Just as capitalist states are "authoritarian" against working class interests, socialist states are "authoritarian" against capitalist interests.
The state is a tool for one class to oppress another. The goal of (most) communists is to transition from capitalism — where the capitalist class is in power — to a stateless, classless communist society via socialism — where the working class is in power.
Public perception of which is more "authoritarian" therefore depends on which class is currently in power and is able to manufacture consent, and that is the capitalist class in the vast majority of the world right now since the USSR's overthrow.
socialist states are “authoritarian” against capitalist interests
The problem with this claim is that the USSR was quite authoritarian towards everyone. The Gulags were a place merely of political repression. Political jokes that are part and parcel of American late night comedy shows would get people harsh labor sentences during certain periods. The claim that this had to happen to protect the working class seems thin.
One regime's political-dissident-by-speech is another's dissident-by-drug-addiction. America's "War on Drugs" was purely political disenfranchisement along racial lines, and it's a major reason why the US continues to have higher incarceration rates than the USSR had in many of the years the Gulag system was operational.
By the way, prison rape jokes have long been a part of those late night comedy shows, to give you an idea of just how ingrained the American prison culture is.
You don't know what you're talking about
read the resent news of Julian Assange or John Pilger there'd be a lot more if i could think to name them
With the USSR overthrown, virtually all mainstream media now is capitalist propaganda. And the capitalist class obviously would not want the working class to prefer a system where workers are in power.
Being familiar with Bulgarian corruption, I'm going to confidently state that their percentages aren't due to a rounding error.
I was in Hungary last year and the nostalgia for communism is high and a significant portion of the population still remembers all the bad parts - Orban has really destroyed the social safety nets there and it hurts to see.
Hungary was also the best part of the Soviet Bloc to live in for the people.
So it's not just that modern Hungary is worse: communist Hungary is more miss-able than communist East Germany.
Nigel Swain's two books on the subject are good:
Collective Farms Which Work? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
Hungary: The Rise and Fall of Feasible Socialism (London: New Left Books, 1992)
He's writing from the perspective of a non-red English academic who's like.... "wait... this works?? how do we explain the anomaly?"
Hungary had full shelves, booming agriculture, available consumer goods.
I'd also expect there's more and more people propagandized by capitalist media in post-Soviet states as time has passed since capitalist bastards took it over. People who have not lived under socialism or experienced the massively decreased quality of life from the privatization forced on those countries.
Hard to do that at the heart of the revolution I guess. Maybe Russian communist parties could use that to become more revolutionary, specially with Russians able to see the stark difference between Russia under capitalism and China thriving under socialism. Doubt that'll happen while Putin is in power though.
This graph is such bullshit. If you were being honest in your arguments there would be no need to alter the results of the study.
This is the original graph - "About the same" answers were given directly to "worse", fabricating results.
This is the study. Despite their life "not being better" on average, they still conclude that Communism has its downsides and are in no way saying they want to go back to it.
Hungarian here. There reason for being the top 1 was because the country was running on debt hell for 10-15 years.
Kádár (the ruler of that time) had promised from 1956 that he will improve the living standards. This worked until the 70s, when the oil crisis happened and Kádár realized that with those current living conditions, the country needs to get loans. So he did that until communism have ended.
But in practice communism ends up the same. The workers had no actual power under Communism. The leaders still took it all.
Uh oh. Looks like you triggered the tankies who are nostalgic for a thing that never happened.
They even had to build a wall to keep the capitalist working class outside of east Berlin.
That Pew data is outdated. They have new data from 2019. Why did you post outdated and bad data to strengthen you belief?
The latest research literally says conditions are better now for most people. Unless you hate homosexuals and women. Every metric indicate high standards of life and rights.
I hate capitalism as much as the next person. But posting like you did is how we got Trump. Just faking everything till it happens.
"Bad data" is when you use data more representative of people who have actually lived under socialism and experienced the massive decline in quality of life, social welfare, housing, etc after capitalist bastards took it over and privatized everything for their profit
Ye sure. No communist project has ever worked out because some people are by nature evil and hungry for power. Every communist regime has gone to shit because of it. Anyone hungry for power should be imprisoned because they are a danger to society. But most people rely on direction to function. It's a double edged blade.
Capitalism ruins everything in its path and communism eat it's children. Welcome to the suck.
The "muh human nature" argument is a fallacy, you do realize that, yes? People are products of their environment, in Capitalism greed and selfishness are rewarded, so you think the way people act in Capitalism is natural for all economic systems, lmao.
I don't think that's the right reason, though it does touch upon one of the biggest reasons.
Communist projects have failed in no small part because of external interference from non-communist countries. Look at the US and their infamous "bringing democracy" around the world, for example.
But they've also failed not because of innate human nature, but because some people's nature is indeed what you describe. And unfortunately, violent revolutions have a tendency to make it very easy for those people take step in and fill power vacuums left in the wake of the former regime's demise. Even if the ideals of many of the boots on the ground in the revolution was entirely well-meaning, the leadership might not be, either from the start, or as the revolution goes on. That's why so many of the more famous communist regimes are incredibly authoritarian.
Name me one communist regime and I'll tell you why you're a fucking idiot and don't know the difference between communism and socialism.
Comparing deaths may put USSR on top, but the US isn’t that far behind.
Comparing authoritarianism is another story. Both quieted political dissent in the same way: raiding opposing political organizations and jailing or killing their leaders. That is authoritarianism.
When slaves rise up and throw the master out of the house they built, the master's first instinct is to gather his friends and and crush the uprising before it's example can inspire others. If the former slaves want to keep their freedom, and if they don't want their sacrifices to have been for nothing, they need to secure the house, and quickly.
In 1917, the people of Russia cast off their feudal monarch. In 1918, America and nine other countries invaded Russia to fight for the czar, to crush the worker's uprising and restore the monarch to the throne. They don't teach us about it in school.
Here's a 2 minute bop set to a Parenti lecture that covers this. The basic fact is that a capitalist empire will never willingly surrender control of an exploitable land where labor and resources can be had for cheap or free, not without a fight. The lecture is at least 30 years old now, but has only gotten more prescient with the genocidal crackdown in Palestine against a liberation movement that threatens America's ability to control the region's trade through it's military outpost of Isreal. To make it even more relevant, there are communist groups like the PFLP fighting the IOF in Palestine at this very moment-this is all very much one struggle against economic imperialism, and against colonialism.
Just as an aside, we here in the capitalist west are authoritarian as fuck lol, we've just structured our systems of exploitation in such a way that it looks like a million separate companies fucking you over instead of an entire economic model fucking everyone over (and enforced at gunpoint), which is what it is.
To add, there is only one country on earth with > 800 external military bases, and through an incredibly effective propanda campaign, they've managed to convince the world that its not them, but their enemies that are "totalitarian" and "authoritarian".
Oh shit the man the myth the legend. Thank you for your service comrade.
Np comrade o7
On your last point, if somebody wants an example of how ordinary everyday capitalism is violent, they should imagine what will happen to them if they do not pay their debts or cannot make their rent. These things are enforced with violence.
one of my favorite takes on this subject is from This Soviet World by Anna Louise Strong:
Most Americans shrink from the word “dictatorship.” “I don’t want to be dictated to,” they say. Neither, in fact, does anyone. But why do they instinctively take the word in its passive meaning, and see themselves as the recipients of orders? Why do they never think that they might be the dictators? Is that such an impossible idea? Is it because they have been so long hammered by the subtly misleading propaganda about personal dictatorships, or is it because they have been so long accustomed to seek the right to life through a boss who hires them, that the word dictatorship arouses for them the utterly incredible picture of one man giving everybody orders?
No country is ruled by one man. This assumption is a favorite red herring to disguise the real rule. Power resides in ownership of the means of production—by private capitalists in Italy, Germany and also in America, by all workers jointly in the USSR. This is the real difference which today divides the world into two systems, in respect to the ultimate location of power. When a Marxist uses the word “dictatorship,” he is not alluding to personal rulers or to methods of voting; he is contrasting rule by property with rule by workers.
