last constitutional referendum passed with 90%+ approval, to be democratic?
I would definitely want more parties in Cuba on the governance side. One party is ripe for abuse. Generally the more the marrier.
Right now I think thier government is too large. Large isn't necessarily bad, but a government should only IMO be as large as it needs to be to help its population. Of course on a political compass, I'm more on the libertarian end in terms of governance.
I think the economics of Cuba would be better if the US would stop senseless embargo.
Again, ideally we want strong communist economic and social fabric AND a thriving democracy to pick leadership. I think they are struggling on the latter.
Of course my perspective is the strict embargos are in place solely because the US really doesn't want communism to work. If it worked somewhere, then it makes US capitalism look quite bad.
I'm not sure if you are saying what i said (that someone in charge sending his minions to harass someone is closer to authoritarianism), or him is a misunderstanding of communism.
I definitely should have used the word "communism" in my sentence, but since he used socialism, I didn't want to change the subject from socialism to communism.
Being from Canada, and a huge proponent of social services and crown corporations, I'm definitely a socialist myself.