Marx said that communism would evolve naturally with neighbour working with neighbour and community working with community. It also involved democracy by electing officials where necessary. He didn’t mention state control, so no, we have not remotely experienced communism.
You might argue, even correctly, that communism is unworkable, but you can’t argue that humans have tried it in modern history and it failed.
I think you can.
I think what happened was exactly what will always happen when people try real communism.
Like any political system it will be brought down by the aspects of human nature it misunderstands or misrepresents.
You have to compare what went before it as well. China is a success compared to the utter slavery and poverty of the common folk before the communist revolution. It’s not freedom exactly, but even the US isn’t free either by many measures. China has guaranteed vacation days, at least. It has near universal health insurance, and while not free, is heavily subsidized by the government.
I’d say that a perfect form of government doesn’t exist, but communism isn’t necessarily the worst. At least in every regard.
That comparison is absolutely essential when looking at history and reality, I agree.
If you’re looking at abstract theory, maybe less relevant.
But then, is there any meaningful discussion of political theory in the abstract? Maybe it should always be grounded in real history since that’s the highest quality evidence.
The trouble with theories is they only work theoretically!
Absolutely agree.
I just want a roof over everyone’s head and food on everyone’s plate and I dont give a fuck how we call it or how we get there as long as we get there.
To paraphrase “A Canticle For Leibowitz”
Humans like to think they are a race of rational tool makers, actually we’re a race of impassioned after dinner speakers.
Arguing about religion and politics is what we do best
Was it a state?
Yes?
It was not communist
Communist state is an oxymoron
Says the person who posted this in an anti-ML/anti-stalinist/anti-tankie comm.
If you knew that communism means a stateless, classless society, why do you ask crap like if mwog is becoming anticommunist?
https://lemmy.world/post/50386781
“I hate communism because communists are delusional psychopaths”
70+ upvotes
Vistix is wrong about their definition of communists and there is way more to that post than that comment.
Also one fucking post doesnt say that the comm is anticommunist when there are tons of comments in the comm where people say MLs arent communists and that a lot of frequenters view communism as a positive ideal if you dont equate communism with ML.
also, I said BECOMING, not IS
Based on the fact that a lot of MLs call the comm anticommunist. It sure sounds like you wanted to make us look bad. Especially when it you made a post about it based on one post in the comm. Again. Leave us alone. I wont ask you again.
That was not my intention, and im not an ml.
Bye
I never said you were. But based on how many people hate the comm, the rhetoric makes it sound like bad intentions.
77 upvotes while mwog only has 84 users a day
a HUGE portion of the daily users
You cant read for shit can you?
Also I have noticed with other groups that the users per day number is pretty broken.
Like I have had posts with nearly 100 votes in groups that had “users per day” in the single digits.
because in the post about “hating communism due to propaganda”, I saw a LOT of anticommunism
Oh, so like the Native Americans?
Honestly a great example and like every other time ruined by North Americans.
This is an undereducated, reductionist take if I’ve ever seen one.
I mean it seriously was never done. Even those autocratic parties that named themselves communist parties never said that they reached communism. It was always the goal to work towards.
An easy to remember analogy is: communism is to socialism what the paradise is to Christianity.
A holy land promised by some bearded guy, where everybody lives perfectly and no bad things happen. And since it is so perfect, we are justified in killing and subjugating everyone in order to bring them also to this promised land, they will come around when they reach it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
since the lemmy tankies love to quote fallacies so much
Except Marx laid out specific conditions for communism and none have been met by regimes who claim the title.
No person should use the name communism as a slur, and no person should claim to be a communist until they have at least read Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto.
Both sides might just leave it alone.
Ah, so the only real communism is marxism?
Once again, Marx did not describe Marxism. Other people did for their own ends.
All Marx did was examine capitalism and compare it to pre-capatalist societies. For instance, a shoemaker could once feed his family for a five day week on making two sets of boots. A factory owner sets up and employs him and he now makes parts of 22 pairs of boots - working 6 days a week for the same money. That is and observation and a critique. He said that all this did was exploit his labour and transfered his monetary value to the factory owner. Furthermore, this situation was unnecessary and society would EVOLVE away from capital-based labour to a social-based way of living. I’m not saying that he was right or wrong. Inherent in all this was seizing the means of production, but not necessary by or for state control.
Marx also got a lot wrong by his own admission. He never understood why England didn’t fall to revolution in 1848 (for instance) because he thought that the time was ideal.
All I’m really saying is that throwing around these terms may not reflect the reality and that time must be spent coming to grips with them. It can be really rewarding, but that might be just me?
Taleya, I think, is alluding to the fact there are also non-Marxist forms of communism.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_ideologies#Anarchist_communism
Gotcha
I feel like no true scotsman is one of the most misused fallacies
x is not y because it claims to be y
if I said that true scotsmen are from scotsland and/or their parent(s) are scottish, that is NOT a no true scotsman
You just made an enemy for life!
grabs popcorn
You could argue that most pre-agricultural societies were ‘true communism.’
and they would starve with the population density of today
Realistically, the world could have had Star Trek style post scarcity as early as 1950.
You either die to imperialism or live long enough to become one.
Well, Gaul was taken over by the Romans and Britania was invaded by, well, everybody, so I guess that’s true.
“This is gold”
