Give me one example of a communist country that didn't immediately devolve into totalitarianism.
That's the problem. Patch Communism to remove the dictator/elite class exploit please. I wanna like this game but I can't support a movement that just reshuffles the elite class. Classless. No hierarchy. Nerf ambitious psychopaths. Nerf people's tendencies to simp for them.
The problem with communism is that Russia was the first to try it and their culture revolves around corruption so much that it is unable to separate "us vs them" and the idea of personal gain from the ideals of communal wealth, which is the core of what communism is.
Russia then exports their flawed model to countries flipping due to frustrations born from the system capitalistic imperialism. The world has only ever had Russian style communism - either Lenin or Trotsky. No one uses German communism, like what Marx was proposing, ACTUAL communism.
Right. And now most (loud) internet communists simp for the hammer and sickle and act like Stalin did nothing wrong but from my POV there's no actual difference between Nazi Germany and Soviet Union or CCP. The end result is identical. Oppression.
I honestly don't think humanity is capable of true communism because somebody somewhere with a high CHA score and a complete sociopath is gonna herd the sheep into yet another bullshit dictatorship. And people can't help but simp for these people. To me it's completely crazy and when I bring this up to people IRL they look at me like I'm the crazy one.
This is not a defense for the status quo however.
There is non-state communism. This whole state or national communism thing is the new creation. With which Lenin shit the bed on multiple fronts. Centralizing power, to be wielded by a somewhat benevolent dictator. A thing that generally does not exist. And in the small instances it ever did was short-lived. Counting that they would be good judges of character and would never let control fall into the lap of monsters like Stalin Etc. Lenin may have had good intentions. But he is the Bad Luck Brian of good intentions. And his road to hell was definitely paved with them.
Traditional communism, of the variety Marx discussed was a significantly different beast. That's why the Soviets, China, and North Korea are all specifically classified as ML Communism. The L being for Lenin. Anarcho communist are anti-totalitarian. They are also anti-government structure in general. Well at least at the extremes. There is a bit of a gradient. But communism isn't what a lot of us have been educated to think that it is.
Finally an anarchist meme. I've had it with all the tankies on Lemmy.
Me and the boys looking for a single communist country that wasn't a totalitarian hellhole:
Me, looking for a single communist country.
I hate being that person but communism has essentially been exclusively used as a campaign promise by corrupt/evil groups attempting to seize power from the population.
Broadly speaking, people don't understand communism and assume it just means "you own nothing and share everything. And starve."
Just like people argue that crony capitalism isn't capitalism, totalitarian communism isn't communism. Corruption is the real problem.
Corruption is the real problem and all systems must develop a tolerance of it to some degree.
It seems to me, when looking at the history of communism, that it has a particularly low tolerance for corruption and that things go to shit quick.
It's not that true communism hasn't existed, it's that it simply cannot exist.
Capitalists are going to oppose communism and socialism no matter what anyways because it threatens their wealth. They are doing well under the capitalist system but the ones who have real power and wealth wouldn't have it under other systems, so they will use whatever words to prevent it, and if that fails, whatever force they can muster.
Whether or not communism can work is a seperate debate, but IMO it's important to realize that those who benefit the most from the current system will go to great lengths to protect it, resulting in many bad faith arguments that don't make sense. Trickle down theory was another one of these.
The only way to create a functioning communist state is to enforce it. It is inherently totalitarian in it's very Inception.
It is also assumes that all involved work for the greater good which is so woefully naive and makes any honest attempt at communism vulnerable to the most malevolent.
Blatantly untrue. The state controls the monetary policy and can restrict capitalism through lack of available currency. No force is needed. Barter opens up communal valuations of labor to set a price for a person's time based on what they can personally contribute. Want to hire someone to rewire your house? Better have equivalent skills or time to compensate the electrician.
Capitalism has conditioned people to think that violence is the only alternative to it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_money
Would you mind explaining how any state could prevent this? Whenever money became worthless, people resorted to using something else as a currency. Want someone to rewire your house? That's 5 liters of gasoline / 20 cigarettes / whatever.
Common currency has existed since civilization began for an excellent reason: what you just wrote. The goal of communism is to make sure people aren't unduly exploited for their labor by a ruling class.
There are aspects of human society where some ideologies make more sense than others. Adherence to communism or capitalism exclusively is antithetical to a healthy society.
Sincerely, A mostly socialist
Do you think private property is not enforced in a capitalist state?
For a moment, assume a complete stateless world. Anarchy in the genuine sense - literally no state, just people and the product of what they do. Let's say someone invents a thing and they want to sell it. There's no state to regulate what he does, so selling it isn't out of the question by default. Let's say he buys wood to construct storage facilities, and a store front. That was wood he bought, and he owns the product of it. Again, there's no state, just things to buy/sell and stuff to do. no state to claim the land he built it on, it's just his shop, his wood, his materials, his ideas. Those are privately owned by him, because he collected or bought it himself. Is this the result of enforcement, or is this just a guy who wanted to sell something?
Now consider again an anarchist state, at what point does the collective come into play? It's not his wood, it's everyone's wood! According to who, who decided that? This guy didn't, so it's his. Okay well let's say people have agreed that the means of production are collectively owned. Well, what if this guy doesn't agree? Actually, fuck it, it's my hypothetical, he doesn't agree. I sure wouldn't. I built it, so it's mine. Okay well now we have a group of people that agree they collective own the things I made. How are they gonna make it theirs? Are they gonna take it by force, thereby enforcing the rule?
Private ownership is not enforced, it's achieved. Collective ownership is enforced.
This ignores thousands of years of history pre statehood. Non communist systems have only exist for a tiny fraction of human history, whereas most of our history was spent in systems much closer to communism than anything else.
They just need societal systems in place that would allow for our much larger communities to work properly.
And your comment about working for the greater good is kind of stupid in this regard as well. Communism is not a lawless society where people can do whatever they want without consequence.
For everyone going, show me an example for non authoritarian socialism Autonomous region of north eastern Syria .
If you think capitalism is democratic in any way, or just generally the natural order of things you've not been paying attention.
ITT liberals who think they understand communism because they've seen a lot of memes about it.
The only way to enforce communism is at gunpoint!
Call me when Tankies have a viable political party in the US, or when one gets elected President. Until then, they’re my anti-capitalist allies. I’m an anarchist. This fight is in the future, if it ever occurs at all.
You should lookup the history of Makhnovshchina to understand how alliances with authoritarians end