The heads of government in America are not the real rulers. I have talked with many of them from the President down. Some of them would really like to use power for the people. They feel baffled by their inability to do so; they blame other branches of government, legislatures, courts. But they haven’t analyzed the real reason. The difficulty is that they haven’t power to use. Neither the President nor Congress nor the common people, under any form of organization whatever, can legally dispose of the oil of Rockefeller or the gold in the vaults of Morgan. If they try, they will be checked by other branches of government, which was designed as a system of checks and balances precisely to prevent such “usurpation of power.” Private capitalists own the means of production and thus rule the lives of millions. Government, however chosen, is limited to the function of making regulations which will help capitalism run more easily by adjusting relations between property and protecting it against the “lawless” demands of non-owners. This constitutes what Marxists call the dictatorship of property. “The talk about pure democracy is but a bourgeois screen,” says Stalin, “to conceal the fact that equality between exploiters and exploited is impossible. . . . It was invented to hide the sores of capitalism . . . and lend it moral strength.”
Power over the means of production—that gives rule. Men who have it are dictators. This is the power the workers of the Soviet Union seized in the October Revolution. They abolished the previously sacred right of men to live by ownership of private property. They substituted the rule: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.” -
Isn't that generally said by countries that oppose them?
The land of the less authoritarian had race discrimination until half a century ago, right? Seeing the BLM, it seems to have a prominent role even now. So are they any better?
Because of who controls the presses in capitalist countries.
Yeah this question is always incomplete; considered by who?
They aren't?
Americans live in an authoritarian plutocracy, but refuse to believe it
Because authority carried out under the pretenses of private property is whitewashed in liberal states, who are the ones in your question doing the "considering".
because capitalists have to lie about reality to preserve their ill gotten gains.
Nowadays we constantly hear denunciations, directed toward Islam, of ‘religious totalitarianism’ or of the ‘new totalitarian enemy that is terrorism’. The language of the Cold War has reappeared with renewed vitality, as confirmed by the warning that American Senator Joseph Lieberman has issued to Saudi Arabia: beware the seduction of Islamic totalitarianism, and do not let a ‘theological iron curtain’ separate you from the Western world.
Even though the target has changed, the denunciation of totalitarianism continues to function with perfect efficiency as an ideology of war against the enemies of the Western world. And this ideology justifies the violation of the Geneva Convention, the inhuman treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the embargo and collective punishment inflicted upon the Iraqis and other peoples, and the further torment perpetrated against the Palestinians. The struggle against totalitarianism serves to legitimate and transfigure the total war against the ‘barbarians’ who are alien to the Western world.
It's simple to label a government as "authoritarian" just because they have things called "laws" that prevent you from exploiting their people. Likewise, it's convenient to repeatedly tell your citizens that distant, non-English-speaking countries are "authoritarian." The truth is, for every Westerner who can afford to travel and verify these claims, a million others will just accept what the media tells them. They'll even go on to reinforce these narratives, despite having no firsthand experience or direct connection to these places.
Projection of the contradiction of capital, capitalists states only allow freedom to those that can pay and has the illusion of free choice only when it comes to consumption.
Exclusively based on vibes and lies/media presentation. It's just manufactured concensus, we teach 9 year Olds that it's freedom VS authoritarian capitalism VS communism
It's just bullshit, capitalist countries are authoritarian as fuck
Authoritarian is usually code for when white people don't rule a country
Reporter: [REDACTED] Reason: racism
We really ought to teach critical race theory in schools like conservative politicians and pundits claim.
lmao did someone really report me over getting their precious little white feelings hurt?
moment
Russia tho.
Russians got kicked out of whiteness a couple years back
I have heard, from leftist, that Russian leadership has a higher tolerance for casualties on their side because THEY see the forced conscripts from easter Europe as disposalable. I have not seen/heard a NATO leader suggesting that they are.
If you're saying authoritarianism can be explained by non-whiteness....
But also saying that anyone opposing NATO become ipso facto non-white because it's "an ever-shifting construct"...
Then the "construct" has no explanatory power.
Why not just say 'authoritarianism' is opposition to the NATO bloc?
You're saying "authoritarianism = non-whiteness = opposition to the NATO bloc"
Why not skip the middle step?
If you’re saying authoritarianism can be explained by non-whiteness…
I’m not saying that. I’m saying that “whiteness” as a construct is a tool of capitalism/imperialism/colonialism. And that the Global North similarly tends to attribute “authoritarianism” to whichever states are acting insufficiently subservient to their imperialist interests at any given moment. And I’m saying that these two constructs have a tendency to be aligned with each other, because they’re both tools of capitalism/imperialism/colonialism.
But also saying that anyone opposing NATO become ipso facto non-white because it’s “an ever-shifting construct”…
Whiteness is as old as European colonialism, and has been baked into capitalism—which began in Europe—from the start. Whiteness has been twisted into all sorts of nonsensical logic pretzels. See for example honorary Aryanshonorary whites. It has no explanatory power because it is simply a tool of power. Even the Irish, Italian, and other Catholic European immigrants have suffered it within our own country. As Josep Borrell has more-or-less said, the imperial core is the “garden”, and the rest of the world is the “jungle.” Imperialism uses race—which again is made-up bullshit—as a tool to justify their imperialism.
You’re saying “authoritarianism = non-whiteness = opposition to the NATO bloc”
I’m not saying that, but the NATO bloc often seems to imply it.
And I’m saying that these two constructs have a tendency to be aligned with each other
It's not empiricaly right tho. Hitler and Stalin are the first type-examples. In the modern era it's normally Putin and Xi who get the label.
I already covered the origins of this propagandistic Western conceptualization of “authoritarianism”/“totalitarianism” in another comment in this post. But I’ll add a 1955 CIA report that was declassified in 2008.
Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.
I already covered the origins of this propagandistic Western conceptualization of “authoritarianism”/“totalitarianism” in another comment in this post
This is off topic, but I want to mention for the sake of other hexbears that I'm glad you linked to this other comment you made. It's a good comment but no one on hexbear can see it or anything else in that reply chain. Since you were replying to someone from an instance not federated with us, it's just not visible. A reminder that the exact same thread can look completely different depending on what instance you're reading it from.
Equivocating Stalin and Hitler is some crypto Nazi shit.
Equivocating Stalin and Hitler is some crypto Nazi shit.
It is standard in Westoid discourse, e.g. the Wikipedia page on "authoritarianism" probably does it idk didn't read it.
People who use words like "authoritarianism" equate the two.
Only one of those four is white, and it's a classic reactionary tactic to downplay him compared to the Georgian and the older Han Chinese example
Joe Biden and the US military industrial complex are currently helping Isreal commit a genocide out in the open, and that's your pick for 21st century Hitler? Tell me you don't think Palestinans matter without using the words, jesus.
Why not skip the middle step?
Go ask the NATO bloc and their supporters. The obvious and surface answer is that it has to do with making for an easy "us-vs-them" identifier. "Of course they're bad, they aren't white like us good wholesome folk are, who are inherently good and wholesome because we're white, and being good and wholesome makes us right and correct in what we do and you can tell because we're white. The ones who are bad clearly aren't like us. They're not white!" Yes, it is circular reasoning and garbage logic. But I don't know why you're getting pissy at us for that instead of the dipshits white people who keep moving the goalposts on the meaning of whiteness, as they always have done to suit their agenda. Take it up with them.
Sorry I have no idea what you're talking about.
The thread was asking about authoritarianism. I was slagging the people who said it's about being black, not about Hitler, Stalin, the USSR, Putin, etc.
You were asking about the shifting nature of the meaning of the term whiteness. Go up and read your own comment to see how you related that to authoritarianism. If you can't follow your own train of thought, then I can't help you because it makes it apparent you're not asking in good faith.
You're saying "authoritarianism = non-whiteness = opposition to the NATO bloc"
What I'm trying to explain to you is that "we" are not saying that. The people who use whiteness to justify their actions and otherize their enemies are saying that. This isn't difficult.
Like I said, I'm here to slag Yanks and their know-nothing racist views of the world.
It's astonishing how they'll confidently lecture ya on things they demonstrate complete ignorance of.
I think the myopic point you’re making is unintentionally promoting some heinous stuff, or else I have to wonder how you seemed to end up with a Lemmygrad alt account. I’m not seeing any “yanks” here being confused about race.
I was slagging the people who said it's about being black, not about Hitler, Stalin, the USSR, Putin, etc.
This is holocaust denialism.
Saying Hitler is white is holocaust denial?
This thread became gibberish a while back
Equating Hitler and Stalin or Nazi Germany and the USSR is holocaust trivialization, according to Jewish holocaust scholars. Dovid Katz did a popular article on it that you can probably search.
You know that isn't what I was saying piss off.
The shite Americans will make about skin-colour.
This comment doesn't stand up to 3 seconds thought. It's their one answer to every question.
Literal swastika-ass Nazis in Ukraine doing terrorism for a decade: we must arm these precious smol boys who are defending western civilization against the Russian orcs!
