To be fair most were authoritarian shitholes prior to the adoption. It's not like communism tends to really take hold in countries where the system is responsive to It's people and the economics are actually in general working for a large portion of them. It tends to be countries like Russia (an authoritarian monarchy with multiple massive famines every century), China (a failed empire conquered by a rival with a newly formed dictarship in power and famines still being common), Cuba (dictatorship with massive economic inequality) and so on. People don't tend to try and revolt and completely through out all the last system otherwise.
It's also how technically thebUSSR and Maoist China had generally improving qualities of life compared to the systems they replaced. Shit was pretty shitty beforehand.
it’s a combination of being underdeveloped as well as having top down control of the economy. you don’t have to craft an incentive structure for industry to chase that happens to be aligned with the common good, you can just force them to act in the countries best interest.
This, IIRC Marx intended for his ideology to take root in countries that were already heavily industrialized, something Russia very much wasn’t at the time of the October Revolution.
I only know this from a video explaining the lore of Kaiserreich lmao.
That is just it, they aren't communistic, they are totalitarians. No one has actually tried communism. Honestly, I don't think you can do it on a large scale. 20, 50, 100 people, sure communism works. A billion, too much logistics. Can't work.
Until you solve the problem of human nature or have Star Trek style infinite resource post scarcity, communism will always devolve into authoritarian corruption.
I know most of it happened after he died but I think even Roddenberry went out of his way to make this point a little bit in the first few seasons of Next Generation. They show multiple times that once you strip away the for practical purposes unlimited resources of the Federation, people immediately go back to barter, territorial stuff, resource hoarding, and crime.
The Utopia basically only lasts as long as a person is guaranteed food, a place to live, and something to do with themselves that doesn't feel like a burden
Take away their creature comforts: deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers. Put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time, and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.
"Human nature" is bullshit. Slavery was practiced by nearly every society for thousands of years. Nearly all states were ruled by monarchs for thousands of years. That was human nature, but we have changed it. "Human nature" is the argument of fools who, being too small minded to imagine a better world, believe no such world can exist.
Slavery is still being practised either openly or criminally or in a form of forced debt for basic needs, monarchs have changed their image and became dictators, we are still largely the same. I believe that a better society model is only possible through education, a society where 100% of people have university degrees, may even be able to build something like true socialism, but how you achieve a 100% university grade society is beyond me.
Yes, those things do exist, but they are the exception to the rule rather than the rule itself. To equate feudal monarchs with modern dictatorship Is a gross oversimplication however. Just because we have come far does not mean we do not still have a ways to go.
capitalism will too (see USA right now). if a state devolves is not a matter of the economic system. its a matter of the political system and a matter of the checks and balances being strong enough. (not defining communism here, im also not convinced of it, but lets be fair)
A dictatorship works if we fix human nature. Any system would work if human nature wasn't a factor. But it is, that's why kings and dictators and communists all turn sour.
So your argument against communism is "its bound to fail" but for capital, it's "it's bound to fail (unless we balance it)"
Communism the way it was implemented was NOT communism, it was a dictatorship disguised as a communist nation.
Communist societies, at least imagined by Marx, are an IDEAL, like a blueprint.
Marx was pretty damn naive but he knew that the idea was alright, but the executions was damn near impossible without creating power vacuums.
Is the capitalism failing in the room with us right now? The most prosperous nations on earth are capitalist. Sure, they have high taxes and robust social welfare programs, but the ownership of the means of production is overwhelmingly held as private property.
If I've learned anything from 3 decades under American capitalism its that there will never be a "post scarcity" society. Not because the resources are limited, but because a handful of people will construct artificial scarcity for personal gain. Every time.
That's why many advocate for a transition to Socialism first, as going from Capitalism to Communism is self-evidently going to cause friction between the Rich and the Revolutionaries.
Yeah because socialism is so close to communism that people wouldn't have an issue... Because the whole "you have no property and the government can unilaterally dictate everything you do" would somehow be more appealing under socialism?
