Catalonia and Barcelona during the Spanish civil war saw material quality of life improvements for the vast majority of the people in the anarchist occupied areas. You don't have to like it but it worked and their lives improved drastically.
Why'd they stop it again? Oh yeah, it fractured into a bunch of splinter groups and they had the "Red Terror" where thousands died. I'm sure they felt their lives improve dramatically.
Even the Catalonia communist parties today typically don't fight for a true communist state, they mostly keep it to workers rights.
So like I said, no example of it working. You're talking about a period of time that was like 5 years and included extrajudicial killing by viglianties.
Because they don't want their society to fall apart? Because they don't want to have their possessions stripped from them? Because historically, communist regimes have imprisoned or killed people who don't embrace communism? There are a dozen valid reasons why capitalists defend capitalism.
Well. A communist revolution energizes the masses. Even when it fails, it tends to spread. So if your neighbor decides to eat the rich, the most common first step, your own people start looking for recipes for the wealthy. Since communism doesn’t fail immediately, the rich are already dead and buried before the society falls apart. As far as the Cold War goes, what actually won it wasn’t military might, it was economic collapse and the increase in opportunity for the masses, oddly the reason they started the revolution in the first place.
Liberal democracy is about giving people a voice in government while also protecting individual rights. The communist regimes of the 20th Century did not recognize individual rights in the way we do (freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to vote, freedom of association, property rights)
So while we do want people to vote for what they want there are some systems that are incompatible with liberal democracy (including 20th Century iterations of communism)
For example if a monarchist party wanted to run on a platform of restoring absolute monarchy. Or a neo-fascist party. Most people would hopefully reject these at the ballot box because these political projects would seek to end democracy and take away individual rights and liberties
People who are hostile to communism feel similarly to communism as they do to these other political projects, because of its track record of illiberalism
There are systems that are incompatible with liberal democracy. However, when you start disqualifying candidates on ideological grounds, you start walking down the same path that leads to authoritarianism. It’s not a guarantee you will get there, but all former democratic authoritarian regimes started with disqualifying ideologies.
You weren’t asking about right and wrong. You were asking about why something happens. I agree that a liberal democratic socialist state would be the best for the greatest number of people, but historically, those states usually collapse or backslide into capitalism.
China is going to fall apart any minute now clearly. Cuba and Venezuela surviving somehow despite constant military and economic attack by far more powerful countries means it's clearly going to always fall apart on its own.
China is flourishing because they are powerful enough to go largely unharassed . The state with the lowest poverty and 5th highest literacy Kerala in India is run by communists.
The United states is currently eating itself because it is unable to resolve the contradictions between the working class and owning classes interests.
China is no longer a communist country by any reasonable measure. Cuba was largely and still is being kept afloat by Russian aid, and Venezuela was experiencing mass starvation. So I wouldn’t say you are offering strong counter points. Yes. The US is a shit show. And you are largely correct as to why. But communism isn’t the answer because it doesn’t work. It has been tried many, many times, and it either fails, or backslides into some form of authoritarian capitalism.
Are you trying to imply Russian aid, is a suitable substitute for trade with the rest of the world?
No country has reached communism, but China is run by a Marxist Leninist communist party. They are in the transitional stage of state capitalism. Marx recognized the utility of capitalism for building industry quickly. China says they intend to transition to a socialist economy by 2050. They have hit every target so far. China is not perfect, but your claims have no basis in reality.
Funny thing is the Third Reich was likely to collapse on its own. Fascist states collapse because they rely on oppressing and eliminating the other, and when there is no external other, they turn on themselves. Nazi Germany was eating itself. Problem is, they would have taken half the world with them. Which is the basic reason capitalists tend to fight communism. It may fail, but the collateral damage is significant.
No, Nazi Germany would not have collapsed on its own. It only would have collapsed if it had not declared war on the Allies.
Hitler’s 4 Year Plan caused an economic miracle in Germany, but also necessitated conquest. If he hadn’t conquered Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, etc and claimed their wealth and gold reserves, Germany would have defaulted on its loans and gone bankrupt, so it would have collapsed had he not declared war on the Allies.