Literal fascists in Palestine doing a genocide against brown people: fuck your terrorist baby hospitals, there are no innocents in Gaza, bleed em dry and stack em high
Dipshits: Wow how could anyone think there's a racial component to this
Yanks have this one-size-fits-all thing with no knowledge of the world.
First guy was saying Hitler/Stalin/Milosevic/Putin aren't white, this guy is saying Palestinians are brown
Yanks
Your make-believe country has a hereditary monarch and human shit in the drinking water, you are recused from adult topics.
Really leaning into the "no knowledge of the world" thing
Back when we had kings prior to colonisation, they were elected, could be recalled, and were not hereditary.
Don't know what you're on about with the shit reference.
Your make-believe country
This is an old imperialist chestnut. We've heard it all before. As I said here, it is one reason we sympathise with our Palestinian friends: we both have imperialist fucks like you telling us our country is make-believe.
This is like a new level of playing victim.
Britain's economy is three arms conglomerates in a trench coat and your slapdash schools and hospitals are currently in the process of falling over. The suicide rate is through the roof, people are freezing to death in the winters and the immigration gestapo are snatching people into vans to be deported to concentration camps in Rwanda. Your rivers are full of cocaine runoff and everyone's depressed. You people have been thoroughly immiserated by authoritrian capitalism, and now you're acting like Cybertruck guys, lashing out at anyone pointing out that you've been lied to.
Spare me this sanctimonious "Me and the Palestinians are as brothers against the imperialists" canard, Paul Ma'ud Dipshit. You fuckers caused this whole situation with your dumb shit "British mandate of Palestine", and now you want to extremely caucasianly hop in and claim the good guys. Your country still worships Winston "I am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes" Churchill, the miserable drunken fuck who created the Bengal Famine, killed a hundred million people, and said of it "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. They will breed like rabbits, famine or no." Toad Hitler is your national icon, you depressed cryptocurrency peddling royalty-sniffers have negative business lecturing anyone about anything.
I believe the person you are speaking to is Irish.
Thanks, that makes it weird as fuck that they're going to bat for Thatcher Island
Wasn't it obvious from the literal start that that person was Irish‽
Literally no, what kind of weird ass non-brit uses Yank every sentence?
Go easy on them. These people can't point to countries on maps.
Please don't think that I'm necessarily agreeing with your stances and attitudes and so forth, but do think that I find ShimmeringKoi to be kind of embarrassing right now.
Take time out of your day and think about why you come across br*tish
How do youfigure that? It was the Brits and the U.N.
Your country still worships Winston
Again, showing your ignorance. Churchill hated us. He ordered the Black & Tans in here, who murdered three of my own relatives. He is a deeply reviled person here and in India.
The arrogance of Yanks is infinite. They think they can lecture people about Palestine/Ukraine/Tigray, when they can't even find countries on a map.
The one hammer in their thick minds is they black/white hammer, which makes no sense for interpreting 90% of things, e.g. authoritarianism in this case.
Honestly though, like our grappling with racism in the states smears our views of geopolitics so much. Like we struggle to imagine a culture not wrapped up in it.
Because mass media, manufactured consent, and regulatory capture are the “good” kind of coercion.
Because our bourgeois state propaganda and corporate media tell us that they are, because it’s in their best interest that we believe it.
I could say that bourgeois ownership of media and academia and the state means that those institutions will represent the biases and interests of the bourgeoisie, and so people in first-world capitalist countries end up living in a sort of self-propagating anti-communist media bubble; but the thing about propaganda is that people are rarely ever truly "tricked" by it, propaganda is always most effective when it reinforces something that someone already believes on some level.
This is why the second part to building anti-communist sentiment has to do with super-exploitation, imperialism, and the labor aristocracy. This is to say, workers in first-world capitalist countries are materially invested in capitalism, through various perks and "treats" that workers of "poorer" countries are deprived of. By being materially invested in capitalism, workers of the first world are primed to take on a sort of "bourgeois mindset", as it were.
I see a lot of comments saying they aren't. I'd disagree, but I agree they don't have to be. The issue is most of the major powers in the world have opposed leftist governments anytime they show up. The ones that didn't have a strong central power and cultural hegymony collapsed under the pressure. Any nation that had a weaker central power was either destroyed, couped, or undermined by the west.
There is nothing intrinsically authoritarian about leftism (really, I'd say it's less authoritarian in it's ideals), but authoritarianism is easier to hold together when outside pressures are trying to destroy you.
bc crackers got lucky 500 years ago by finding an entire hemisphere of free money, thus any "free commerce" after this date necessarily advantages crackers, and "authoritarian" (AKA anti-freecommerce) measures are necessary to avoid a horde of crackers (and one Iranian cuck) owning the entire oil deposits of Iran
bc crackers lie about everything including the 1st definition, and most people regardless of race only watch and listen to cracker media and learn cracker languages and spend their time in cracker echo-chambers, and also most people are just stoopid (way too stupid to be cognizant of this), so even when point #1 ceases to be true and commerce starts to benefit some Asian country who pulled themselves up against all titanic odds, you will still have billions of people agreeing with the worldwide cracker circlejerk
Damn you really hate white people
According to people like these, white people are the devil incarnate.
No, they're Saltines.
Cracka.
Let's do a fun thought experiment, shall we?
Ctrl+c, [super]+t, vim swap.txt, i, ctrl+shift+v, [esc], :%s/crackers/ni*****/g
Post the results and see if that still has 31 up and 15 down..
Let’s not, we all already realize that.
Socialist countries are not, the entire Scandinavian block are super socialist, and not authoritarian.
As for Communist countries, no one has actually implemented communism, only in name. Communism means the workers, not the state, control the means of production. The state controlling them allows for bad actors to seize control.
Scandinavian countries are not "super socialist" - sure, we have robust social welfare systems, but these are funded through taxation on regulated market economies with private ownership. That is not socialism.
I know that there were some experiments with trying to transfer into a socialist system here in Sweden during the 70s (I think?), but those failed in a spectacular fashion and were rolled back. They are the reason that many famous "Swedish" brands such as IKEA aren't actually based in Sweden.
Most large-scale attempts at communism were managed in a centralized way top-down by force.
One strong leader, usually with a cult of personality. Glorification of the military. Devaluation of individual life and emphasis on sacrifice for the common good. Suppression of dissent by violence.
You can see the parallels with fascism. I'd even argue that what we know as communism and fascism mainly differ in their approach to the economy.
On the other hand, capitalism exists and thrives in chaos. It doesn't exclude authoritarianism - actually it tends to produce it when capitalists capture the government. But some capitalist countries manage not to slide all the way and have been keeping up some kind of freedom for decades, so it kinda works.
Ah yes, the legendary capitalist freedom to go homeless and die of preventable diseases. And the awful authoritarian communism of providing full employment and eliminating poverty.
If you don’t think the USA is the most authoritarian country ever, your definition of authoritarianism is useless.
Let me guess, you're an American who has never been outside of the USA, never read anything about other countries, and believes 'Murica is the greatest one forever and only one that matters (even in evil)
This. This post right here is why no one takes this place seriously.
That chart is pretty great, because it shows that only a tiny minority of US states have smaller incarceration rates than Russia.
Oh yeah, the whole blue state red state thing is just degrees of awful.
I’m not going to stick up for the U.S. carceral system, but it does not really speak unequivocally to the matter at hand now does it?
Yeah, the legendary communist free world, where you went to gulag, if you dared to think of your own. And the awful authoritarian capitalists of bringing up the average quality of life that much since ww2. /S
Sorry, but this view is very much too simple.
What country has the biggest prison population both by raw numbers and on a per capital basis?
By raw numbers obviously the US, followed by china with not too many less. Per capita El Salvador and Cuba are on the first two places. So what's your point? Per Capita and in raw numbers there is a capitalist country and a country which calls itself socialist on place one and two.
Now include Guam and Puerto Rico, which are US territories.
?
I really don't know what you are hinting at. In raw numbers the US will still be number 1 followed by China and per capita adding in countries with a lower incarceration rate and less people than the USA won't lift up the USA in the ranking.
Perhaps, if NATOpedia’s raw data is to be trusted.
The World Prison Brief at PrisonStudies.org is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is now hosted by the Institute For Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck College, University of London.
