Even from people that never lived in a communist state
edit: im 17 and i hate communism
Lemmy, the social network, started off as a leftist hangout spot.
From the perspective of “Open Source developers who are anti-Reddit pro-Fediverse”, it makes a lot of sense for Leftist/Communist and anti-corporation leaning people to hang out.
After all, the more extreme the viewpoint, the more driven to action (ie: write tens-of-thousands of lines of code and release for free) people get. In some regards, its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology. IE: Free Software is driven by ideology, not by money. So you get ideological people, especially when the software is small and niche.
The July 2023 Reddit Blackout was a big challenge for Lemmy’s old community and the new community, as the new community basically “invaded” a large scale leftist hangout spot. But hopefully we all learn to work together and the nature of our neighbors moving forward.
I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion. Which is enough of an alliance to keep us together, for now.
It does mean that we’ll have to keep up with the far-left old-timers on this network who wish to push their viewpoints. But they are the legacy and the start of Lemmy in some respects, even as the hypergrowth (starting in July 2023) has moderated the community pretty severely.
I don’t see the problem with people having communist views…capitalism isn’t great.
Yeah, the problem is that you have instances like Hexbear and Lemmy.ml that tread more into tankie territory, where if you argue anything less than the complete annihilation of the West and hail China, you’re likely to get harassed. I think rational people can agree that there’s a pretty gap between “The current system is corrupt” and "anyone who thinks differently than me should die,’ but I’ve seen plenty of irrational leftists.
I mean, I don’t have much problem with people disagreeing with me. But I’m pretty openly pro-capitalist, though I’m not a dumbass libertarian.
I recognize the need for the “capitalist edge cases” (externalities, monopolies, etc. etc.) that must be regulated and fixed for the system to work. I also recognize that we’ve failed to regulate externalities (ex: CO2 emissions), and failed to regulate monopolies / anticompetitive behavior (see Google).
So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
Overall, I accept that the commies / tankies were here first, and the history of Lemmy makes it clear why that happened.
So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
Right there with you.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
We also HAVE to teach the kids how to protect it better than people did 100 years ago. Most of our problems today stem from people voting to remove “useless red tape” (that was put there for damn good reasons).
The Marxist answer to why the red tape is removed is not because people directly vote for it, but that the State serves the bourgeoisie.
My problem with communist views is they’re unproven and have only lead to authoritarian governments when put into play.
Capitalism has regularly gone off the rails … but not to the degree communism has. Capitalism has been defending democracy for the last few centuries, not communism.
These are the nations that identify as communist:
- China (PRC)
- Cuba
- Laos
- North Korea (DPRK)
- Vietnam
These countries were previously communist and (of that has that) have pretty much only improved since transitioning to democracy with capitalist economic systems:
- Afghanistan
- Albania
- Angola
- Benin
- Bulgaria
- Congo
- Czechoslovakia
- Ethiopia
- Germany (GDR)
- Grenada
- Hungary
- Kampuchea
- Mongolia
- Mozambique
- Poland
- Romania
- Somalia
- Soviet Union
- Tuva
- Yemen (PDRY)
- Yugoslavia
That’s not to say that capitalism doesn’t have its problems, people here aren’t angry with it over nothing. However, if you really look at the problems it’s had, they all come down to voter manipulation and/or apathy “things are going good, why do I need to worry about politics?”.
We didn’t just wake up with weakened labor unions, weakened voter rights, weakened infrastructure, etc; we got their because of generations of apathy and frankly electing the wrong people. People that cut taxes, asked “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” (short term gain), allowed our unions to be broken up, allowed jobs to be exported over seas to communist China (which is now one of the greatest international threats), bought the cheapest products (from mom and dad at the store to the executives running major corporations) without asking why they’re cheap, etc.
The “common people” cast the votes that ultimately lead to corporations being people. The “middle class” cost votes that ultimately lead to the middle class shrinking.
I think it’s naive that communism somehow automatically makes those problems go away/means we’ll never end up with similar problems. Especially when communist countries are consistently doing worse/falling into authoritarian rule.
We need to expand our social programs, reign in our billionaires, and reign in our corporations and we’d be a lot better off. Capitalism works so long as you don’t let anyone or anything get “too big to fail.” Capitalism doesn’t have to be capitalism without limits. The reigns of power will always be challenged no matter what system we find ourselves under, only an educated vigilant population can stop that.
