Why is this shit always communist vs capitalist, like we've only got 2 answers avaliable. You fuckers never set foot in a communist country and worship this shit
Fucking communist countries have killed how many millions of their own citizens? Don't really think showing a picture of some buildings is enough to prove that they actually solved any issues. They may have solved those issues for some who were lucky enough to get an apartment, but don't be a hexbear and pretend they housed everyone.
And no, I don't want a response with a link about hurr duer capitalism bad, yeah I know, but I live in capitalism so I already know that.
I’m still confused and alarmed that the only alternative brought up is communism, not socialism. So far as I know, the core difference is transfer of power - one is peaceful, one is violent.
So in communism, your home might be six feet underground because “It is necessary to achieve the revolution, comrade.” Absolutely zero chance of a leader that wants the best for their people, apparently.
That's incorrect.
Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. There sre many, many forms, such as Anarcho-Syndicalism, Marxism-Leninism, Democratic Socialism, Market Socialism, Libertarian Socialism, Anarcho-Communism, Council Communism, Left Communism, and more.
Communism is a more specific form of Socialism, by which you have achieved a Stateless, Classless, moneyless society. Many Communist ideologies are transitional towards Communism, such as the USSR's Marxism-Leninism or China's Dengism and Maoism.
Whether by reform or Revolution, the form doesn't change.
Nationalise essential needs and create State corporations, let capitalism have fun with non essentials. If don't care if private producers make wine or funky clothing or big houses, the government should make sure everyone has food to eat, basic clothes to wear and a place to live.
On that last part, buildings with 8 living units or more should be ran by a non profit State corporation, charge people based on the cost of maintenance and the salaries required, send a check if people were charged too much at the end of the year.
The problem is that a leader who wants the best for their people isn’t sufficient to actually achieve that. What you need is for everyone to be making decisions about what’s best.
You’re also taking a snapshot of the most regulated industry in the US. Building high rises is illegal in huge swaths of urban areas. Before we say the free market isn’t providing an answer cab we actually try it? I’m talking removing exclusionary zoning, speeding up the permit process and reducing the power of local action committees, and reforming the broken heritage process that’s used by rich people to keep their areas from densifying.
Real socialism leads to communism. I want to call what I am advocating for as cultural marxism, but unfortunately that term has antisemitic connotations, while also perfectly encapsulating the gradual shift in the publics perception of Marxist ideology I am advocating for with memes such as this. I am not advocating for a violent revolution, but I wont deny the fact that when the powers that be make a peaceful revolution impossible, a violent revolution is inevitable.
Fucking communist countries have killed how many millions of their own citizens?
Bruh, centuries of capitalist exploitation of its citizens and treating them like a disposable commodity would like to have a word on the whole 'citizens killed by their own country' topic.
How many thousands or millions of citizens die yearly because they can't afford to live in this fucked up system?
It's simple... If you convince the communists that the capitalists are trying to destroy them, (and vice versa), they fight each other, distracting them from the real enemy: the 1% with enough money to directly influence the folk that make the rules that keep them in the 1% club. We're fighting culture wars so we won't fight class wars, my friend.
The 1% are the Capitalist and they are trying to defeat the Communists and surpress/continue to exploit the Prolitariat with every tool at their vast disposal. The folks in the comments defending Capitalism are all members of the Prolitariat brainwashed into thinking they are down on their luck Millionaires.
It's even worse than that. Most Lemmy commies are aggressive sectarians who cling to a very particular form of the ideology, while rejecting all forms of moderate leftism and Marxist revisionism. It's extremely obnoxious, and their bizarre, outdated philosophy is a primary reason why people are skeptical of leftist politics.
Remind me, how many capitalist countries have killed millions of their own citizens?
Germany, pre-communist China, Japan, Armenia, pre-USSR Russia, Pakistan...
Edit: if apparently this isn't the point, why so passionately call out the communist killcount?
See, this is what the fuck I'm talking about.
You're so dense. I'm not advocating or simping got capitalism here. That's what I'm trying to communicate, but you're too fucking dense to even see that when I lay it out.