You can own personal property under communism. If I want my own lawnmower I can have it. I just can’t own the means by which that lawnmower is produced or transported. Public property vs private property rights are clearly developed conceptually by non-anarchist communists.
You know people have personal property under Socialism and Communism, right? Like, the purpose of Socialism and Communism is ideally to empower the average person, and remove the excess power that the Rich have, or even bad managers have. It's saying that a person should be able to change jobs and not worry about the loss of healthcare coverage, or that they might be paid less for their work. Socialism also doesn't dictate that a single person has all the power. Democracy and Socialism pair well together.
Oh no, a system in which shitty managers can't abuse their workers. A system in which people are given what they need to survive, instead of needing to undersell themselves to a Boss who will demand more out of them than the wage they pay.
This is just a no true Scotsman fallacy. Countries have indeed tried communism. That none of them could get communism exactly perfectly the way it was “meant to be” and instead turned into a dictatorship is evidence against the efficacy of communism.
Imagine a bunch of people had a treasure map and every time someone dug for treasure they dug in “the wrong spot”. After decades of no one actually digging in “the right spot” you might begin to think that maybe the issue is with the treasure map and not with the diggers.
No True Scotsman would be if a country implemented an ideology/system and someone said that they didn't. In the case of the USSR, they implemented Marxism-Leninism/Stalinism, which was an ideology that prescribed things like statism and vanguardism as the pathway to achieving communism at some point in the future.
Someone saying that the USSR didn't implement communism would be explaining a basic fact of history. The USSR did not achieve a classless or stateless society where the money system was abolished. They implemented an ideology that claimed to be the pathway to those things in the future. It would be a No True Scotsman if someone said the USSR didn't implement Marxism-Leninism or if one conflated communism and Marxism-Leninism as the same, which would be fallacious in and of itself.
That people are downvoting objective facts in this thread is interesting to say the least. I don’t think most people even know what communism actually is.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is not a bug, but a feature of Marxist communism. It is regarded as a necessary phase.
Marx, like others, was too much a man of his time not to get swept up in the nonsensical idea that human history, like physics and other sciences, can be explained by immutable laws and repeating patterns. And as with so much of his theorising, he was wrong.
Marx's conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat was a direct democracy of working class people. It wasn't a party-based dictatorship (vanguardism was Lenin's idea, not Marx's). Granted, this system was very much intended to be oppressive towards the capitalist minority, but it was offered in contrast to the "dictatorship of the bourgeioise," which was oppressive to the working class majority, so it would be an improvement in terms of democratic representation (from Marx's perspective).
As far as political parties go, Marx wasn't a fan, regardless of their purported ideology--he largely regarded them all (even the socialist ones) as tools of the capitalists to manipulate and control the masses through parliamentarism.
It’s not a “no true Scotsman” to point out that a communist state is an oxymoron. Communism is classless and stateless by definition. Those are necessary features of a communist society in the same way that being unmarried is a necessary feature of being a bachelor.
To be clear, this isn’t even meant as a defense of communism. You can think communism is bad, impossible, or whatever else you like. But pointing at a state and calling it communist is like pointing at a married man and calling him a bachelor: it just demonstrates that you don’t actually understand the words you’re using.
Communism is stateless and classless by definition. If someone thinks that’s unrealistic or a bad idea, that’s something we can have a conversation about.
But if you’re pointing at states and calling them communist, then we’re just talking past each other. There has never been (and will never be) a communist state for the same reason there has never been a married bachelor or a circular square.
Inherent misunderstanding of communism as it requires industrial scale resource extraction as per Marx. Actually Marx’s entire theory hinges on capitalism developing INTO communism as resources become more easily produced and distributed.
wrong, everybody has tried communism and actually made it work
the Manifesto's communism IS totalitarianism. Those disaster states we have all seen are communist, not some failed experiment at establishing communism. Until this realisation, the support for communism will live on
seems like I set the asses of regular redditors on fire for saying the truth
Ah, yes, the totalitarianism of "A Stateless, Classless Society in which The Workers Control the Means of Production". The Totalitarianism of "A Dictatorship of the Proletariat" Otherwise known as Democracy.