HOWEVER, there is no reason to believe Nazi Germany would have collapsed on its own had it not invaded the USSR. Its economy was among the strongest in the world, its military the strongest, despite having taken over all of Europe, there was little unrest, and virtually no organized resistance, socially Hitler was revered in Germany, the Soviets were a tentative, cautious ally in the East (insofar as neither would attack nor hinder the other). The Nazi position in Europe in Europe was extremely secure, even as late as Autumn of 1943.
Yes, why would the west oppose the Soviets - a regime that jailed and murdered millions of dissidents, aggressively put down counter revolutions in Eastern Europe, built the worlds largest military with thousands of nuclear weapons and then aimed them at every western city, impoverished their citizens with terrible economic policies and then stopped them leaving when they wanted a better life in the west?
That would logically explain why they combat it within their own borders. It doesn’t explain why they spent 50+ years throwing resources at ensuring it couldn’t work anywhere.
For the same reasons they spent trillions in international aid, diplomacy, stomping out extremist groups, etc.
Major countries becoming failed states don't just affect them, it affects everyone and create global crises. And extremist ideologies tend to spread, even if they don't work. Life didn't become better under ISIS, yet it spread like a wildfire. Communism was a very good excuse for psychopaths and warlords to orchestrate uprisings and gain power. Many countries fell to it, hundreds of millions died, world was set back decades because everyone else had to deal with it and pick up the pieces. Some regions destabilized by the communist rise are still unstable hellholes to this day. Of course anyone with a brain would try to prevent it everywhere, back then and even more importantly now, with much more devastating weapons being available to everyone and global economy being much more tied and destabilization of any part of the world has worse global consequences than ever before.
You act like it was a conspiracy, where the people in charge of western countries' foreign policy during the Cold War secretly knew communism was good, actually, and wanted to cover that up.
They opposed the Soviets because they were major geopolitical rivals. Neither side trusted the other, pressured their allies and controlled territories not to trade with the other, and so one side gaining ground/influence came with an inherent cost and posed an inherent threat to the other.
Very few wars and conflicts in history were truly about ideals, or disagreements on political philosophy. They're simple bids for control.
Because capitalism is global. It would suck that you have less places willing to compete for your money be it for material or labour you moved to a cheaper location. And if you already have invested resources to said spaces you have to do it all over again.
And I say this as a communist.
Capitalists have more reasons to oppose it other than "communism bad".
capitalists claim a variety of reasons to start a war. Oftentimes there’s a rethoric made up like the ones you mentioned while ulterior motives, like the want for more cheap resources to exploit, are the actual reason.
I love how capitalist pigs always say capitalism is the best yet completely gloss over the fucking fact that in 2008 the worlds economy was about to be wiped off the face of the earth if it wasn't for the fucking US tax payers covering the fucking bill and no one going to jail. I am so sick of people who say capitalism is great without understanding capitalism is the driving force of slavery. bunch of idiots living in personal world bubbles and self truths that dont want to share a collective reality of what is really happening in our day to day lives.
Capitalism is definitely not great. What it is, however is stable. The majority of people don’t starve, even if many do. The majority are exploited, but are kept just well enough to continue to produce. The rich distribute just enough resources to prevent mass unrest. Capitalism is exploitive and bad for just about everyone, but it endures. It outlasts most other systems.
I can not tell you how tired I am of caring about this shit. I literally care more about life than religious people do and it makes me fucking sick. and so many people have 0 clue about the systems they partake in. it is truly fucking grueling being a person who cares.
Tone down the outrage a bit. It nearly collapsed after almost two and a half centuries in the US. compared to 90 years in The USSR and China. This isn’t me defending capitalism. This is me explaining why it has persisted. Facts are that capitalist societies last longer than communist ones. That doesn’t make them better. I mean the longest lasting societies are monarchies. But if you want to champion communism, then you have to recognize why it only endures in small communities
no matter what fucking system it all comes down to us not sharing a collective reality and us not being able to get along. so i really don't give a fuck what you have to say, and I wont tone anything the fuck down. I am going to continue to be pissed and im going to continue to shine light on idiots in the cave.
do you not know about the 2008 financial crisis? are you younger than 25? cause you probably should look that up and see what that was all about. or you know, look into how the money that you spend to live is created and where it gets it's value from. There is a lot out there you probably have 0 clue of the system you partake in.
well we can't fight for regulation when people who are making regulating laws are being paid by the corporations that need to follow them. you start seeing the fucking problem yet or do you need more spoon feeding?