Both are bad. Just because I say these turds who worship an imaginary and propagandized version of communism are dorks doesn't mean I'm arguing in favor of capitalism. For fucks sake learn to read
fucking communist countries have killed how many millions of their own citizens
Most of these articles cite the Black Book of Communism, which goes to absurd lengths to inflate the death toll of Communism, for example counting all the millions of nazi and soviet soldiers killed on the eastern front as victims of communism, counting the entire death toll of the Vietnam war, and even counting declining birth rates as deaths due to communism.
Noam Chomsky used the same methodology to argue that, according to Black Book logic, capitalism in India alone, from 1947–1979, could be blamed for more deaths than communism worldwide from 1917–1979.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160921084037/http://www.spectrezine.org/global/chomsky.htm
These discussions on communism vs capitalism that devolve into comparing the US with the USSR are like discussing feudalism vs liberalism in 1825, when the only perceptible legacies of the French Revolution were the Reign of Terror and Napoleon's degeneration into monarchy.
If you're sensibly anticapitalist, for the love of Marx do not argue in favor of states that rejected all pretension of wanting to let the economy be democratically managed, ultimately turning into party-controlled hierarchies rather than socialism. If you're a liberal in 1825 and rather than arguing in favor of ending serfdom and enfranchising everyone you keep going on about how Robespierre wasn't really that bad, you're politically useless.
I'm always confused at how people think communism and democracy are opposites. The indoctrination is crazy. They're not even the same category of thing. Communism is an economic model where democracy is just about how leadership is decided. They can exist in the same country at the same time.
Communist theory explicitly tries to dispel the idea that political and economic structures are separate things. As such, communists intend to create democratic structures that can distribute resources in place of undemocratic market relationships which empower owners of capital.
Liberalism on the other hand believe that market relationships are inherently democratic. Therefore they may think that any attempt to replace them with a planned economy are undemocratic regardless of how such planning would be decided upon.
I think a lot of Marxists take sympathy with Lenin, and Lenin's vision, they don't necessarily like what the USSR became under Stalin. The principles of Soviet Democracy, for example, are appealing to many Lefitsts. "All power to the Soviets!"
That being said, ultimately the USSR serves as a great example of why Vanguardism can be good in overthrowing a bad system, but must be held far more accountable, or even dissolve after revolution. I know many MLs would probably shit on me for saying that, citing the CIA paper saying Stalin wasn't a dictator, but I still think ultimately the form of government under Stalin and those who came after him is very dependent on who is in power. A more decentralized system would have checks against such issues.
My 2 cents as a leftist that isn't an ML, but has spent time reading about the various leftist tendencies.
I'll conclude it by saying I would have loved it if Lenin continued to live and stay in power, I wonder what the USSR would have looked like, maybe even today.
Lenin's State and Revolution is great and set the foundations for the Bolshevik discourse that led to them being capable of leading a movement large enough to gain power over Russia, the problem is that not even Lenin himself was consistent with the principles he proposed. The idea that you can legitimately sustain some sort of pretension of achieving worker democracy when the Bolsheviks consistently ended up repressing all other leftist factions wasn't coherent, to the point that Stalin wasn't a sad degeneration of Leninist practice, but a necessary consequence.
We unfortunately see the same result in almost all countries that followed the ML model, where a party elite ends up monopolizing power and divorcing itself from the rest of society, ultimately instituting themselves as a separate class that sees no ideological issue with bringing back capitalism, as they find it to be more consistent with the really existent power dynamics in the country.
Anyone who has actually studied political science has nothing but contempt for what Lenin did with his opportunity. At this point if you are ignoring all the hindsight of the 20th century, you are campist, not a communist. Which is what describes most of the lemmy communists.
This is a golden take. We seriously need to communicate it to the Left.
most on the left already agree
This is capitalist solution to homelessness
I love the top one, because it's the same way they deal with pigeons. They see poor people as just another pest.
Personally I've never seen the spikes or anything that horrific in Canada. But fuck do those stupid bench "armrests" ever piss me off
Why a lot of people on Lemmy like communist so much? As a person who grow up in a country which is almost destroyed by the communist party in the past I don't know what to say just why?, capitalist or not it's depends on your own country's government, at least you still can talking shit about them without getting arrested and torture to death, have we not learn from the past or other communist country, why don't you live in North Korea or China and see how've you like it
I'm going to take your question as genuine and answer in equal.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Most leftists will agree with you, the USSR and other Eastern Europe countries that were communist did a lot of damage and most likely more harm. They committed atrocities. They were authoritarian. It was disgusting.