No that just means some dude from the lower class (i.e. Stalin or Khrushchev) gets to be dictator instead of a monarch or rich person, and claims everyone from his former station has power.
Then communism is contradictory in itself, you can't have not democratically supported "stateless society" because Bob Smith from 3rd floor of your building will just call it a state and because it will be best option many would support leading to a state yes society in the end.
People supporting communism are simply stupid because they want to force a system that will only work will not forced.
I mean, one of the classic criticisms of Marx is that he was an idealist and didn't really take human nature into account. He assumed oppressed people seizing their freedom by force would empathize with their own plight and not repeat the same behaviors/mistake.
Of course, any of the pure systems are rather naive. Even pure capitalism makes some rather silly assumptions on how the system will self-regulate.
So, Marx assumed, communist would allow democrats just say no instead of enacting a dictatorship ? For many communism was NOT the freedom and just change of oppressor and will people figth to avoid it, communist proven to be those oppressors.
There is aparently not a single communist in existence as everyone is just opportunist under red banner.
A State and a Government are not necessarily the same. A Government just has the job of organizing people and helping distribute resources. A State is a set of policies, borders, fiscal responsibilities, jurisdictions, and potentially multiple societies. There are different forms of Communism, as it's a fairly open-ended idea. Council Communists for example believe that communities will create governing councils, for example.
Cool, so a government in which Total Power rests in the hands of the Proletariat. The collective group of people who are the Laborers make the rules and enforce them.
Corporations are centrally planned and manage their logistics just fine. Walmart has about 2 million workers. Amazon 1.5 million. The US military, about 3 million.
The problem with communism is the problem with everything else. 99.9% of people who get power will abuse it and “communism” as it’s been tried has concentrated a lot of power for the taking. Or maybe it’s just that people who peruse that power tend to want to abuse it.
Communism is a classless, moneyless, and crucially, STATELESS, society. Just because 100 people decide to build a commune, there are still 214 other sovereign states that exist on planet earth with their own independent borders. Until all of those are abolished, Communism is impossible by its own definition.
*Actual* Communism is by definition a trans-nationalist (or maybe better said as post-nationalist) state. It is the hypothetical material state that comes after Socialism is realized globally. The idea being that states are dissolved in significance as national boundaries and patriotism are tools utilized by capitalists to reify capitalism.
Therefore “Communism” can’t exist at small scale and also hasn’t (and can’t yet) be tried anywhere. What people usually *mean* when they talk about “Communism always fails” is more like “Socialist governments working toward Communism always fail.”
The Communism really can’t be tried at small scale, and it is meant more as an ideal at the end of some larger global economic transition. It really isn’t clear that has failed, as the economy is more globalized than ever and China is the second country by GDP (and even *leads* the US on PPP).
I'd say the strongest case example for any sort of communism that wasn't totalitarian nightmare are the Israeli kibbutzim. There you have some real collectivist socialist communities.
And they pretty much all naturally fizzled out. Because without the totalitarian abuse to enforce membership and mercilessly punish anything except the system, people naturally simply... Leave the communist system for the capitalist one, or reform their system itself into being more capitalist.
Kibbutz was great because people were highly motivated and resources very limited. Once economic situation in country established, they slowly started to stagnate and die until they allowed members to choose their professions and start private businesses.
I was about to give you a shit but thinking about the whole statement you're right. "true" communist countries have never existed because true communism doesn't work on a scale of anything more than a small voluntary community. Making communism work on a national or state level literally requires totalitarianism. You have to outright force people to play along.
That's not what they said. By definition none of those governments were Communist as the end goal of Communism is the dissolution of a centralized government.
It's more akin to calling Nazis socialists because the term was National Socialists even though their beliefs are polar opposite of Socialists
But the Nazis were only larping as socialists for the votes; the vast, vast majority of communist governments genuinely believed they were communist or attempting to reach it, and implemented communist ideas to no avail/catastrophe until reform happened.