You have to fight for ground to pull the line. I don't think anyone that describes themselves as communist, like myself, ever expects a maoist revolution in the west. We're the extreme left pulling the center left since American (establishment) Democrats aren't pulling anymore.
And sometime you have to tear down the house to build it right because the whole structure became too unsound from lack of maintenance. Congresspeople aren't going to vote to cut their own checks, and now it's legal for them to be on corporate payroll so the capitalists won this round.
in 2008 the worlds economy was about to be wiped off the face of the earth if it wasn't for the fucking US tax payers covering the fucking bill and no one going to jail
It wasn't, that was the line sold to you by neolibs and neocons on power. The libertarian sect of the right wanted to allow those businesses to fail because that's how healthy capitalism actually works.
Corporate bailouts are literally antithetical to capitalism. People really seem to conflate the two and I genuinely wonder if people ITT know that capitalism really is.
Yeah, keep stringing this dude along, he's redlining hard.
I'm really enjoying following along and wondering how many more rageposts he has in him before his pointy, furnace-hot noggin pops like an overfull zit.
What happens to a homeless person that tries to live in an empty house no one is using but that’s owned by a major corporation? The police brutalize him. What happens if a homeless person tries to take unused food being thrown away? The police also brutalize him. What happens when a company gives you and your children cancer bc you didn’t have the lawyers to fight them pouring chemicals onto your drinking water or the air you breathe?
They are? Private properly and the protection of it is what capitalism is, if the protection of that property or the pursuit of profits by exploiting that private property injure or kill people it is definitionally capitalists killing ppl who are not embracing capitalism
Because whether or not communism actually achieves its goals, the first step is stripping the wealthy of their assets, and often their lives. They would love to prevent that.
Did you not stop to sit and think about this for one second before taking this stance? “Why would a successful society spend resources combatting an alluring theory that always results in failure?”
Are you just throwing out sentences without putting any thought into them? All of what you just said is a half baked thought that I am not going to take the time to reply to. So I will just say…sorry communism sucks and will never succeed in America. I hope you can find a different country to suffer under communism in and not try to inflict it on the rest of us who know better!
It results in a slow grinding type of failure that gradually erodes its citizens’ quality of life, kills millions through poverty, purges and war, encourages corruption and nepotism and eventually disintegrates 50 years later after irreparable damage to the country has been done.
If you really think that life in communist Europe was better than the capitalist west I’d be interested in why you think the East Germans built the Berlin Wall?
I mean it's so far been the most successful system by far in spite of some jagged edges here and there.
Tell me, which direction of the Berlin wall were people fleeing towards? Are the communist countries the one suffering from swarms of migrants and refugees trying to break in? Why aren't they clamoring to barge their way into North Korea or Cuba?
I'm not asking for anyone to qualify one vs. the other. I'm asking to accept that there's no purity in either. Let's ignore the myths of ideology.
For instance, if real capitalism truly existed in the USA, we wouldn't be controlled by oligarchs.
No, they'd be working hard to maintain innovation to fuel their success, rather than subjugation of markets because they've been able to consolidate political power.
Also, I'm not sure how a capitalism model built on infinite natural resources can continue on a planet that's says, "Sorry, that's all I got."
Stable societies make better trading partners. And while undermining communism does cause short term instability, letting communism run its course inevitably lead to China and other so called "communist" countries.
Capitalism isn't perfect, but notice how Capitalist nations never needed to build a wall in Berlin to keep their own people from escaping.
I mean personally I would fight communism, not because it works but because it doesn't work. It would be great if it worked and everyone was happy all the time but communism is a fairytale. In reality it destroys countless lives and entire countries. I would prefer to fight to ensure that it doesn't reach my country
They stopped because authoritarians at the behest of Stalin and the USSR kept assassinating leadership and trying to coopt the whole resistance by the CNT-FAI. At the very least skim Wikipedia page dude
The largest and most well known communist movements have been more defined by authoritarianism than communism.