The leftists who still prop those countries up on their shoulders are what many call tankies. Today they sing praise about Russia, China, and North Korea, but your observation is correct, they won't ever move there. These are individuals who repeat propaganda and are, ultimately, just red fascists. When you actually dig into their ideals they parallel and sometimes mirror Nazis.
I believe leftism cannot have an authoritarian element to it. I think most social hierarchies need to be destroyed. I think the only way to have a socialist society is through democratic means. Democracy in the workplace and national level. I think most of us can agree workers need higher wages and there is a wealth gap that needs to be dismantled. I think most of us believe healthcare needs to be universal, food and shelter and water, education, information (internet), speech, and much more should be free and readily available. There is this element of freedom that needs to be achieved that isn't found the countries that are "communist".
I don't want to explicitly say those communist countries wasn't "real communism", but fascists, authoritarianism, always appropriate from progressive movement. There is no freedom, especially of workers, under a dictatorship. If workers are starving, dying, being outright black bagged and killed, i don't think that can be considered communist.
In the "capitalism did better than communism/socialism" debate i still feel a great lack of historical context. Eastern Europe has been largely destroyed by the Nazis. China has lived through brutal Japanese occupation and a genocide of 10 Million people. Korea has been subject to a war emplyoing terrible new weapons such as Napalm to bring great destruction.
Meanwhile the US homeland has been faring without any destruction, France surrendered quick enough to avoid most damage and the UK sucessfully fended off the Nazi attacks so the damage was limited.
Purely economically speaking the Western allies were off to a much better start than the Eastern countries. So i would argue that for the economical question, it remains impossible to claim capitalism to be superior to socialism. Otherwise authoritarianism is always to the detriment of the people.
Hello, I'd like to speak for people I disagree with
As a leftist whose platform doesn't seem to include a word about abolishing capitalism, any time I am challenged by someone to the left of Bernie Sanders, I turn into a right wing crank telling people 'if you don't like it get out'
And today I'd like to tell you about horseshoe theory
It’s a bit more complicated than that. Most leftists will agree with you, the USSR and other Eastern Europe countries that were communist did a lot of damage and most likely more harm. They committed atrocities. They were authoritarian. It was disgusting.
Most leftists are literally marxist leninists or some derivative of ML in socialist countries. I think you mean most white leftists in the imperial core when you say most leftists.
sing praise about Russia
I have never seen a communist claim that the modern Russian government is good or communist, only that it opposes western hegemony, to the occasional benefit of poor nations in the global south.
Ah yes the utopian rainbow many want, yes, #metoo
It's an unfortunately nuanced subject, where people don't agree on the underlying definitions of words. For instance, I think you're confusing "capitalism" with "democracy". You can have authoritarian undemocratic capitalist countries, where you can't talk shit about your government.
For me personally, I think communism has too many issues to actually try, but I like some of its theoretical tennants when compared to that of capitalism. Those goals are something to strive for. The spirit of communism is helping eachother and rewarding work, and the spirit of capitalism is sacrificing others for personal gain
I think a lot of people don't want to admit that most political ideas ranging from communism to capitalism are half baked labels we stick onto a collection of beliefs about what works best to solve certain problems. If you got rid of the labels you might just ask the question of what works and where the money will come from
Because they are reacting to living under the oppressive structures of late capitalism. Having been raised in a capitalist world, they naturally overemphasize economic systems and their alternatives and make assumptions about government.
So when they communism theyusually mean communism + some equitable government or just they mean socialist democracy.
Funnily enough, you live pretty well in China these days if you're a good little capitalist.
"China is capitalism with beastly grin"
- Ekaterina Shulman
This community is on lemmy.ml, which explicitly leans hard left. Maybe a memes community on another instance would be less like this
A number of reasons. Just like you claim a Communist party almost destroyed your country, Capitalist parties destroy and are destroying many countries as well. The existence of bad Communist parties does not itself mean Communism is structurally a bad thing, as pursuit of a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society is a noble goal for humanity.
