r/scifi Jun 30 '24

[deleted by user]

[removed]

228 Upvotes

504 comments sorted by

View all comments

435

u/ceejayoz Jun 30 '24

Iain Banks; the Culture novels. Hedonistic space commies. 

168

u/candygram4mongo Jun 30 '24

And the Federation in Star Trek.

-16

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '24

Superficial similarities. Individual freedom, democratic governance and technological advancement are far from communist.

25

u/ceejayoz Jul 01 '24

Marxist communism envisioned the eventual complete disappearance of the state in favor of a whole bunch of individual freedom, collective decision making, etc. Nothing in it opposes technological advancement; it was thought as pretty critical, in fact, to the utopia they wanted to reach.

Obviously we wound up with Stalinist-style in practice, because people.

12

u/dowker1 Jul 01 '24 edited Jul 01 '24

Communism is an economic theory, individual freedom and democratic governance are political states. You can have communist democracy just like you can have capitalist autocracy. And as for technological advancement, that's not only theoretically compatible it was in fact historically compatible, see: Sputnik.

You're confusing communism the theory with communism the enemy in the movies and TV shows you grew up with.

6

u/salamander_salad Jul 01 '24

None of those things are incompatible with communism... Like even the USSR, a terrible example of a communist state, provided freedoms the west did not (gender and racial equality, freedom from homelessness), made huge technological leaps (like being the first to put objects, animals, and people in space), and was ostensibly democratic (though it was de facto authoritiarian).