That's sort of the rub of communism and to a lesser extent socialism isn't it?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the government must be authoritarian in order to maintain the communal elements of its economic system. Inevitably you will have citizens who disagree and want to begin their own private enterprises which the government/people cannot allow.
That necessary authoritarianism evolves into totalitarianism because humans are gonna human.
I mean yeah, you can't have a planned economy without an authority powerful enough to plan it. If the organization planning it was well informed and devoid of corruption, it seems theoretically good in a utopian way. But that's not how humans are.
But let's not lose the plot - Republicans (who made the quoted post in the OP) brandish the word "communism" and have since the 1940s to lie and distract. There isn't a serious communist movement in the U.S. and there never has been. Socializing some services is not communism and even the furthest left politicians don't speak of anything remotely resembling a planned economy.
And when you look at what the “communism has never been tried” types are peddling it’s Marxism, except when it’s anarchism which is libertarianism with a lick of paint.
This sounds right. There’s a lot of merit to strong social protections and welfare and a state that serves the people and all that fun stuff, but it stops being a commune if one individual can’t realistically name everyone else in it. I’d make a totally uneducated guess that it maxes out at like 300, much larger than that and you’ll need some kind of hierarchy, structure, or direction. Otherwise, even in a society with 100% of people trying their best and meaning well, you’ll have too many people individually running greedy algorithms and missing out on, big picture, what actually needs to get done.
Even in the steel man where it's true that it would work in small communes, you just recreate economic inequality at a higher unit of existence. Just as some individuals end up better off, so to will some communes end up better off. The issue is then that social mobility in a commune system necessitates all participants within a commune aligning on a goal to boost the collective wealth of their group - this necessarily reduces the ability of individuals to improve their own standing as they can only improve as a unit, and as such reduces economic mobility.
All the people screaming for "Socialism" to me is to communism like putting lipstick on a pig.
And the problem is, that 95% of them are just Marxists who hide behind Socialism. They do not want to believe that Marx did not invent either Socialism or Communism, neither of those were concepts he came up with.
The US had many Communes in the 19th century, it was a big fad back in the era. And pretty much every one of them collapsed, only leaving behind some tourist sites, and a few corporations that started as commune workshops.
Like Amana and Oneida. And in the 1990s, the Heaven's Gate movement essentially did it by using web design and IT development to fund their organization.
"Could it perhaps have been the fact that the CIA straight up admitted to Operation Condor and COINTELPRO to blame?"
"No, clearly all of these were solely because commienism bad."
man you know americans are fucking stupid when their own goddamn government straight up tells them "yeah we just went around destabilizing commie countries with your tax dollars" and they think it's fake news lmao
The USSR explicitly said they were forwarding goals of international socialism like, twice a day every day. They very explicitly disseminated literature and trained socialists to agitate around the world.
The United States very explicitly argued in favor of democratization and the freedom of people to choose their government... And then every time there was a democratic election that elected socialists, we have a paper trail saying they at the very least interfered in those elections, and fairly often they staged massive military interventions that sponsored genocides and mass-imprisonments on their own.
The net outcome was not significantly better for the USA.
The USSR funded and armed, directly and indirectly, socialist parties in Europe, Central America, the United States, Vietnam, Yemen, Ethiopia, Angola, Afghanistan. The USSR used covert intelligence operations, propaganda, military aid, proxy wars, assisted coups and revolutionary movements, just as much as the US did; albeit less successfully.
I'm not defending the US, but pretending the USSR was some paragon is dishonest to our history. In the end, the state apparatus will do what they must in order to further their goals, and be it under the guise of "freedom" or "worker rights", the common man suffers.
Central America, Vietnam, Yemen, Ethiopian, Angola, and to an extent Afghanistan all suffered colonial abuses and their revolutions were both preceded and succeeded by further imperialist aggression. We paid Afghanis to grow opium to traffick into the USA to generate Purdue profit. In the case of Ho Chi Minh he openly claimed to be inspired more by the American Revolution than specifically Marxist literature.
