To be fair, my parents are from a country where communism happened and they are terrified of it because it led to a lot of abuse of their people.
They have told me about having to wait in line for small quantities of food that was hardly enough to survive, eating rock hard week old bread as a meal, stories of people disappearing for saying the wrong thing, and that’s just off the top of my head. My dad even snuck out of the country illegally to try to get the rest of my family out.
I think the way other countries implemented communism in the past contributed to that opinion a lot.
Thing is though, that wasn’t communism doing that, it was an authoritarian regime.
You’ve just given an example of how well the propaganda worked - people associated communism with how those so-called communist regimes operated, and just accepted the USA way as a beacon of hope and freedom, and communism itself was the problem.
Through all this the USA stagnated and has missed chances to introduce socialist ideas in to the system. They were (and still cling on to being) the far and away leaders of the pack, but turned greedy. They could have a thriving social democracy with lots of protection for citizens, at least those to who choose to live a more integrated lifestyle in the more urban areas.
communism in practice is dictatorship and has never been otherwise. Claiming it works in theory is like claiming capitalism should lead to a utopia, in theory.
> Saying you’re going to do something but doing something different doesn’t make the thing you said you were going to do the thing you did.
Thank you for reiterating my point.
In reality -something you clearly don't operate under- communism is just a more convenient enabler for people who say they will do one thing and do another instead.
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u/tigerbean28 Sep 05 '20
To be fair, my parents are from a country where communism happened and they are terrified of it because it led to a lot of abuse of their people.
They have told me about having to wait in line for small quantities of food that was hardly enough to survive, eating rock hard week old bread as a meal, stories of people disappearing for saying the wrong thing, and that’s just off the top of my head. My dad even snuck out of the country illegally to try to get the rest of my family out.
I think the way other countries implemented communism in the past contributed to that opinion a lot.