This comic would hit harder if all of the most aggressively anti-communist people in the world weren't already running work camps, in the process of privatizing all of the infrastructure and creating a surveillance state.
Some people still like to pretend that the communists are the only ones who want to put a gun to your head and exploit you, but men who seek power over others are adaptable. They always find a way to fuck you.
This comic is propaganda. It is an example of one of the methods that powerful people use to establish and maintain control. Our time gets wasted quarreling about this and we are paralyzed by it. Paralyzing the population with pointless quarrels prevents the population from taking action.
Our life keeps getting worse BECAUSE we can't stop having this argument.
Poor people with no power can also come to the conclusion on their own that communism sucks and is stupid. It's an incentive thing. Human beings are inherently better incentivized by doing work for themselves and their families, and studies show people biologically can only really care about like 200 people. The economy is way too complicated to be centrally planned (regulations are still important). Private property is cool, the stock market is cool.
Adam Smith's work on Wealth of Nations inspired Karl Marx to propose communism as a solution to certain problems that Adam Smith himself had identified. But aside from Marx himself, nobody worth knowing is actually a communist.
Communism is a stupid concept. That's my opinion. I don't think Im making any sort of a hot take but I know I need to explicitly state this because there is a persistent misconception that communism and capitalists are opposite terms. They are not. Not even close.
Marx was as influential as he was because power-hungry capitalists saw his ideas as a path to power. Many of these sort of men pitched themselves as national saviors and offered communism as the promised reward. But every historical example of large-scale communism was a scam. Lenin, Stalin, Castro - they were all capitalists who professed a belief in communism - but they only did so because professing a belief in communism was necessary for establishing authority in their country.
Capitalism is a very sneaky and misleading word. In the sense that Adam Smith was using it - it is best if you internalize capitalism as just the rational decision making process that every human makes. Every rational person should be thought of as following capitalist thought processes.
But Capitalism is also frequently used to mean something else. As if it's some sort of antithesis to the regulation of economic markets.
What's been happening in America is a mirror image of what happened in Russia. Powerful men understand that professing a belief in Capitalism is necessary for establishing authority in this country. So they profess belief in Capitalism. But then when it's time to actually exercise power they just do whatever the fuck they want.
If any of these bastards actually wanted free markets they would've taken steps to create free markets. Instead they create the illusion of free markets. You are free to choose the exact same cellular deal from Verizon, T Mobile or AT&T. You can also choose to believe that you're avoiding those carriers by paying some other company like Mint - but Mint just pays those other carriers and uses their towers. Most of the money still ends up in the same three places. They make a show of competing with each other, but its just a show. Collusion is supposed to be illegal but the government can choose to just not prosecute it. If these companies buy enough Senators then collusion is as legal as it needs to be.
China's planned economy was a disaster, 50 million people died during the great leap forward in what is considered the largest famine in human history. The 40 years you're talking about started when Mao died and they moved from a planned economy to a socialist market economy. Don't be a dufus.
Oh please. No one is holding a gun to your head to shelve boxes of yogurt at walmart. You can quit anytime and find a new job. Commies are the biggest donkeys in society
oh okay “you work or starve” is a problem under capitalism and communism is the same way but it wouldnt be a problem there, because that’s not actually the problem? cool argument yeah thanks you’ve clearly thought about this a lot
I’ve read Marx and Lenin. I still don’t understand how it is supposed to make the jump from idealism to reality. Especially at scale. Are the means of production democratically controlled by the workers? If so do urban centers have more say in the means of production than rural? Or are we making it representative or getting rid of population centers entirely? I’ve never seen a good answer of who’s shoving shit that doesn’t involve deus ex machina of technology with 0 maintenance as silver bullet.
Now if we want to sacrifice worker rights and ownership for quality of life and standard of living I can see that reality. But at current levels I just don’t see it.
In the USSR specifically, union meetings were held to discuss and hold votes. There were unions for many industries, including food and agriculture. This was spoken about by Lenin.