I think it's fair to say that decentralization is a good check against Authoritarianism, and as such, this should be extended to the workplace, not just government.
As far as why Lemmy leans left, the founder is a Communist, and principles of decentralization and federation tend to appeal far more to leftists, while Capitalist-inclined individuals have Reddit.
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Saying that any existing communist party looks like what we, or theory, want(s), is like saying that North Korea is a Democratic Republic because it's part of the name. Authoritarians love corrupting the meaning of words so they can keep people ignorant.
NK's highest legislative body is a multiparty parliament elected directly by the people.
"Oh but the communists dominate"
Yeah, because they do popular things and have a popular political program compared to the other parties.
Is it more democratic when no one party is popular because all of them don't help the proletariat and power is a hot potato passed to whatever bourgeois party fucked the people the longest time ago?
Though to be fair, DPRK is the way it is at least in part thanks to the Americans obliterating their cities and farm land. But we can ignore history to make a "I used to be in a communist country and it's bad, trust me bro" statement.
And I agree, I prefer to live in a system where prisoners aren't primarily minorities or political prisoners. And where the prison system isn't the most populated in the world, and rife with for-profit forced labour.
I would also be curious to hear which definition of "capitalism" and "Communism" you are using. That is, if you are open to dialogue.
Grass is greener on the other side
Because they hate the system they live in and communism is the only modern alternative that has ever existed.
When someone comes up with an alternative to both, humanity will move forward.
What Country?
'in the past'
How old are you? If your claim to authority here is that you grew up being told history by the winners, what should that mean to us?
What was done in South America for a century was done in a decade in Eastern Europe when the west finally won the cold war. Read Shock Doctrine.
While they wont even tell us what country they are talking about.
how old were you when the USSR fell? Did you experience communism, or the capitalist takeover after communism fell?
We have never seen an actual communist country. USSR for example was a fascist dictatorship which runs directly counter to the first property of communism, it must be stateless.
Facists like the Nazis like to claim they are for the people and sadly the only "communism" we've seen so far has been carried out by their hands. This is similar to how Nazis were supposedly progressive... Hopefully we can agree that is obviously not the case.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
Don't call communists fascists please. This is an article from a mainstream holocaust historian that explains why a related equation between the two is harmful.
I would also recommend reading "economy and class structure of german fascism" so you have a better idea of what fascism actually means.
What if, and hear me out on this one, the problem isn't which "-ism" is prevalent. The real problem is that ANY form of power or society needs checks and balances. If those are missing or not enforced, then everything goes to shit. It's a balancing act, not just a matter of black or white.
But I want to defend my -ism
Sir please put your -ism away, you're scaring the children.
Name checks out lol
The whole point of Communism is to balance power away from the 1% and back to the masses. The fact that it is an "-ism" and has decades of propaganda demonozing it, doesnt make that any less true.
The whole point of Communism is to balance power away from the 1% and back to the masses
But there needs to be some governing body that is responsible for determining how the power and wealth is distributed. Per the OP's point: if the proper guardrails are not in place, control of that governing body will eventually shift towards a person or party who corrupts it for their own purposes. It doesn't matter what the "point" of a system is, corrupt people will always attempt to take the wheel.
balance power away from the 1% and back to the masses
By installing a dictator...every time it's attempted...
Maybe not do that next time and try doing it from the bottom up instead of top-down🏴. It's much more work to convince people that this is a solution and have them help willingly instead of forcing them to go along with it. We tried the Marxist-Leninist way dozens of times, let's try the anarchist way. A capitalist boot or a communist boot on my neck makes no difference to me, it's still a boot on my neck.
Just look at "balance power away from 1%" in China, Ruzzia or North Corea. Do you really like it? Or you just read books and not looking at real life examples?
Why is there so much communist propaganda on Lemmy? Could it be that reddit is actually good at filtering out state-sponsored content farms?
Decentralization appeals to leftists, as that's the principle of the ideology, away from bourgeois interests.
I haven't seen evidence of state-sponsored propaganda, though there are people that simp far too hard for China and the CPC on Lemmy though.
You should read capital volume one, it will explain how the problem actually is capitalism
Actually, the problem is homelessness.
The solution is either housing (ethical) or genocide (unethical).