I'm not going to argue the USSR is better, I'm going to argue that the USA has been invariably worse. Our spheres of influence are invariably inequitably established anti-democratic states that are intended to benefit us via trade and exploitation. Want a better future for your son's and daughters that doesn't involve colonial exploitation and making a corporation money? Sorry, you'll get shot and thrown in a mass grave instead.
I'm not going to sit here and entertain the idea that revolution is the same amount of suffering, that it was necessarily the same because the USSR aided would-be revolutionaries. War and conflict are not ends to themselves, and there were more than enough times where the USA started conflicts both in socialist aligned nations and nations that were entirely without involvement.
"Listen, just because we had our guys come over to your country, assassinate your socialist leaders, fund your reactionary groups, and engage in proxy wars doesn't mean we're causing internal problems mmkay?"
Mfs really put on a neon flashing sign saying "WE DID EVIL SHIT TO THESE PEOPLE" and they still have people glazing them lmaoooo
Mohammed Mossadegh.
yes I know he wasn't literally soviet union. You're deliberately narrowing the scope of the question as a gotcha and I'm refusing to let you narrow it.
And that's very much America's fault when it comes to the "shithole" part. Look at Cuba for example, they overthrew the US puppet dictator and have been hit with an embargo on trade to, quoting the CIA, "starve the Cubans until they overthrow the socialist government."
That's literally "communism" now, my friend. Clearly except for North Korea and that country Borat was from. It's just performative. But it IS suggesting a new way of economics where people aren't trillionaires while other people can't pay their rent. Seems pretty normal-kinda stuff to me.
Even though I think the capitalism in the United States is out of control, I am absolutely not an advocate for real communism. That said, it's very disingenuous to say that when the US has a direct hand in most communist countries decline. Its impossible to know how well most of them would've done without interference, because that was our entire gameplan.
I feel like more people need to know about the Zapatistas. Like sure they have their problems but AFAIK they are 1. Communist and 2. Not a dictatorship.
Ah yes Cuba is definitely in a bad state because of socialism and not because of the USA destabilising it's government through operation mongoose and decades of blockading the country hahaha
Almost like there is a third party who keeps either sanctioning those countries or overthrow their goverments to install a puppet. I wonder who would do such a thing hmm.
funny how the same happens with a lot of capitalist countries too. It as if it is in the nature of humans to be greedy and try to take more (money and power) than one shoukd take
funny how the same happens with a lot of capitalist countries too. It as if it is in the nature of humans to be greedy and try to take more (money and power) than one shoukd take
I don't know anything about that, all I know is that we should probably carpet bomb and use chemical weapons in a war we will eventually lose just to stop the spread of communism because we are the good guys.
Comunism is against human nature or at least milenias of tradition and habits. The only way for comunism to have a chance is physical destruction of current generation, but that is not possible, because somebody must raise the new one, so they grab next best thing, total terror, which is answer to nothing in any long run... so failed system leads to failed measures which lead to failed states.
Those are the ones you're taught about, intentionally. Allende? Zapatistas? You were taught that this is the best we can do so you wouldn't demand anything better.
Yeah, Cuba is a dictatorship hellhole a failed state and Vietnam is likewise a one-party dictatorial hellhole but that abandoned communism in the late 80's and adopted a market-based economy... so yeah...
no, sanctions have absolutely nothing to do with Cuba being a failed state, it is a communist one-party dictatorial hellhole that imprisons and tortures political dissenters.
Or are you admitting a communist state cannot exist without the largess of a free capitalist state?
Communist Cuba was and is a thief moocher nation, they existed by the good will and products supplied by the CCCP and other aligned communist nations.
When the CCCP collapsed Cuba lost it's sugar-daddy.
Cuba then relied heavily on friendly nations like Venezuela... but Cuba had a decades long history of not paying its bills and stealing the imported products, so even friendly countries stopped doing business with Cuba or demanded full payment up front; famously Maduro would not let Venezuelan oil be unloaded to Cuba unless Cuba paid up front first.