It was previously hosted by the International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS). It was a research centre at the University of Essex. It was launched at the House of Lords on 4 April 2011. Between 1997 and 2010 ICPS was based in King's College London and was launched formally by Home Secretary Jack Straw in October 1997. In July 2010 the International Centre for Prison Studies incorporated and registered as a charity with the Charities Commission of England and Wales. From the outset the Centre was independent of governmental and intergovernmental agencies, although it would work closely with them.
So who really knows what the quality of the data is without further investigation. But it seems to have been originally created by the UK’s military-intelligence-industrial complex.
Yeah, nice thing that everything not fitting your view is propaganda. I mean also what does not fit? If Wikipedia is just a pro US propaganda machine and the source they give, too: Why would the US still be on place one when looking at the absolute numbers?
Also the raw data is not from "NATOpedia", but from the source you gave. What even is your point? They are lying about China being second place in raw numbers or what? Feels a bit like killing the messenger before thinking about what he said.
I flubbed one stat that doesn't really move the needle on the point I was trying to make. I was thinking of world powers and didn't double check to make sure nations scorned by empire didn't barely hedge the US out of the top 5 on per capita (though another of its territories made it).
America is a remarkably "authoritarian" country by all standards whether they be prisons, police spending, or military spending.
I do agree with the US being quite authoritarian and that the US are a good example why capitalism in this form is very bad.
My only points are, that the world is not black and white. There may still be points where the US are doing good (national parks may come to ones mind) and China is surely no workers paradise.
You know absolutely jack shit about how Lenin came to power, or what Stalin did to maintain it do you?
Communism sounds great on paper and if anyone ever works it out successfully irl I am in.
The problem is they always try to use power to achieve their goals and that corrupts a society from the beginning.
Grown organically it might work but for some reason people really hate communists
Lenin is great, and Stalin literally saved the world. The USSR was a great success. It was as authoritarian as any western “democracy”. Prove me wrong bozo.
How did they go about it though?
At the barrel of a gun.
The same way they kept it going.
Discuss what they achieved all you want, you can be a great man without being a good one.
Damn revolution bad? I guess we should just lie down and accept how things are then. Better the death of millions of people, billions very soon, from the system that exists; than thousands from a revolution. You are very wise.
Have all of the revolutions you want, just don’t force others to live by your choices.
If you have the support, then good.
If not, go start your own thing.
Buy some land and start a community, support each other and grow larger through shared experiences and work.
If you get enough, you can start your own town.
Yeah you kind of still have to play by other rules as far as taxes, but you could be self-sufficient and off the grid.
Residential windmills and solar panels have come a long way, recycling would be easier, and if you get the right machine, you can actually burn trash for power.
Move in more people like yourself and you can probably go big enough to take over a county by sheer weight of legitimacy.
That’s probably as big as you could go though, the Mormons have kind of got Utah, but they’ve been working on that since like the 1850’s I think, and they still only have influence, a rather large amount of influence, but not control
You can see the parallels with fascism.
Totalitarianism, AKA authoritarianism. Hannah Arendt came from wealth and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. This is a bourgeois liberal, intentionally anticommunist construct that lumps fascism and communism in the same bucket.
U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the “Democratic Left” and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.
Authoritarianism has nothing to do with economic systems and everything to do with government structure. The Soviet bloc/China and other communist countries were authoritarian because the populous allowed their governments too much power. China is ultra capitalist now and they're as authoritarian if not more so.
People remember communist countries as more authoritarian because they're the more taught examples. Pinochet was a turbo capitalist and he was one of the most authoritarian rulers in history.
This is a good comment, I think. Authoritarianism is defeated with democracy, not economic systems.
Democracy can in essence just be tyranny of the majority, as well. It simply isn't enough of a safeguard against authoritarianism.
some people have to be forced into being a part of a social system.
IE, there are people who would rather let others die in the streets than have their taxes raised. some people are just terrible human beings who believe 'i got mine, fuck everyone else' which is antithetical to socialism, and requires a heavy hand via regulation.
Because they are. They are all very bad at social justice, probably because no matter the best intentions, humans are going to fuck it up. China isn't even communist, it's capitalist through and through. They have lousy worker protections, banks, housing markets, stock markets. The USSR was as expansionist and militaristic as any fascist regime, just like the current Russian one. Korea is essentially a tyrannical monarchy, no real communism to be found there. Why do you think the first ones to go up against the wall after a revolution are the true believers? Because they know it's all gone wrong.
When you have a lot of bullets, you will never run out of targets. Or in other words, if your revolution involves killing a lot of people in the name of the people, you're doing it wrong.
Edit: added another post that should go here, deleted the other one.
From a Swedish standpoint, this is just nonsense. The Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Island and Denmark) are all in the top six most democratic countries in the world (according to The economist, England). These are were much socialist countries and most definitely democratic.
Then you have china, soviet and alike. Those are countries that call(ed) themself communist. I will argue that that's however mostly used as a label to legitimate the government and to obscure what they really are, in the same manner north Korea is formaly named the democratic people's republic of Korea (DPRK). Those countries does/did not operate as communist states the way that Marx and other political theorists imaginend them.
Neoliberal corporate media are defining what is to be considered “democratic”? You don’t have to drink this Kool-Aid.
Yes i know it's not perfect and the exact positions might not be completely accurate but I still think the overall picture it paints it useful. Maybe we aren't the most democratic countries but we're defently democratic. You can check this whit whatever source you happen to prefere
The only thing it's useful for is an approximate answer to the question "Who does the Economist Group want to lionize?"
I'd like to add that the nordic countries are not socialist by any metric.
Also, we shouldn't be so quick to trust western media on the DPRK, who have gotten to the point that they can literally say anything about their enemies, and have it be believed.
They Nordic countries type of socialism may not be a replacement for capitalism (I live in Sweden so I'd know) but works alot more like the type of socialism that's common in Europe.
This terminology might not be on spot but I still think the Nordic countries are what most people would refere to as at least a little bit socialist. Maybe the proper term is social democratic?
The proper term is social democratic. Socialism has a simple and specific definition. Those Nordic countries have changed nothing about who owns the means of production and therefore have no relation to socialism.
but works alot more like the type of socialism that's common in Europe.
i.e. not the socialism of Marx
but I still think the Nordic countries are what most people would refere to as at least a little bit socialist.
If you ignore that country with 1.4 billion people and a few others, i.e. the majority of country calling their countries socialist.
Maybe the proper term is social democratic?
Yes, that is the proper term
The Nordic countries are at best welfare capitalist states, and that welfare relies on the super-exploitation of the Global South. No Nordic country is even gesturing toward the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. In fact they’re moving in the opposite direction, toward the neoliberal privatization of more and more of the commons and the financialization of everything, which is burying the working class in debt. The Eurozone is just the cartel of the European private banks, and it was designed to enforce neoclassical economics and preclude Keynsian economics.
Du høres ut som meg når jeg var 15. Har du faktisk lest Marx og disse "andre teoretikerne"?
Jag hae inte läst Marx (men har en kompis som håller på med det) och jag är faktiskt 15. Men jag vet en del om vad han tänkte/skrev t.ex. att Marx inte uppmanar till att döda demonstranter och bygga murar för att stänga inne folk. Han beskriver ett samhälle styrt av arbetetarna, inte ett samhälle styrt av en liten majoritet med enorma klasskillnader som i dagens Kina.
och jag är faktiskt 15.
For en tilfeldighet! Jeg kan respektere ærligheten, i det minste. Jeg virkelig burde slutte å tenke at alle på Internett er like gamle som meg.
mccarthyism, red scare, American and western Europe propaganda. listen to Blow Back podcast it explains a lot of political meddling and how capitalism is working in its best interest in crippling socialism
Wew lad but can you ever tell this is .ml.
So, thought experiment for you. What do you need to overthrow a government and oust a bunch of rich assholes from power? Well, you need power of your own, right? You need loyal comrades.
And say you actually manage it. Chances are it was tough. Some didn't make it. But now you're sitting on all this wealth and power. Are you just going to give it back? To who? What if someone abuses it?
You're the one who did the work. You're the one with a vision for the future. And now you have these loyal comrades and surely they deserve something for their sacrifices and hard work?
And so it goes.
Anyway, it's less about Communism as a set of ideas and more about what power does to revolutionaries and how that mixes with the local culture.
Or the CIA made it all up because Mao and Stalin et al did nothing wrong. 🙄
Or the CIA made it all up because Mao and Stalin et al did nothing wrong. 🙄
They made mistakes. But overall their countries were a gazillion times better from their influence.
I've never seen it put so well. But yeah, it's super hard for anything nice to actually follow a revolution without outside support.