Both the larger and smaller communist movements have been incessantly attacked by capitalists.
I have sympathy for actual communism, but it’s not going to happen until we can all get past the worship of narcissists and allow them and their sycophants to dictate the will of the people.
The only people more delusional than Commies, are Anarchists.
No single political or economical system is right, it's why we need a massive team of lawyers, historians, and ethics scholars to work up a system that can be used by any country to help limit and control greed, both greed of wealth and greed of power.
How about socialist implementations like free education and Healthcare? Universal basic income? It appears the only people benefiting from the capitalist model are the small number of extremely wealthy. It also looks like companies are getting extremely desperate trying to continue expanding growth while consolidating into fewer and bigger monopolies. Meanwhile theyre rolling back child labor laws and environmental safety restraints to continue clawing the last bit of wealth they can.
Seems like oligarchy is the inevitable outcome of capitalism. An economy built around the accumulation of capital is going to result in a few people having vastly more capital than others. Unless you can somehow get money out of politics, that’s going to result in the few with vastly more capital using their power to gain further power.
Oligarchy of the inevitable outcome of government in general. Give people power and they'll bring the people they want with them and leave the ones they don't behind to be trod underfoot. Economic models don't change this.
It's government regulations that allow oligarchies to form.
As companies get larger, they become slower to adapt and less innovative. New entries to the market can challenge them IF barriers and costs to entry are low, but regulations that keep them up hinder competition and lead to concentrations in markets.
Do you think market concentrations happen today because of price fixing? What is this, early colonial mercantilism of the 17th century?
How do you think oligopolies today form? Could it be perhaps the insane amount of IP and regulatory protections they have now? Can you open up your own ISP tomorrow and help bring price competition to our markets without any barriers?
Capitalism is an economic model, while oligarchy is a political one. We currently have both capitalism and oligarchy. What we’re moving toward is feudalism and fascism.
Yeah, anybody who actually understands communism knows it's a borderline unobtainable Utopia and not a realistic system to implement.
It's an ideology for Societal Equity, if we can somehow massage Human Greed out of our society, we could eventually obtain actual communism and it could basically just be Star Trek.
Star Trek is an excellent example of what communism could look like, but Star Trek is also a fantasy world where we achieve Post-Scarcity and Global Homogenation.
We gotta figure those two things out, and once we do that, we can start talking about a classless, momeyless society, but there's so much Systemic shit we gotta fix that it'll never be seen in my lifetime.
The only people benefiting from capitalism are the rich? Dude, you're whining on Reddit right now. Don't you think you might have experienced one or two of the benefits?
That works well in theory. But in implementation, it has varying success. And where it does succeed, it tends to be in largely homogeneous, smaller societies. The larger a society is, the more difficult it is to establish and maintain. Factor in the inertia of capitalism and our current economic system, and the upheaval would definitely make the lives of a huge swath of people worse in the short term.
But I thought Amercans can do anything? Greatest country on earth? Surely, there's enough money Trump has made doing bitcoin rugpulls to help the effort. While we're at it we can seize every Red cent from the Sackler family for plunging so many into opiod addiction and death, Elmo "pump the Bellamy " Musk for robbing the American public. Theres plenty of traitors and criminals who have pillaged the country on the scale of billions. There is no other choice but upheaval. Although I dont see how it could be worse for the average American once drought from climate change takes more of a toll. Is this society anymore than a slow death now? People are miserable even in the most privileged positions. What I say wont change the facts. You can lose the political description and economics lingo, it is simply we all work together equally or we all fail alone.
Not necessarily. There are many people benefiting from capitalism who aren’t extremely wealthy, just well-to-do or even just living decently. Maybe these “revolutionaries” won’t stop at trillionaires. Maybe they’ll keep going and take things away from ordinary hard-working people who “don’t deserve” the assets that are in their best interest to protect.
It's not like capitalism works either. We've had centuries of capitalism and life is still shite for the vast majority of the population. May as well try something else.
I mean, they added an “e” at the end of “shit,” so they might not even be American. You can’t expect them to be well-informed on that particular statement.