Provision of housing for the poor can be achieved by means of social housing programs. These can exist in both communist and capitalist societies. E.g. the Netherlands is capitalist, but there is almost no homelessness thanks to its social housing program. The few homeless that are present are choosing this way of life and are therefore not part of problem.
People tend to argue that commie blocks look depressing and dystopian but you can actually make very pretty neighborhoods with them.
This is where I live. It's called Oyak Sitesi in Turkey/Antalya and it's a beautiful place with an actual community. Very affordable too. We just did a stability test and they were also very durable to earthquakes.
Just because you're making blocks doesnt also mean that they have to be 20 stories tall either. Here is my old house.
The important parts are paint and maintenance.
Give a commie block a fresh coat of paint every decade or so and they can look good (though I just don't like flat roofs. But that's personal taste.)
But while a somewhat run down european style house can still have some charme for longer (guess I'm biased here) a run down commie block in gray and with cracks in the facade will quickly start to look depressing.
And as they are often chosen for cost reasons inside capitalistic environments, they are often neglected.
So, the problem is not commie blocks, but how they are maintained. And as often we tend to search for the extreme examples if we (dis)like something.
I happen to live in a city that's primarily blocks (or as we call them: Plattenbauten) and honestly, they're pretty good houses. The structure is sound, after some renovations in the 90s and 00s, insulation and comfort are perfectly fine, and the surroundings are usually very green and pleasant.
The only real problem is, that these buildings are somewhat away from the city center due to superior socialist planning, so they are not super attractive for younger people.
I should probably take pictures of freshly-paited commie blocks in my district and post them on lemmyy.
Why do you call them "commie blocks"??
It wasn't communists who came up with the idea of that type of building and it's a common sight in many European countries, for example, which are not communist.
Please, not this again.... Personally, I am a lot in favour of communism. But some people, especially US Americans, have a fundamentally wrong idea about the housing shown in the upper picture.
This is often neither cheap, nor does it reduce homelessness. And it's also not the goal of that kind of rental homes to reduce homelessness.
That is just normal homes of average people in many places.
It's not "cheap housing for everyone".
Those houses were built by state-backed actors to support growing urbanization and create a housing surplus for that urbanization to give the workers more power since they no longer have to deal with aggressively rent-seeking private landlords.
Wait, isn't that communism?
There is a reason why cringe tankie bullshit is the worst enemy of actual leftist policy.
This is often neither cheap, nor does it reduce homelessness.
If we are talking about cities, humant colonies are cheapest housing. Buuut kinda crap.
And it's also not the goal of that kind of rental homes to reduce homelessness.
Don't look like rental homes to me.
Why doesn't it look like rental homes? I think it does. We had a lot of buildings built here in Northern Europe where I'm at that they built between 1965-1975 in the suburbs of our capital city when they built a large number of apartments during those years to alleviate the shortage of available homes.
People still live in them today, they are not beautiful but they are functional, and it's all rentals pretty much.
In the 2000s and onwards yes. Because often these were sold to private investors in the capitalization of former communist/socialist countries.
At the time when they were built they did provide a great improvement in housing, especially as most of eastern Europe has been terrible destroyed by the Nazis.
This is not communist solution, this is half-socialism humant colony solution.
Real communist solutions look like this:
Ugh, living in a forest like that sounds idyllic
There is no such thing as half socialism. There is only the oligarchy deigning to not be complete assholes, as long as you agree to beg.
I'm pretty sure that's an issue with maintenance, not communism. And I'd still rather live there than in a tent.
Is the point supposed to be that they haven't been cleaned in a while?
Otherwise they don't look that bad. 🤷
No one realizes what this is a picture of huh?
And it failed miserable, at that.
I live in north-east Germany in one of these Blocks (it was firmly renovated tho). It's actually not bad. Most of them are build in Horseshoe shape so you have small parks inside. But it's nearly impossible to hang anything to the wall without proper power tools. EDIT: typos
Yes, but since the wall isn't paper you can hang really heavy stuff on your walls. I have a massive ghettoblaster sitting on a wooden board over my desk 🥰
Want to drill a hole? SDS plus and a good drill (more like two) is a bare minimum.
But you can hear your neighbors snoring.