And there is always outside influence too. That outside influence might make even the best of socialist experiments fail because of embargoes and assassinations. Or maybe the outside influence wants the socialism to succeed, but maybe it has to be their brand of socialism, or else.
Under communism, sovereign authority is attributable. If you ask the US president, they'll say they have little power. If you ask senators, or congresspeople, or local representatives, the media, the bourgeoisie, neither do any of they wield power. Where authoritarianism occurs under capitalism, apparently no one is responsible for it. Under communism, it's directly attributable to communists.
Both are often authoritarian, but the argument that communists are more authoritarian is simply an easier one to make.
We haven’t had a “communist” country yet. Communism is a spontaneous, free market for voluntarily donated goods and services.
Communism is basically how groups of people under about 100 behave naturally. Any group of friends on a road trip is inherently communist, as is any tribe of people, as is any family.
At larger scale, this kind of “just pay attention and do what needs doing” approach to economic distribution breaks down. Marx believed that with enough material abundance, humans would naturally behave communistically at larger scales as well. I think he’s wrong, but it remains to be seen.
So far we’ve never had communism at the scale of a county. We’ve had socialism, which is where the government forcibly redistributes wealth.
The reason that socialist countries are more authoritarian is that socialism is by definition the non-free-market version of that process.
Under capitalism, if you have an acre of farmland, that’s your acre of farmland until you decide to sell it. Under socialism, whether it’s your acre of farmland is the decision of the central economic planning committee, and in order for that committee to be able to decide whether you keep your farm or not, it needs to have the authority and power to take it from you. And the policy to do so.
Do you see why this requires a more authoritarian society?
Let’s look at it another way. Under capitalism, ie under what we call the “free market”, you own the farm. That means you have authority over it. You have authority over yourself. There’s just as much authority; it’s just that the authority is broken into little bits and distributed to people who own capital.
Under socialism, the people own the farm. Except “the people” can’t effectively operate with anything like a will, due to a lack of borg hive mind telepathy mechanics unifying their will into a single instrument, and so “the people’s” authority is wielded by the Central Committee.
When authority is centralized in this way, taken away from individuals and given instead to the state, we call this an “authoritarian” state.
Authoritarian therefore doesn’t refer to more authority; it refers to the authority being concentrated in the center.
And the authority over economic decisions being concentrated in the center is, by definition, “socialism”.
Just to clarify since I don’t think I did in the above comment: by the above explanation communism is not authoritarian. Communism is the free, distributed decision-making version of socialism. Communism is a free market scenario, just like capitalism. It’s just a gift economy instead of a trade economy.
To be more accurate when talking online its better to distinguish between who is intended to be in charge (capitalism vs socialism) and what political systems are in place to implement it.
China for example has some state capitalist characteristics meaning the state is ran in part and for the owners of capital. This is where some of their strongest economic intervention its policies stem from.
Another example would be community cooperatives operating outside of the state. They clearly are not "capitalistic" by their nature but also are not a form of central planning.
Another weird breakdown of these dichotomyies are inside of a megacorps operations, which while the corp is clearly owned by, and operated by the owners of capital (as virtual representation of shares) internally it is ran as centrally planned entity with no free market between departments (though some entities do expirment with heavily regulated market like Amazon does).
Tldr
Its a complicated subject, but boiling everything down to a false dichotomy based on 50 years of evidence does it a huge disservice. A better one to separate the intended stakeholders and what is the intended ways allowed for conflict resolution and coordination.
A socialist business (exanple worker owned cooperatives)
A capitalistic business (publically traded companies)
Of course most modern organizations have multiple interest groups so you can have a state that has both capitalist favored laws, and working class and small business owner and NGO and etc etc
A dictatorship is bad whether it carries a hammer and sickle or a wad of $100 bills
Politically they have ended up authoritarian in many instances. However, capitalism has as much "authoritarianism", just economically. Try whatever -ism you like, enough percentage of population is psychopathic and will climb to a position of power in some form or another. It's in our collective nature.
I believe it's inherent to the system. The whole point of a communist system is a centrally planned, and controlled, economy. This gives the state immense control and as inherent to every form of government, self preservation at any cost.
As discussed in "rules for rulers" by cgp grey, there is no such thing as a benevolent or kind dictator. All politicians and leaders will use any means available to themselves to further their own ambitions.
The whole point of a communist system is a centrally planned, and controlled, economy.
This has not been universally true among socialist states.
The capitalist class controls the state in capitalist countries, including ostensibly democratic” ones. They use the state to to rule the working class and to protect their private property.
self preservation at any cost.
This is practically every state that has ever existed.
“rules for rulers” by cgp grey,
Maybe step away from the Polandballs and go read/listen to some books.
This has not been universally true among socialist states.
🤣
An interesting point against communism is the lack of drive for innovation it creates. If you're living in a truly classless society (which has never and does not exist), you have no drive to do better, there is no personal reward to innovate besides progressing your society in ways you'll likely never see / be rewarded for.
The number of China's domestic valid patents does not include those held in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
Ah, you know what you're clearly correct. China, who is not a communist state, has a population of a billion people, and an authoritarian regime who would love nothing more than for it to look like China's innovating having filed more patents than the next nine countries combined means that Communism drives innovation!
Besides common knowledge, you could also research why China files so many patents (subsidys per patent filed, and the fact China acknowledges utility model and industrial design patents that are not considered patents in most countries [AND these patents make up at least 75% of those filed in China, meaning their number of real (invention) patents is more like ~400,000, and that 75% is conservative.
That second paragraph isn't necessary though, your point never had legs to stand on.
I know a lot of people push back against this but it's true in many regards. The vast majority of soviet innovation is directly from government activity and investment. When the Soviet union surpassed western governments in certain fields, it was always heavily funded by the government.
If you step back and look at the small things, consumer products and especially computers, they were extremely behind.
For real, government funded space program ≠ innovation at scale
from my own experience observing people migrating from the soviet union, they're considered more authoritarian for the efforts to keep the workers in the worker's paradise, the moment you have to put up walls and border checkpoints to keep people in, it's over. you're an authoritarian state, no longer actually socialist imho.
How is this a controversial take? If you need a wall to keep people in or attempting to emigrate makes you a "defector", or you've built up a huge surveillance network where your neighbours or even partners can report you for bullshit "crimes" , you're an authoritarian state.
tankies, I guess.
Well, us socialists have free health care and education. Most of us socialist states have female bodily autonomy. Were not big on banning books either. Most importantly we recognise a false dichotomy. Also we actually know what socialism is. Try visiting Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Europe.
You'll notice that they're are not authoritarian at all. You might just be an American, but that's not your fault.
Historically, there have been more socialist and/or communist states associated with the USSR than not. Especially when measured by population.
I mean yeah, any successful socialist revolution will naturally seek good relations with the most powerful socialist state of all. Doesn't really answer their question though.
When a smaller nation aligns itself with a larger empire or coalition, it will gravitate towards that collective's philosophy. Sometime's it's imposed through political or military pressure, or "encouraged" through subversion, but it can just as easily happen through the natural influence of a larger and more prolific culture.
"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others"
I don't know why that comment is collecting downvotes. They are referencing George Orwell's "Animal Farm."
Context: "Animal Farm" is a story about how communism can devolve into dictatorship. In the story, the animals on a farm drive out their tyrannical drunkard farmer. They write on the barn wall: "all animals are equal" and live in communist utopia. But some animals, too, hunger for power and status. Rather than overturn the system, they undermine it by adding "...but some animals are more equal than others" to the barn wall, legitimizing a ruling class (themselves) because they are "more equal."
It's because there are some real naive kids on here that believe communism will work
Love that book!
For anyone interested they're currently releasing a modern retelling in comic book form called Animal Pound, next issue is #5 of 6, and the collected trade paperback will be along later after issue #6.
It's fantastic imo so far. The Pound has just found their new autocrat, their Napoleon, and shit is getting real for the poor lil bunnies.
Because countries that call themselves communist are just dictators lying about it...
I mean, you're asking about two separate political axis: economy, and control.
Look at the Nordic countries and even most Western Europeans and you'll see socialist countries that aren't authoritarian.
Theres not a single communist country tho. So when you talk like there are, people assume you have no clue what you're talking about about.
The economic policy of those countries is socialism.
They are also democracies.
Like if I asked what kind of car you had you could say "Honda" or "a red Honda".
Their not two different answers because one included unrelated information.
If someone asks what kind of government they have, "democratic socialism" would be correct, because only giving one of the main axises wouldn't tell the full story.