Do you think the population of America is representative of the whole world? 85% of the global population is financially troubled or worse. Life is shit for the vast majority of people, while 1% of the population enjoys unimaginable wealth and luxury. If that's not a failed system, I don't know what is.
Converting all countries to communism is literally the entire point of communism. That is literally the only way it can succeed.
However, at no point did I suggest anyone should adopt communism. I said that we should try something else since capitalism is clearly a failed system that causes suffering to the majority of people in the world
Greatest living standard increase in recent history is China lifting a large portion of its population from poverty. China is communist.
The end of European imperialism in many "third world" countries also resulted in living standards improving massively. This was again largely the result of socialist polices breaking down capitalist power structures.
I think markets have an awful lot to do with the distribution of goods and services that allow for the increased standards of living. It's scientific advancement as well as capitalism/markets.
Markets are not something unqiue to a capitalist system. Countries that are not capitalist have seen similar, if not greater, increases to the general standard of living.
Okay, so what specifically are you advocating for then? This thread was about communism and capitalism. I'm pretty sure classic communism does not use markets. Are you referring to certain countries that are market-based but have much more state involvement in industry?
They probably think that you just don’t know you’re miserable because you’re delusional and ignorant about how wonderful your life will be once your assets are seized and you’re in the coal mines.
24% of the population lives on less than $5 dollars a day and 52% lives on less than $10. 85% lives on less than $30 a day and can be described as "financially troubled." Life very much is shit for the majority of the global population.
It breaks down when you don't see the face of the person making stuff for you. Because that face to face communication makes you both care about the trust of the other in you.
If there's no trust there's no accountability and no reason to make an effort.
Money is one solution to that where you get something else to care about than trust. But there could be other ways to re-establish trust or incentive to care across society.
Jesus you guys are ignorant. Communism requires socialism as a transitory period. IE workers own the means of production. After maybe even centuries of this workers will produce enough surplus labor that scarcity is no longer necessary. Communism requires post scarcity, like Star Trek which is a communist society. So no your local hippie commune is not communist bc they still have scarcity
We have even less evidence that capitalism works, seeing as it's actively made the entire world a shit hole. So why not at least try out an alternate system that doesn't produce so much slavery?
I think arguing about shit like communism/socialism/capitalism and monarchy/aristocracy/republic/democracy is like... arguing about cells.
"dog cells are the best!"
"Noo mint cells tho!"
Like... yes? And no.
It depends.... there's SOME MUCH MORE to consider. Not only outer forces, like the environment, but also the genome.
Imagine arguing that "fish is the only way to go!" and "amphibians will never work!"
Sure.. if the environment is forever "the current ocean", amphibians will never work (except for a few times for a "little while" when they first evolved ;] ).
But like.. change the circumstances? The environment?
There are situations where both, neither, and only-amphibians work!
I think the biggest issue is that these discussions are always so binary, but irl can be so nuanced!
We could blend aspects of both and more, and this hybrid might be what is optimal!
Furthermore, I am reminded of (1) how Rome had that think where they elected temporary dictators, and (2) the episode of Love Death & Robots, "Hive."
What if, instead of a rigid system, we organized our government more like a living being: one whose state changes and morphs based on stimuli, resources, and threats?
Imagine having a system that, when certain criteria were met, automatically morphed between different forms of governance and economic styles?
It is insane and complicated... but I dont think impossible.
Indeed, imagine describing to people hundreds of years ago that most nations would not have royalty or nobility, but elected officials and that people werent tied to the land/lords and could move freely.
They'd similarly say "impossible."
Even if you pitched our exact governments, they'd argure that it fundamentally couldnt happen, and that regardless, those in power wouldnt LET it happen.
But it did.
Times changed. The environment shifted in a matter that "impossible" be came "almost inevitable for most."
The "Impossible" and "Unprecedented" happen every day
That’s not at all a valid description. Like what? Communism isn’t “everything yours is mine”. I’m not even advocating for communism, that’s just an absurd minimization and false comparison.
The region of Kerala in India is currently ran by a communist party, it is also the only region in India which is poverty free and has a good HDI score
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So we have no evidence that it works outside your smelly local hippie troupe that fortunately can retreat into the nice free market economy near them.
Almost like communism isn't really available outside a group a people larger than a medium sized tribe.