Capitalism “going off the rails” completely understates it. The history of the last 500 years is soaked in the blood of the capitalism. Voter apathy has nothing to do with it. Enthusiastic voters gave us genocide of indigenous peoples of North America, the nuclear bombing of Japan, and currently a 75 year genocide of Palestinians. Not to mention things that voters do not have even the semblance of a choice, such as CIA activities in the 20th century which led to bloody coups in Indonesia, Chile, and Iran, just to name 3.
You need to incorporate class analysis or else nothing makes sense. Why do American voters get shitty choices that reduce their power to the advantage of the wealthy oligarch class? Why are there oligarchs if capitalism doesn’t tend to monopoly? Does voting actually do anything? Why does the electoral college still exist? Why did Americans support the Iraq War? What role did the media serve?
I think it’s naive that communism somehow automatically makes those problems go away/means we’ll never end up with similar problems. Especially when communist countries are consistently doing worse/falling into authoritarian rule.
Communism doesn’t automatically make anything go away. The point is that the ruling class of capitalists are an obstacle to making things go away. I’m not sure what is your criteria for authoritarian rule. Capitalist countries are authoritarian too, it’s basically a meaningless signifier coming out of cold war propaganda that said communism = dictatorship and capitalism = muh freedom. The democratic processes in China and Cuba of example are lightyears ahead of what you can find in the US or European parliamentary so-called democracies.
What are you on about? “its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology”? Aside from your first sentence, this is just baseless word salad.
I mean just that.
Open source developers are not paid in money. One of the other major motivators is ideology, so that becomes a major motivator in practice.
All I can say is that you clearly have no familiarity with open source development or the active contributors within it.
Be careful where you tread here. You must be careful to separate “communists” (people who believe in economic reorganization away from the power of capital) and “tankies” (those who support corrupt regimes that project the illusion of communism).
There are indeed quite a few communists and various other alt-camp political spectrum believers on here. They do have quite liberal beliefs but don’t typically cause much of a fuss, because rational people can coexist with differing beliefs… and i dont mind them one bit. But the tankes, like lemmygrad, hexbear, etc, do stir up an anti-west "commie propaganda"fuss every chance they get, without being related to actual communism, especially if one mentions a hot button like Israel or Ukraine. And if you get into an argument with a tankie, they will just sling mud on you and call you a Nazi.
The cool part is, you can filter a lot of the chaff by just blocking the ugly instances from your user settings page (since Lemmy supports that now), blocking frequent flyers, and trimming/moving your subscribed community list to other, often smaller instances. A minimal amount of effort VASTLY increases the quality of content you’ll see on lemmy.
Multiple reasons.
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Lemmy was crested by and is maintained by Marxist-Leninists.
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Lemmy’s structure and rejection of the Profit Motive is in line with Communist ideals, and attracts Communists and other leftists over Reddit, which is Capitalist.
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FOSS in general is supported by Communists and Anarchists.
Point 3 is true for almost any group you can think of. Communists, anarchists, Baptists, disestablishmentarians, etc., for any large group of people of course some of them will advocate for FOSS.
some of them
Implying that not all communists and anarchists are FOSS-advocates
We are, for obvious reasons
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I’ve lived all my life under capitalism and I hate it.
I’ve read Marx, (for real, grab the book and read it!) and I see the dude does have a point.
I strongly recommend you to read Animal Farm, it’s very easy to understand
I’ve read it.
Orwell was socialist my dude.
Ever read one of his other books Down and Out in Paris and London?
It helps explain why he is a socialist.
I recommend actually reading Marx and Lenin, and not fictitious allegories about strawmen
allegories are much better at explaining theories, you guys always say that it was never actually implemented. And I’m not gonna read something from a man who occupied my country in 1921
Allegories can help explain theories, but they are never sufficient to understand it. Animal Farm is an allegory of a strawman, it barely touches reality. And it’s no wonder you are that embedded in propaganda, it’s normal.
You mean Orwell’s classic anti-capitalist novel wherein a worker’s rebellion against tyrannical bosses is betrayed by capitalist pigs who re-create the farm’s original conditions for their own profit?
You should read his “Homage to Catalonia”, Orwell fought against capitalists in Spain’s civil war and wrote a book about his experiences there.
I recommend you learn from real books about real life like those of Marx and Lenin, not fiction.
I thought the same many years ago, until I saw how it went for every single country that implemented communism and then I didnt like it so much. You all seriously think is a coincidence?