But since we're talking economic systems, the democratic part is superfluous
Socialism requires that the workers have democratic control over the means of production. Nordic countries are not socialist, the working class isn't in control there.
Socialism does not refer to welfare states, but control of the Means of Production by the Proletariat.
I don’t know why you’re doubling down on your confident incorrectness when you don’t even have Wikipedia-level understanding. The very first sentence from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.
And obviously the question who the state allows to own the means of production is very much political. Economics is politics.
None, as any communist country will tell you. They are socialist states working toward communism, meaning a classless society, and, by their own theory of state, a stateless society.
I mean, you’re asking about two separate political axis: economy, and control.
You may not realize that these are in no way orthogonal to each other, but the bourgeoisie certainly do, because they own the means of production, and they use the state to enforce the private ownership that perpetuates their control over the proletariat.
Im not sure what you mean by socialist countries. But communists countries are more oppresive:
They have leaders that stay in power for decades. Opposition is often punished.
There is nor freedom of speech, speaking against the government gets you in jail or worse.
In some of those countries, people are not allowed to leave the country.
And for the record, I agree that poverty is extremely oppressive as well and we need more socialist reforms in capitalist countries, tax harder the rich, break monopolies, foster more unions and so on, I just dont agree that communism is the magical land you all think it is and the solution to all the problems. Nobody seems to want immigrate to North Korea for a reason.
For communist countries, because they are.
Because authoritarians took over the Soviet Union and proceeded to try to run every other revolution.
Because communism doesn't work for large, heterogenous groups, so increasing amounts of coercion are used to keep the system running.
And new forms of government such as socialism are generally more succeptible to corruption as people find the new loopholes; as a government gets more corrupt, those who corrupted it seek to consolidate their power.
I think socialism can be made workable, as we examine and correct the problems with previous attempts. I don't think communism works well for human societies, as it requires people to act better than we know they do.
And new forms of government such as socialism are generally more succeptible to corruption as people find the new loopholes; as a government gets more corrupt, those who corrupted it seek to consolidate their power.
This is capitalism tho.
This is every system, but new systems have new avenues for corruption and usually no established defense against it.
The USA has by far the largest prison population in absolute terms and per capita. You have no idea what you are saying.
Because communism doesn't work for large, heterogenous groups
I hear a lot of variations of this "socialism can't work for a large heterogenous group" and its such a dumb lib brainworm. Its incredibly rascist for one (obviously too if you think about it for more than 1 second) and the population size argument is just nonsensical. The largest country in the world is communist and has a heterogenous population. The USSR had a large heterogenous population and that fact had nothing to do with the eventual dissolution, but did have much to do with its success
Leaving aside nonsensically calling the CCP socialist or the USSR a success, I'm curious about your racism argument.
I don't see how acknowledging that racism exists and is a barrier to class unity is racist. I tend to think acknowledging that racism exists is the first step towards fighting racism. What's your reasoning here?
I'll note as well that that criticism was towards communism, not socialism which I think can work just fine for both large groups and diverse ones.
You don't know enough about what you're talking about to be worth arguing with. I was just pointing out the stupid rascist lib talking point cause it comes up all the time for anyone who's actually interested in learning about things you have failed to investigate but want to run your mouth about
Edit: also considering it nonsensical to consider the PRC to be a socialist nation is also pretty rascist
I'm sorry, I shouldn't have included arguments in my request for clarification, that was extremely poor form and you were right to have been dismissive.
But if I have some previously unexamined belief that's rooted in racism, I do earnestly want to correct it. If you've got something to teach me that can help, I want to hear it and will thank you for telling me.
if I have some previously unexamined belief that's rooted in racism, I do earnestly want to correct it.
I already pointed them out and you doubled down, but I'll try to give a quick explanation.
The PRC is socialist and governed by a communist party. They have a series of 5 year plans that culminate in reaching full socialism by 2050.
The reason many westerners say they're "communist in name only" is partially because of the reforms under Deng that allowed for capital development in order to build the productive forces that could be utilized to build functioning socislism under the nose of US imperial hegemony. Those reforms were controversial amoung communists at the time, but the government under Xi is making good on the intention of those reforms right now, and history has proven them to have been effective. The other part of the reason is Western chauvanism/rascism. "Non-whites cant do socialism right - they're authoritarians." This arguement is leveled at every actually existing socialist project by Western "leftists."
So it isn't "nonsensical" to consider the PRC to be what it considers itself to be, and has demonstrated itself to be. You just have to actually be informed about it
The original point about "can't do socialism because of large, heterogenous population." Besides being obvioulsy wrong because there's examples of actually existing socialism that had or have large, heterogenous populations, i always point out that the statement is rascist. I do this because most people repeating it, haven't even thought about how its rascist.
Its a brainworm people in the US use to explain why they can't have the kind of social democracy they have in Scandinavian countries - at least that's the context I've always heard it used. This is a "nonsensical" trueism. First, the Scandinavian countries they're refering to are 1) not socialist to begin with, they're social democracies. 2) they aren't homogeneous, they also have ethnic minorities and have rascism.
That statement is not a meaningful acknowledgement of rascism, its an acquiescence to it. Its an appeal to rascism as an arguement why something just can't happen in the US. It also ignores the actual reasons impeding social democracy, let alone socislism which is the entrenched position of capitalist hegemony, the power and depth of its propaganda apparatus, and the relatively privileged position of US workers vs those in the global south due to imperialist exploitation and extraction.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this out for me, especially the stuff about China's capital projects. I will certainly be less blithe about trotting out the party line on that topic.
No problem, you're welcome. I actually misread your last post and thought you were being sarcastic but thought I'd give that info anyway lol, sorry about misreading.
Yeah until i started learning about socialism and learning about actually existing socialism i had no clue about the nuances of China's development either. There was a lot of skepticism about Deng's reforms at the time and to the present, but the actions of the Party under Xi have begun the process of reigning the capitalist expansion in and redirecting those productive forces toward the goal of full socialism by 2050.
There's an important distinction that AES states recognize - that they're socialist projects even if they aren't currently in a state of full socialism. Socialism is diffucult to create. Marx theorized that revolutions would take place where fully developed capitalism already existed for the workers to then take control over, and use thise productive forces to build socialism. But the Revolutions in Russia and China (and the subsequent revolutions in the global south) required some reevalution. Generally speaking, the revolutionary potential was weak in the highly developed capitialist countries and was strongest in the areas ravaged by Western imperialism. But following the successful revolutions measures were required to industrialize and build the forces and conditions necessay to create socialism. Western left anti-communists chauvinisticly tend to point to full socialism not existing already in AES as them "not doing it right" despite the fact that they are actually creating socialism, while the Western left has achieved basically nothing.
complains about capitalism
Is this communism?
I'd argue that no system truly works for larger groups.
more susceptible to corruption
I couldn't disagree more. Any system is very susceptible to corruption. It's all about accountability and transparency, which those in power will never make themselves do, because it is actively harming them by stripping them of opportunities to amass more power and influence.
And that is true in any system. Communist states became totalitarian dictatorships, while Capitalist nations also grow more corrupt because of greed and power lust, to the point where you see things like "the revolving door" in the USA, or the Tory party donors essentially paying for peerages in the UK. And of course, there's also lobbying.
Corruption is everywhere and the common man gets screwed over regardless of the system or people in charge, because the good people are always too good to compete, fight, and play dirty against these politicians so the winners are always the evil ones.
That's not only an incredibly nihilistic way of seeing the world, but also it is exactly what the bourgeoise dictatorships want you to see: "everything is terrible but the dreaded others are worse, now shut up and work for my 10th yacht"
That's not what I said. I said everywhere is terrible.
And to be honest, yes, other places have it worse. I used to live in arguably the worst nation in Eastern Europe and I like in the UK now. I sure as hell know which one gibes me more life opportunities, higher quality and diversity of jobs, better education and higher quality of life.
And that's without even considering the places that are at war.
So yes, people in other places have it much much worse.
Now in terms of nihilism, I actually see myself as more of an absurdist, as ultimately I'll carry on living in this meaningless universe in spite of its lack of meaning and I will achieve a level of success and satisfaction with my own achievements, (hell, I kinda already have) in spite of the aforementioned bastards politicians.
Oh I completely agree.
Established systems, at least ones that last, tend to have checks on corruption or on consolidating power. These are not always effective, obviously, and corruption is always a danger. My critique was specifically how newer systems have new and unforseen avenues do these antisocial activities.