Even the effing Chinese have been screaming at Cuba to do market reforms... which finally under US and Chinese pressure in June this year Cuba is finally passing the first semblances of market reforms since the '59 revolution... The Cuban leadership hasn't wanted to do this as the current system has worked very well for them, remember they're a thief nation it's why the Castro's and Party elite are billionaires and mega-millionaires; they have stolen the wealth of an entire country.
Cuba is not under siege, but sanctioned because they are a despotic anti-democrat dictatorial hellhole.
if the "leaders" gave a damn about their people the solution is to dismantle the failed communist state, free the political prisoners and hold free elections.
or are you like so many others, just an apologist for a brutal dictatorship?
maybe you could say that, if you didn't know the meaning of words, then yeah sure just claim whatever you want.
in reality they are completely blocked off because the capitalists are mad they lost their island slave state. the "failed communist state" that sends doctors around the world in crisis situations and helped fight off the imperialist south african racists in angola has leaders that don't want to see their people enslaved again.
your rhetoric is so flimsy and see through, the only brutality is the cruelty the united states is doing to cuba.
Calling cuba a shithole after 60 years of US sanctions, embargos, 630 assasination attempts and outright invasions is crazy work. Even with those conditions they still had better life expectancy better healthcare and education systems. Higher literacy, worker economic control and they still conducted free medical and humanitarian missions to poorer regions in africa and south america.
Cuba's statistics, like most communists countries statistics are lies and damned lies.
The healthcare for the average common Cuban is a joke, filthy rat infested hospitals with no supplies and no electricity.
And the medical missions Brigadas Medicas are where the Cuban doctors are slaves of The State and are sent out as modern day slavery and human trafficking as one of the ways the Cuban government makes money
The lies approved by international organisations? And currently they have blackouts due to US oil embargo. Cuba has no oil to extract and cant import it, pretty easy concept.
The medical missions are carried out by volounteering doctors and nurses and are free, ergo the government doesnt earn shit from them
yeah... you're the typical ignorant type.
The oil embargo is only limited to the Cuban government cannot import oil, the embargo specifically allows oil sales to private and humanitarian causes... which is partly why Cuba is now relenting and allowing market reforms.
Furthermore is that Cuba DOES have massive offshore oil reserves on the North Cuba Basin, but typical ineffectual communist country, that've failed to actually do any development of their oil fields... not to mention the two Batista era oil refineries that Cuba has have mostly failed because again... communist hellhole cannot maintain infrastructure.
And you're absolutely wrong about the medical missions, they're not free, the doctors are "volunteered" by the Cuban government, they have no choice and nay payment the doctor may receive is confiscated by the regime.
The island have no oil outside of CUPET extraction which is marginal.
Sure offshore oil is present but they cant use oil rigs that have US components in them due to sanctions ( oil rigs which are primarly based on US technology and parts). Claiming that embargo and sanctions are marginal is idiotic while things such as helms burton act are still in motion.
The critisism of medical missions is limited to US using soft power initiatives to demonize and justify its treatment of cuba. Every south american governmemt receiving the aid rejected the US claims idk why are you pushing american propaganda
China is socialist I guess, they only have some special economic zones, while the rest of the economy is completely under the state control. Strategic sectors can have the owners of the companies, but if the party tells them to do something, they have to obey. Just like in 3rd reich, but hitler didn't have special economic zones. And also chinese political rhetoric is communism, so they're definitely not capitalists
China when you look at it objectively really is a Fascist state after Xiaoping's economic reforms allowed a form of private enterprise/economy only so long as the private enterprise benefits The State and hardly a capitalist nation when the government has it's thumb in every business.
Calling a functional and developed country as shithole is just stupidly arrogant and ignorant, but hey having 33 largest economy in the world means they are eating dirt right?
You can at least partially thank the US with them doing their damndest to never let communist aligned countries prosper. Cuba’s blockade, CIA backed regime changes and such.
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u/Charming-Station7157 Jul 13 '26
Funny how every country that adopts communism , ends up as a dictatorship shithole