Not just snoring 😅 👌
Brought to you by capitalism. Look at pictures of what those places looked like under communism.
Huh? I just wanted to say these blocks are not bad to live in. I belive in social market economy. Capitalism is a consuming flame, let's put it in a furnace made out of rules and regulations and put it to work.
Those were not built for homeless people.
And yet they still would affect the rate of homelessness.
So they affect shit volume produced on a toilet.
They were built for the Prolitariat, which homeless folks are quite literally a part of.
Capitalism has a solution to the tent problem though
UK - The home secretary is proposing new laws to restrict the use of tents by homeless people, arguing that many of them see it as a "lifestyle choice".
It sure is a lifestyle choice. The choice is the tent or a cardboard box, fucking insensitive assholes.
San Diego already banned camping in the city. The county board of supervisors either has proposed that they do the same or already has.
San Diego county is bigger than two states. They are trying to outlaw homelessness in an area about 65 miles north to south, and roughly the 86 miles east of The Pacific Ocean.
These are almost all Democrats, btw. We didn't vote for Republicans.
Communism's solution to homelessness is mass starvation.
And also just homelessness. It's pretty amusing that people believe there are no homeless people in Russia or China. China in particular is amusing because they have massive empty apartment blocks, but they still have homeless people because the hukou caste system means they aren't allowed to live outside their birth city.
I'd say that I'm rather anti communistic but one thing that has never happened in used-to-be communist country i have experience with is starvation.
Actually they solved starvation, built fcking appartments for everyone to live in and gave them to people for free. They also made sure every forgotten village had drinakble water, electricity , gas, shop, train station and bus stop.Reason why people overthrown them was humans rights repression like taking away people's businesses to make them state companies. It was not poor the living conditions (for the time).
People keep denying it, trying to bury it, but it’s historical fact.
If any bad thing that happens under a nominally communist system is the fault of communism, then any bad thing that happens in a nominally capitalist system must be the fault of capitalism, right? Capitalism has an awful lot of slavery, genocide, apartheid, coloialism, wars of choice, and other evils to answer for, then.
That's the fascist solution to this problem. Don't worry, capitalism is considering it.
Finland is capitalist and kind of solved homelessness, with there being around only 1.3k homeless people in the entire country (population: 5.6m, which means the rate of homelessness is around 0.02%).
I don't think that communism or any ideology is an answer to homelessness, it's pretty much the job for the government and what kind of systems/reforms they implement.
What a fun imagination you have here!
NK making fake buildings like the top image for the illusion of a wealthy nation when the 99% of their nation live in the below image.
Apartment buildings like this aren't that expensive to build, and the concentration of services you can build around them saves a lot of money.
There may have been a time where buildings of this caliber were faked, but I doubt that's the case now
Meme would be more accurate to say European social democratic. .
I live in a capitalist country and we fixed homelessness by building more houses
It's not always a question of the quantity of houses, but the affordability. Seeing rent being waaaay higher than mortgages were 30yrs ago is always shocking. The house i sold 15yrs ago for 600k is now worth 1.3m. And it would need a big renovation. This is sheer madness.
who is upvoting this?
Don't forget removing benches so that the homeless can't sleep on them (capitalist solution, of course).
Capitalist inovation:
Pls keep your talkie bulshit out of the meme subs. You may be right with this one, but this still isn't a political sub, so just don't.
Atleast the building shouldn't be of low quality but most of them are due to corruption and most of the funds are waisted as a result
We haven’t seen a communist solution; they’ve all had governments
The USSR and CCP were/are Marxist states. Saying they weren't is just a cope from American socialists who feel the need to defend leftism anywhere, presumably because dumbasses think all socialists need to answer for every flaw while capitalism always has "context."
Regardless, they, and various social democracies, did do something America refuses to, solve homelessness and hunger (after some... Initial difficulties).
I don't particularly like the concept of the welfare state but it's better than nothing and union busting.
Do the leader of those countries hold more power than the worker?
If so then there is a class struggle and you can’t consider it
ok, so why are there so many people trying to escape these communist paradises you people praise so much? and why so many people want to live in the capitalist hell holes you complain about?
As a disclaimer, I understand the logic in most cases, it shouldn't imply that I agree with it.