You gotta look the context and learn about geopolitics. If Communism is so bad why the USA need to keep interfering with Cuba?
Lets compare Cuba with other Caribbean islands, how they perform against those? Remember they are blocked by the strongest country in the world.
Cuba developed its own covid vaccine, cuba sends doctors to africa in order to help people there, when Italia was in a health crisis Cuba sent thousands of doctors.
Cuba has the most advanced and inclusive family laws in the world.
Edit: btw Awesome album and Lemmy was an Anarchist.
The language can be a bit tough to understand these days though so might want to read Ted Reese’s Socialism Or Extinction instead
I’d recommend Chris Harman’s How Marxism Works for an intro, or Engels’ Principles of Communism. The Manifesto is more of a call to action for Workers than an overview of Communism, though it’s still an important work nonetheless.
Especially people who never lived in a communist state
Especially people who never lived in a communist state
That’s a rather impossible requirement, considering that all “communist states” to date have been oligarchic autocracies that were just as much about communism as they were democratic.
Real communism is market ownership by the people, and not some elite cabal of politicians or capitalists. And a top-down planned economy is pretty much anti-communism, as it violates the very fundamentals of communism as being worker-driven.
considering that all “communist states” to date have been oligarchic autocracies
And you think that is a coincidence?
Considering how America is moving towards that same state, with it’s Republicans?
No, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Oligarchic autocracies can occur under any circumstances where a power-hungry elite manage to wrest control by using the masses as “useful idiots”. The Conservative leadership, in general, have learned this trick very well.
I think you should read Marx. State planning is definitely in line with Communism, the state is of the Workers and not a separate entity in Socialism and Communism.
Sure I’ll just go in my alt-history time travel machine and be born in a communist state. Sorry for suggesting we improve things somewhat?
You don’t even need to travel in time to feel the communist spirit, just go to any post-soviet country and see the reality for yoursef.
You mean the capitalist ex-Soviet states? Lmao.
Part of the problem is capitalist regimes keep sending assassins to murder leaders of communist movements, such as FBI killing the Black Panther leaders.
Law enforcement in the US is harassing mutual aid organizations. Maybe they’re afraid we’ll repair the park fences and deny some business a choice government contract?
While you’re not wrong, it’s important to retain a global perspective. There are “communist” leaders that were total pieces of shit and while they did have help, that help wasn’t always capitalist. Stalin is an example here.
And then there’s pieces of shit who were supported by external forces, but not by capitalist regimes seeking to undermine them. I’m not 100% confident in this history, and there’s no way I’m going to spell his name right, but, the Romanian piece if shit, Caucescu (???) came to power riding a wave of support from the Nazis. Hitler didn’t do it to destabilize Romania, but because he was like, “there’s some good old fashioned fascist genociders down there, let’s give them more guns.” And those fascist genociders were technically communists.
What I’m getting at is that the enemies of a worker-ruled communist state are many, and many of those enemies are within their own systems. Communism, like every other system, suffers from the fact that there are humans involved. Just because a communism exists doesn’t mean it’s going to be utopia.
But that also doesn’t mean that communism can’t be good, or at least better.
As a note, fascism is a tool of industrialist plutocrats to extend the life of their power as worker class quality of life deteriorates. While Hoover was in power during the Great Depression, US industrialists were looking to Hitler and Mussolini while laborers were looking to the Soviet Union.
As per the Christian nationalist movement / transnational white power movement in the US, our dependence on capitalism has driven us to the verge of civil war, and a push by the Republican party to single-party autocracy and purges of undesirable demographics, including the impoverished and homeless.
I can’t speak to Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu except to say autocracy always tends to go badly, with power consolidated until abuse and corruption is inevitable.
The whole idea behind communism is to imagine what a functional public serving state would look like, and then how to get there from here. Marx speculates on steps that might work to get to a starting point, but much like the framers of the Constitution of the United States, he didn’t know everything and couldn’t predict how it all plays out in given circumstances.
(US constitutional framers never did democracy before. They favored landowners. They assumed common homesteaders would be driven to understand and vote for their own best interests. And they got broadsided by the industrial revolution. Also, FPTP elections and two-party systems suck.)
We know civil wars tend to lead to serial dictatorships and foreign influencers looking to exploit economic vulnerability. We also grassroots mutual aid movements take generations and are prone to disruption by time and circumstances, particularly raiders and police forces. So we’re still trying to chart the geography between here and utopia.