Because the communism is a convenient ideology for totalitarian states to exploit and control the population.
It's exactly like the middle-ages Christianity, with the Bible promoting humanitarian ideology, and the church exploiting the hell out of the population.
That's also why communists banned all religions, they don't want any competition.
Liberals' complete lack of materialist class-based analysis is always funny to see
Because the rulers under communism are still the political class and not the working man. And instead of being able to uplift yourself via entrepreneurship you have the state controlling every aspect of your life, your career, and your ability to own property
Just as capitalist states are "authoritarian" against working class interests, socialist states are "authoritarian" against capitalist interests.
The state is a tool for one class to oppress another. The goal of (most) communists is to transition from capitalism — where the capitalist class is in power — to a stateless, classless communist society via socialism — where the working class is in power.
Public perception of which is more "authoritarian" therefore depends on which class is currently in power and is able to manufacture consent, and that is the capitalist class in the vast majority of the world right now since the USSR's overthrow.
A five minute primer on Herman & Chomsky’s propaganda model:
Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The problem with this claim is that the USSR was quite authoritarian towards everyone. The Gulags were a place merely of political repression. Political jokes that are part and parcel of American late night comedy shows would get people harsh labor sentences during certain periods. The claim that this had to happen to protect the working class seems thin.
One regime's political-dissident-by-speech is another's dissident-by-drug-addiction. America's "War on Drugs" was purely political disenfranchisement along racial lines, and it's a major reason why the US continues to have higher incarceration rates than the USSR had in many of the years the Gulag system was operational.
By the way, prison rape jokes have long been a part of those late night comedy shows, to give you an idea of just how ingrained the American prison culture is.
You don't know what you're talking about
read the resent news of Julian Assange or John Pilger there'd be a lot more if i could think to name them
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
What is "Authoritarianism"?
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
With the USSR overthrown, virtually all mainstream media now is capitalist propaganda. And the capitalist class obviously would not want the working class to prefer a system where workers are in power.
Being familiar with Bulgarian corruption, I'm going to confidently state that their percentages aren't due to a rounding error.
I was in Hungary last year and the nostalgia for communism is high and a significant portion of the population still remembers all the bad parts - Orban has really destroyed the social safety nets there and it hurts to see.
Hungary was also the best part of the Soviet Bloc to live in for the people.
So it's not just that modern Hungary is worse: communist Hungary is more miss-able than communist East Germany.
Nigel Swain's two books on the subject are good:
Collective Farms Which Work? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
Hungary: The Rise and Fall of Feasible Socialism (London: New Left Books, 1992)
He's writing from the perspective of a non-red English academic who's like.... "wait... this works?? how do we explain the anomaly?"
Hungary had full shelves, booming agriculture, available consumer goods.
I'd also expect there's more and more people propagandized by capitalist media in post-Soviet states as time has passed since capitalist bastards took it over. People who have not lived under socialism or experienced the massively decreased quality of life from the privatization forced on those countries.
Though fortunately it seems like the Russian capitalists have not managed to succeed in this, with more and more people identifying with the USSR than the capitalist Russian Federation in recent years.
Hard to do that at the heart of the revolution I guess. Maybe Russian communist parties could use that to become more revolutionary, specially with Russians able to see the stark difference between Russia under capitalism and China thriving under socialism. Doubt that'll happen while Putin is in power though.
This graph is such bullshit. If you were being honest in your arguments there would be no need to alter the results of the study.
This is the original graph - "About the same" answers were given directly to "worse", fabricating results.
This is the study. Despite their life "not being better" on average, they still conclude that Communism has its downsides and are in no way saying they want to go back to it.
Hungarian here. There reason for being the top 1 was because the country was running on debt hell for 10-15 years.
Kádár (the ruler of that time) had promised from 1956 that he will improve the living standards. This worked until the 70s, when the oil crisis happened and Kádár realized that with those current living conditions, the country needs to get loans. So he did that until communism have ended.
But in practice communism ends up the same. The workers had no actual power under Communism. The leaders still took it all.
Uh oh. Looks like you triggered the tankies who are nostalgic for a thing that never happened.
They even had to build a wall to keep the capitalist working class outside of east Berlin.
That Pew data is outdated. They have new data from 2019. Why did you post outdated and bad data to strengthen you belief?
The latest research literally says conditions are better now for most people. Unless you hate homosexuals and women. Every metric indicate high standards of life and rights.
I hate capitalism as much as the next person. But posting like you did is how we got Trump. Just faking everything till it happens.
"Bad data" is when you use data more representative of people who have actually lived under socialism and experienced the massive decline in quality of life, social welfare, housing, etc after capitalist bastards took it over and privatized everything for their profit
Ye sure. No communist project has ever worked out because some people are by nature evil and hungry for power. Every communist regime has gone to shit because of it. Anyone hungry for power should be imprisoned because they are a danger to society. But most people rely on direction to function. It's a double edged blade.
Capitalism ruins everything in its path and communism eat it's children. Welcome to the suck.
The "muh human nature" argument is a fallacy, you do realize that, yes? People are products of their environment, in Capitalism greed and selfishness are rewarded, so you think the way people act in Capitalism is natural for all economic systems, lmao.
I don't think that's the right reason, though it does touch upon one of the biggest reasons.
Communist projects have failed in no small part because of external interference from non-communist countries. Look at the US and their infamous "bringing democracy" around the world, for example.
But they've also failed not because of innate human nature, but because some people's nature is indeed what you describe. And unfortunately, violent revolutions have a tendency to make it very easy for those people take step in and fill power vacuums left in the wake of the former regime's demise. Even if the ideals of many of the boots on the ground in the revolution was entirely well-meaning, the leadership might not be, either from the start, or as the revolution goes on. That's why so many of the more famous communist regimes are incredibly authoritarian.
Name me one communist regime and I'll tell you why you're a fucking idiot and don't know the difference between communism and socialism.
Because we live in a capitalist society where capitalists control our media and education. Back in the fifties, you’d be jailed or even killed for being a communist (or gay) in the United States of America. Why do we view this as any less authoritarian than the USSR? Because it’s our past.
Because the USSR killed millions of its own people in concentration camps and gulags. The two are so incomparable.
While I agree that the USSR was worse, the two absolutely are comparable.
Comparing deaths may put USSR on top, but the US isn’t that far behind.
Comparing authoritarianism is another story. Both quieted political dissent in the same way: raiding opposing political organizations and jailing or killing their leaders. That is authoritarianism.
When slaves rise up and throw the master out of the house they built, the master's first instinct is to gather his friends and and crush the uprising before it's example can inspire others. If the former slaves want to keep their freedom, and if they don't want their sacrifices to have been for nothing, they need to secure the house, and quickly.
In 1917, the people of Russia cast off their feudal monarch. In 1918, America and nine other countries invaded Russia to fight for the czar, to crush the worker's uprising and restore the monarch to the throne. They don't teach us about it in school.
Here's a 2 minute bop set to a Parenti lecture that covers this. The basic fact is that a capitalist empire will never willingly surrender control of an exploitable land where labor and resources can be had for cheap or free, not without a fight. The lecture is at least 30 years old now, but has only gotten more prescient with the genocidal crackdown in Palestine against a liberation movement that threatens America's ability to control the region's trade through it's military outpost of Isreal. To make it even more relevant, there are communist groups like the PFLP fighting the IOF in Palestine at this very moment-this is all very much one struggle against economic imperialism, and against colonialism.
Just as an aside, we here in the capitalist west are authoritarian as fuck lol, we've just structured our systems of exploitation in such a way that it looks like a million separate companies fucking you over instead of an entire economic model fucking everyone over (and enforced at gunpoint), which is what it is.
To add, there is only one country on earth with > 800 external military bases, and through an incredibly effective propanda campaign, they've managed to convince the world that its not them, but their enemies that are "totalitarian" and "authoritarian".
Oh shit the man the myth the legend. Thank you for your service comrade.
Np comrade o7
On your last point, if somebody wants an example of how ordinary everyday capitalism is violent, they should imagine what will happen to them if they do not pay their debts or cannot make their rent. These things are enforced with violence.
one of my favorite takes on this subject is from This Soviet World by Anna Louise Strong:
This Soviet World
Isn't that generally said by countries that oppose them?
The land of the less authoritarian had race discrimination until half a century ago, right? Seeing the BLM, it seems to have a prominent role even now. So are they any better?
Because of who controls the presses in capitalist countries.
Yeah this question is always incomplete; considered by who?
They aren't?