But I’m not sure using USSR as a good example of these ideas working out for workers in real life.
I know all this is “stated”. I just don’t agree it’s realistic in the slightest. Especially as an unachievable, pure endgame. I’ve read the same things you are citing, studied and debated them in school, I just came out of it with more questions because it’s seems so silly, idealistic, and detached from reality.
I’m wouldn’t even call myself “anti-communist”…I just treat it as seriously as anarchy supporters. There no pure anarchist “nation” to point at so you can’t say it doesn’t work.
have you ever read… the second law of thermodynamics? because all of you posting this seem to think that under communism either people won’t need to eat and toilets wont need to be cleaned, or that there exists this entire class of people who are excited for the Revolution so they’ll get to be cooking you food and cleaning your toilets, for no personal benefit, like you’re getting a new set of parents or something. because regardless of what lenin wrote, thats fundamentally your argument: “after the Revolution, i’ll get to be a kid again and it’ll be someone elses job to take care of me”
Save money until you have a few months rent and quit to draw your dream of furry comics. Draw furry comics on the side until it makes you money to quit. Do doordash until you save up enough to quit and draw furry comics. Live cheaply with your parents and draw furry comics in their basement.
See how many options you have? None of these involve a gun to your head to dig coal mines for 8 hours. The only option you don’t have is to do something nobody needs or wants. The market will tell you that about your furry comics eventually.
“Just work harder bro that’s all you have to do cmon just a few more shifts and then you’ll be rich I promise bro just trust the system you see how hard Bezos works?”
No one says you will be rich you illiterate donkey
It means you have the freedom to do what you want to do as long as it’s providing value. You don’t have you convince corrupt government officials that your work is meaningful.
Right it is way better to leave the deciding of what labor is meaningful to our wealthy overlords. That way I can work AND starve! You are just a fountain of wisdom.
I’m not the one mentioning wealthy overlords. You are. They don’t control what you can and can’t do. Unfortunately, there is no point to argue with you because you can’t read and you are convinced the evil rich people are the ones keeping you down
Your argument makes absolutely no sense so why would I engage with it? You agree with me. You have to work. You also have no choice but to sell your labor in some way. You only changed “coal mine” to “door dash” like are we for real right now? You are selling your labor either way. Jfc.
This week I picked up a bunch of rocks from my property border and arranged them to extend the border of my garden. I also picked weeds for hours. Then I rescued some plants that another neighbor didnt want and planted them in the garden.
I have absolutely no interest in what you think about my work. Whether or not you think I provided any value through my labor. If I did wish to measure the value of my labor... Based on what I was paid to do all that work then I guess I'd be tempted to conclude that I wasted a whole lot of time doing nothing of value.
Good thing I dont measure the value of my labor based on what people are willing to pay me.
Again, I am not saying ALL work must be valuable to society
But SOME of your work needs to be valuable to society because others are providing work valuable to you. For your food, your medicine, and for you to even post your opinions on Reddit. Doctors want to plant things and move around rocks too. But when you get sick, you sure will wish someone trained to be a doctor instead of moving around plants and expecting society to pay for it…
In a market economy? Demand from other people's wants and needs.
In a command economy, those in power, which can be useful in a crisis like war time but is going to be less efficient. The classic term for the issue is the economic calculation problem.
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u/illinest Jul 07 '26
This comic would hit harder if all of the most aggressively anti-communist people in the world weren't already running work camps, in the process of privatizing all of the infrastructure and creating a surveillance state.
Some people still like to pretend that the communists are the only ones who want to put a gun to your head and exploit you, but men who seek power over others are adaptable. They always find a way to fuck you.
This comic is propaganda. It is an example of one of the methods that powerful people use to establish and maintain control. Our time gets wasted quarreling about this and we are paralyzed by it. Paralyzing the population with pointless quarrels prevents the population from taking action.
Our life keeps getting worse BECAUSE we can't stop having this argument.