Because there are a lot of communists on lemmy?
Some can be very annoying. If you haven’t blocked hexbear, I highly recommend it. They got exiled from reddit years ago and have been stewing in a tankie echo chamber ever since.
Hexbear aren’t communists, they’re just using it as a facade to spread propaganda.
90% of the shit spouted about Hexbear is just baseless nonsense. Soon as you actually try to have a good faith discussion, they’re hecka cool.
They’re abrasive kinda like Twitch Chat, but many are reasonable.
Because there’s nothing wrong with being communist, and yet most of western civilization publicly demonizes communism and anyone who espouses communist views. Given the freedom to share an idea without fearing ad hominem attacks, ideas are judged on their merits alone.
See also: Satanism, Atheism, Socialism.
There’s nothing wrong with communism or being communist, correct. But what we know for fact is that the human species is incompatible with communism, moreso as the population is increased. There is, by nature, traits within that are antagonistic with communism. Communism has failed every time. Our best efforts so far are embracing some communist ideals whilst pandering around with others.
Will we get there? Probably.
Within this era? Hell no. We’ve only just started evolving an adaption to a shrinking planet and working with neighbours. However, as you know we’re still very divided, tribalistic, and prone to taking whatever advantages we can get. This is, after all, how we got to be number 1 and millions of years of evolution can’t be stifled or changed in mere generations.
This is the realisation most people have during year 3 or 4 of the college communist phase. You accept the reality of Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm, that human nature is why we can’t have nice things…yet. I reckon around 2100–2150, after we’ve been through some more shit together and wanked another world war out of our system.
Will it last? Probably not lol.
But what we know for fact is that the human species is incompatible with communism
Sorry what? How on earth would such a thing even be established as fact? This is a very bold claim.
Communism has failed every time.
I’m always really interested in what people mean when they say this. Is it that no organisation that has tried has managed to realise the utopia Marx predicted? Is it that they tend to lose wars with the USA? Is it that great suffering has occurred?
What is a system that has not failed? Like it’s pretty apparent whatever we’re doing now isn’t working. We’re in a mass extinction, the climate is destabilising, homelessness and sickness exist alongside people that personally own jet aircraft.
Genuinely I would love to know what specifically you mean because I see this a lot and it confuses the hell out of me.
Hopeful aside btw. Lord of the flies basically happened once except the kids all banded together and helped each other because humans are actually extremely pro social. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
Sorry what? How on earth would such a thing even be established as fact? This is a very bold claim.
I don’t want to sound patronising, but you have access to the entirety of our species’ history. It’s more about going through it to try find a time where it has worked. Beyond the exception of small communities, in every case I know of it has failed before maturing to a complete enough state—this actually includes some of those small communities too. Unless you’re confusing socialism with communism because of all it’s socialist traits.
I don’t want to sound patronising, but you have access to the entirety of our species’ history
I mean, do you? You think early man was a rugged individualist who pulled himself up by his boot straps?
Homosapiens survived hundreds of thousands of years as a result of collectivism and sharing resources, which are the central tenets of communism. From a historical perspective, the ideas that underpin capitalism - private ownership, the elite controlling the means of production, individuals acting in their own self-interest - came about only very, very recently.
Unironically “why didn’t Marx think of human nature lol”
Actually read a book and stop trying to sound like a smartass asserting stuff on the basis of “it feels true”.
Must be the lizard people then, huh? I mean, if human nature has had nothing to do with the outcome of Marxism’s lack of uptake in global societies and cultures- Oh wait, I’m doing it again. Just because that “feels true” is might not be so. I’m learning…
So, since that’s all a lie and I’m clearly unaware that Maxism is actually wildly successful across the globe, please, recommend a book so I can keep riding the Revelation Train.
I would like to know why people keep bringing up Karl on a comment about communism. Maybe he has works you know about which explains how they are synonymous. Any literature with that would help since everything I’ve read clearly disassociated and outlines the two, including Karl’s own writings.
Marxism lack of global uptake on a map:
States that had communist governments in red, states that the Soviet Union believed at one point to be moving toward socialism in orange and other socialist states in yellow. Not all of the bright red states remained Soviet allies.
I didn’t know “human nature” was shorthand for “current capitalist states”.
Dunno about communist unless you count the tankies which I don’t see on the main instances.
Lots of socialist stuff though.
Socialism — the dictatorship of the working-class — is the transitional mode of production between capitalism — the dictatorship of the capitalist class — and the stateless, classless mode of production that is communism. You can’t really separate the two.