In an ideal communism, everyone would have their basic needs taken care of, regardless of who they are, what they do, how "valuable" they are, or what they know is, etc.
In reality, almost all attempts at communism are authoritarian at their core, and whomever is in a position of authority, due to them being human and inherently selfish, they value their own comfort and contribution more than they value the contribution of others. This will almost always devolve into a mass exploitation of the populous to serve those who are in control.
The ideals of communism, in and of themselves are not bad or evil. The practical result of the authority that arises from a communist country or society will very often result in human suffering on a massive scale.
So to put it simply, people generally romanticize the ideals of communism; at a high level, speaking very ideally, they're not wrong. Communism has some ideas that should be taken into very serious consideration. When applied on a large scale in communist countries like China (as an easy example) it's very easy for the majority to be living well below what most would consider "the poverty line" with little to no consideration from the governing authority regarding that situation.
Thus, while the communist ideal of a solution to this problem is preferable to the homeless and destitute results of capitalism, there isn't any country in the world that lives up to providing a good living situation to those who are in need. Sure, in a communist country, you may get a roof over your head, given to you by the government, but you may or may not get adequate amounts of food on the table to not starve, or required medical care, or any of a plethora of other things that are beneficial to your continued existence. You just get to die in a bed, in an apartment, via starvation or treatable medical ailments, rather than dying from exposure with enough food in your stomach, and in otherwise okay physical health, because you had no place warm to sleep.
All options are equal levels of terrible.
IMO, the point of these kinds of posts isn't to say that we would be better off with communism, but rather, that the typical capitalist "solutions" to problems are less desirable, and we, as a society, should consider other options and solutions in order to help our countrymen, rather than punish them for being poor.
And I agree that social investment in capitalist societies builds better quality of life. Where I disagree with you is on the intention of these posts. Its clearly communist propaganda painting communism as a perfect solution for everything, as if we could not remember history or see with our own eyes that nobody wants to immigrate to North Korea for a reason.
hate both of them
Build more spikes
TBF the communist solution is for homes in general, not just homelessness.
Ah, but one contains millions and the other only hundreds of thousands.
Pull the lever?
🤔
Governance has deeper roblems that trace to the top. We are at the bottom.. hell.
Detroit tried this. It didn’t work.
I have no problem with communism(i think socdem is a better system but thats a discussion for another day) but the moment a tankie here mentions anything about the soviet union being better than capitalism just look up holodomor.
This has to be one of the most horrible tower I have ever seen. Well, every big tower like those are horrible. What, you want big towers like that ? You think that's how we fix the housing crisis ? Not really..
What is good ubanism then ? 4 to 5 story building max, mixed use, no cars, 5minutes walk to everything you need, great architecture so it's nice to walk in the neighborhood. That's what we need. We want human scale, not some horrible bullshit like this. That's not a city, it's a nightmare. That's not beautiful, that's depressing. That's not great architecture, that's just some concrete box stacked on top of each other. If this is what you want, read about ubanism. If you think this is beautiful, you probably have horrible taste. And if you think that's needed, well, that would be like applying a bandaid on someone that lost his legs. We need a fucking surgery to fix our cities, not that bullshit "let's build horrible concrete tower that will ruin the land for decades.l, because housing crisis".
If I was living in a tent under an overpass, I'd LOVE to move into a building like that.
You've never been homeless have you? I've been homeless. Literally this year. A place to sleep and shit with a lock on the door is way better than a bunch of lying employers and real estate agents sucking me dry while I'm sleeping in the weather and working full time.
Commie blocks are great at that, and certainly better than nothing. They served their purpose really well when they were built, for example, and we can definitely learn from them. But still, quality of life wise, they really aren't the best. So with all the wealth we currently have, it should be easily possibly to create affordable/free housing that has all the benefits the original commenter demanded. I'd gladly take prefab mega buildings over people living on the streets, but when we get to choose and plan cities for the future, they shouldn't be our first option.
What's the good urbanist response to homelessness?
Less fucking road, less cars, more co-op housing. Leta stop wasting space for cars, and use that space for mixed use housing.
It's a prison.
Well, I hate mmunism as much as the next Eastern European but this is absolutely true. Commie blocks rule.