American says communism and means socialism
American says communism and means conservative democrat or Trump Republican, depending on who is saying it.
AES barely even registers, except for the occasional “Why don’t you move to Vuvuzela!”
Why isn’t anyone defending AEC countries?
Nobody actually wants to be Estonia anymore
It is a communist platform, you will find communists
“I’m 14 and very edgy.”
Sounds like you probably are
why not? if you’d like a more capitalist experience you can always go to reddit. don’t forget to download their shitty app that no longer has competitors.
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As Marx predicted a hundred years ago
I think it’s because my rent is a third of my income and im not allowed to function without not only feeding the parasites but making them morbidly obese.
so first you choose these parasites and then you hate them? How unfortunate…
First you choose to be a wage slave and then you hate your bosses?It’s not really a choice. If you don’t want to be on the streets then you have two options: buy or rent. (There is a third: squatting, but that has its own downsides.) Presumably riodoro1 can’t buy (or has chosen not to for some other reason) and doesn’t want to be homeless or a squatter.
Why do you hate communism?
Nobody has ever actually done real communism on a national scale. The closest is probably the USSR, but that was a disaster because it was an authoritarian dictatorship that funneled money and power to the top. People only got token representation, the people were not actually in charge of anything, they got no real say in their leadership. Doesn’t matter that it was structured like communism says it should be, the reality of it was anything but communism.
Real communism would probably be pretty decent. There wouldn’t be too much to hate about it other than what you’d dislike in any government.
The problem is the humans running it. It’s a constant battle against power-hungry and self-serving people being in charge, just like any government, and no nation espousing communism has ever managed to prevent authoritarianism and basic kleptocratic people from settling in and running the show.
- I am not for communism or here to espouse any virtues it might have. The concept of communism certainly has appeal and presents many benefits, however the reality of implementation and human nature virtually guarantee it will never achieve its intended form.
Real communism will never work for the same reason a completely free market would never work.
Too many people are greedy and selfish.
People are shaped by their environment, people seem greedy and selfish because of Capitalism. Primitive communism existed for thousands of years, and people were cooperative and communal.
Why do you believe selfish and greedy people existing in Communism would strain or ruin it?
Communism is by definition a society without a state, so nobody has ever lived in a communist state and I doubt there has ever been a communist society in recorded history.
That is at a ‘state’ level, there are still smaller level communist places to live. Like where the word ‘Commune’ comes from and what communism was derived from and attempted to expand into. There are communes all over the world. US included. There is a famous one in London, lots of large ones in Spain. They are communities that exist in their own bubble of micro economics within their larger communities of normal living. You should look it up. They are interesting and normally very appealing.
Comminism, along Marxist lines, is meant to have a World Repunlic. It will have a government, but not a state.
Communes are more along Anarchist lines.
Comminism isn’t anarchic, Anarcho-Communism is. While it’s true that Communism has never been reached, it isn’t because government remained. The State in Marxian terms refers to the mechanisms by which one class oppresses the other, once class is abolished there need not be a state.
Communism was always meant to be a world republic.
Communism is by definition a society without a state, so nobody has ever lived in a communist state
The last stage of the Marxist evolution of communism involves the decay of state institutions through neglect, as they become redundant in a post-scarcity no-cops Utopia.
But there are a bunch of prior stages (including capitalist industrialization even!) that are neglected. And even then, the utopian end-game is routinely disputed by the subsequent generations of Leninists and Maoists who believe we will never truly escape the revolutionary cycle.
There absolutely are Already Existing Socialist states attempting to move themselves from primitive accumulation, through industrial capitalism, and into a collectively governed socialist post-scarcity society. And people absolutely are living in them. And none of them are Utopian (although the quality of life in many of these countries is exhaustively propagandized to be by degrees to be between Unbearably Hellish and FALGSC-adjacent).
The problems that these countries typically have, however, aren’t ones that armchair communists on a niche western internet platform are capable of solving. You’re not going to break the Cuban blockade. You’re not going to settle the endless territorial disputes plaguing Vietnam. You’re not going to undo the legacy of generations of apartheid in South Africa overnight. You’re not going to Make the USSR Great Again.
So maybe save yourself some angst and stop trying to tell Nicholas Maduro and Kim Jung Un how to do their jobs. Maybe worry more about why your local chapter of the DSA can’t get a teacher’s union off the ground.