You know a lot of soviet buildings was built by prison labor? Let's make a next meme about egyptian pyramids. They look great too.
Way more shit is done with prison labor in the US. I guarantee. We have 25% of the prison population of the world, and the USSR had a tendency to send a massive amount of their prisoners to Siberia, which would make it difficult to help build apartment blocks several thousand miles away.
What's with that whataboutism? I don't care about the US. Why do your type brings it up every time, like it makes USSR's wrongdoings more acceptable. It doesn't. It's rather a lesson to learn and not repeat in your country.
and the USSR had a tendency to send a massive amount of their prisoners to Siberia, which would make it difficult to help build apartment blocks several thousand miles away.
So? They built infrastructure there, yes, so it's enormous territory can be somehow crossable. And they also built infrastructure, housing and plants\factories all over it's territory. Gulag wasn't just a one small camp, it's the Main Office of Camp (Managenent), it had a lot of people to send elsewhere, based on what Kremlin wants.
Now that is what I call a truely amazing meme for showing the amazing capitalism abilities!
This is indeed correct but it had dark side, like taking away people's business or limited freedom of speech.
Fortunately, it isn't a package deal. You can give people homes without taking away their rights.
Definetly, but not under the regime that built those used as reference.
No, that is unrelated.
Taking away people's businesses is a good thing actually, and free speech doesn't exist in capitalist cultures either, anything threatening the regime will be dealt with. Capitalism just has a wider range of things you can say that aren't threatening because it has a more stable hegemony for now due to its historical position.
Nah it's not, taking away people believe they can built something made most people dull factory workers and those who were extra regime supportive were put in the post to build something but they often didn't have the abilities . It's hard to put it into words but you couldn't have just make startup with nee awesome idea because people in the posts would not let you unless it meant increasing quota.
Hey OP, comunistm is great on paper because it doesn't take into consideration the human nature. Humans are corruptible, no matter who, and even the best of us would be corrupted when it comes to someone they love. This alone breaks the comunist stance because you can't have fairness when one human is responsable for managing/governing. Comunism would work if there was no hierarchy between humans, no one more powerful. Maybe if some aliens come or if some AI evolve enough to govern, but that's is not today's world
Edit: I do think the US level of captalism is horrible. Maybe begin with just SOME socialist policies, like free healthcare and univesities, that would already improve so much the lifes of americans
Hey Commenter, it sounds like you only have a surface level understanding of Communism, i suggest you read some theory. Communism very much takes human greed into account, its kind of its whole point.
You are right I really don't, but not all theory translates well into reality. How would a country of milions manage all that without hierarchy? I'm not going against you I'm just trying to understand how would this work without a dictatorship and considering that humans are not trustworthy
Humans are corruptible, no matter who, and even the best of us would be corrupted when it comes to someone they love.
Agreed! That's why I think it would be better if the workers ran things, instead of a few corrupt CEOs.
you can't have fairness when one human is responsable for managing/governing.
I would say that you have left your society and government open to the inevitably of corruption when you place the power in one person's hands. I've been advocating for elected councils to run the system. It's not impossible to corrupt an elected council, one needs look no further than the US Congress, or whatever they call the CCP massive room of people. I would propose that just having a council is not enough, one also needs to have a more robust voting system such as Ranked Choice Voting, or another runoff system so that you don't end up with a choice between two shit sandwiches. We also need to abolish policing, as it is currently done, as a career. I'm not certain how to fix this one, and perhaps we can't without actual incorruptible androids and AI.
The real issue is that we the people have tried to implement these changes only for the rich old fossils to refuse the will of the people. Just look at what is happening with Measure 1&2 in Ohio.
I don't think there is an imediate solution. Humams can not be trusted with power, it's human nature. I see only 2 ways, either someone/thing else does it or, a more realistic one, technology becomes so powerful that we can manage the managers, monitoring their actions/choices (and voting?! maybe?!) Idk, but remember that tech is a sword and not a knife, if it monitors them.they would also monitor us.
Anyway there is no simple solution. Captalism as is today and comunism as is today are both bad options.
Too bad that to have homelessness in the first place you usually require communists doing their communist shit.
Right, there are no homeless people in America. Those people I see sleeping on the street just really enjoy urban camping!
Did the tents come from famous US communists?