Americans live in an authoritarian plutocracy, but refuse to believe it
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
Because authority carried out under the pretenses of private property is whitewashed in liberal states, who are the ones in your question doing the "considering".
because capitalists have to lie about reality to preserve their ill gotten gains.
From Losurdo - A critique of the category of totalitarianism:
It's simple to label a government as "authoritarian" just because they have things called "laws" that prevent you from exploiting their people. Likewise, it's convenient to repeatedly tell your citizens that distant, non-English-speaking countries are "authoritarian." The truth is, for every Westerner who can afford to travel and verify these claims, a million others will just accept what the media tells them. They'll even go on to reinforce these narratives, despite having no firsthand experience or direct connection to these places.
Projection of the contradiction of capital, capitalists states only allow freedom to those that can pay and has the illusion of free choice only when it comes to consumption.
Exclusively based on vibes and lies/media presentation. It's just manufactured concensus, we teach 9 year Olds that it's freedom VS authoritarian capitalism VS communism
It's just bullshit, capitalist countries are authoritarian as fuck
Authoritarian is usually code for when white people don't rule a country
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: racism
We really ought to teach critical race theory in schools like conservative politicians and pundits claim.
lmao did someone really report me over getting their precious little white feelings hurt?
Russia tho.
Russians got kicked out of whiteness a couple years back
Oh my god that's real what the fuck lmao
When I was born in China, the spirit of Genghis Khan himself came to me and told me to be authoritarian
That’s why Russians aren’t “white” anymore. They’ve been downgraded to asiatic horde again, which is why NATOpedia has trotted out meat wave theory again. Like authoritarianism, whiteness is also an ever-shifting construct of imperialism/colonialism.
I have heard, from leftist, that Russian leadership has a higher tolerance for casualties on their side because THEY see the forced conscripts from easter Europe as disposalable. I have not seen/heard a NATO leader suggesting that they are.
If you're saying authoritarianism can be explained by non-whiteness....
But also saying that anyone opposing NATO become ipso facto non-white because it's "an ever-shifting construct"...
Then the "construct" has no explanatory power.
Why not just say 'authoritarianism' is opposition to the NATO bloc?
You're saying "authoritarianism = non-whiteness = opposition to the NATO bloc"
Why not skip the middle step?
I’m not saying that. I’m saying that “whiteness” as a construct is a tool of capitalism/imperialism/colonialism. And that the Global North similarly tends to attribute “authoritarianism” to whichever states are acting insufficiently subservient to their imperialist interests at any given moment. And I’m saying that these two constructs have a tendency to be aligned with each other, because they’re both tools of capitalism/imperialism/colonialism.
Whiteness is as old as European colonialism, and has been baked into capitalism—which began in Europe—from the start. Whiteness has been twisted into all sorts of nonsensical logic pretzels. See for example honorary Aryans honorary whites. It has no explanatory power because it is simply a tool of power. Even the Irish, Italian, and other Catholic European immigrants have suffered it within our own country. As Josep Borrell has more-or-less said, the imperial core is the “garden”, and the rest of the world is the “jungle.” Imperialism uses race—which again is made-up bullshit—as a tool to justify their imperialism.
I’m not saying that, but the NATO bloc often seems to imply it.
It's not empiricaly right tho. Hitler and Stalin are the first type-examples. In the modern era it's normally Putin and Xi who get the label.
I already covered the origins of this propagandistic Western conceptualization of “authoritarianism”/“totalitarianism” in another comment in this post. But I’ll add a 1955 CIA report that was declassified in 2008.
This is off topic, but I want to mention for the sake of other hexbears that I'm glad you linked to this other comment you made. It's a good comment but no one on hexbear can see it or anything else in that reply chain. Since you were replying to someone from an instance not federated with us, it's just not visible. A reminder that the exact same thread can look completely different depending on what instance you're reading it from.
Equivocating Stalin and Hitler is some crypto Nazi shit.
It is standard in Westoid discourse, e.g. the Wikipedia page on "authoritarianism" probably does it idk didn't read it.
People who use words like "authoritarianism" equate the two.
Only one of those four is white, and it's a classic reactionary tactic to downplay him compared to the Georgian and the older Han Chinese example
Joe Biden and the US military industrial complex are currently helping Isreal commit a genocide out in the open, and that's your pick for 21st century Hitler? Tell me you don't think Palestinans matter without using the words, jesus.
Go ask the NATO bloc and their supporters. The obvious and surface answer is that it has to do with making for an easy "us-vs-them" identifier. "Of course they're bad, they aren't white like us good wholesome folk are, who are inherently good and wholesome because we're white, and being good and wholesome makes us right and correct in what we do and you can tell because we're white. The ones who are bad clearly aren't like us. They're not white!" Yes, it is circular reasoning and garbage logic. But I don't know why you're getting pissy at us for that instead of the dipshits white people who keep moving the goalposts on the meaning of whiteness, as they always have done to suit their agenda. Take it up with them.
Sorry I have no idea what you're talking about.
The thread was asking about authoritarianism. I was slagging the people who said it's about being black, not about Hitler, Stalin, the USSR, Putin, etc.
You were asking about the shifting nature of the meaning of the term whiteness. Go up and read your own comment to see how you related that to authoritarianism. If you can't follow your own train of thought, then I can't help you because it makes it apparent you're not asking in good faith.
What I'm trying to explain to you is that "we" are not saying that. The people who use whiteness to justify their actions and otherize their enemies are saying that. This isn't difficult.
Like I said, I'm here to slag Yanks and their know-nothing racist views of the world.
It's astonishing how they'll confidently lecture ya on things they demonstrate complete ignorance of.
I think the myopic point you’re making is unintentionally promoting some heinous stuff, or else I have to wonder how you seemed to end up with a Lemmygrad alt account. I’m not seeing any “yanks” here being confused about race.
The original thing was they said "authoritarianism is when not white".
After that it got confusing.
This is holocaust denialism.
Saying Hitler is white is holocaust denial?
This thread became gibberish a while back
Equating Hitler and Stalin or Nazi Germany and the USSR is holocaust trivialization, according to Jewish holocaust scholars. Dovid Katz did a popular article on it that you can probably search.
You know that isn't what I was saying piss off.
The shite Americans will make about skin-colour.
This comment doesn't stand up to 3 seconds thought. It's their one answer to every question.
Literal swastika-ass Nazis in Ukraine doing terrorism for a decade: we must arm these precious smol boys who are defending western civilization against the Russian orcs!
Literal fascists in Palestine doing a genocide against brown people: fuck your terrorist baby hospitals, there are no innocents in Gaza, bleed em dry and stack em high
Dipshits: Wow how could anyone think there's a racial component to this
Yanks have this one-size-fits-all thing with no knowledge of the world.
First guy was saying Hitler/Stalin/Milosevic/Putin aren't white, this guy is saying Palestinians are brown
Your make-believe country has a hereditary monarch and human shit in the drinking water, you are recused from adult topics.
Really leaning into the "no knowledge of the world" thing
Back when we had kings prior to colonisation, they were elected, could be recalled, and were not hereditary.
Don't know what you're on about with the shit reference.
This is an old imperialist chestnut. We've heard it all before. As I said here, it is one reason we sympathise with our Palestinian friends: we both have imperialist fucks like you telling us our country is make-believe.
This is like a new level of playing victim. Britain's economy is three arms conglomerates in a trench coat and your slapdash schools and hospitals are currently in the process of falling over. The suicide rate is through the roof, people are freezing to death in the winters and the immigration gestapo are snatching people into vans to be deported to concentration camps in Rwanda. Your rivers are full of cocaine runoff and everyone's depressed. You people have been thoroughly immiserated by authoritrian capitalism, and now you're acting like Cybertruck guys, lashing out at anyone pointing out that you've been lied to.
Spare me this sanctimonious "Me and the Palestinians are as brothers against the imperialists" canard, Paul Ma'ud Dipshit. You fuckers caused this whole situation with your dumb shit "British mandate of Palestine", and now you want to extremely caucasianly hop in and claim the good guys. Your country still worships Winston "I am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes" Churchill, the miserable drunken fuck who created the Bengal Famine, killed a hundred million people, and said of it "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. They will breed like rabbits, famine or no." Toad Hitler is your national icon, you depressed cryptocurrency peddling royalty-sniffers have negative business lecturing anyone about anything.
I believe the person you are speaking to is Irish.
Thanks, that makes it weird as fuck that they're going to bat for Thatcher Island
Wasn't it obvious from the literal start that that person was Irish‽
Literally no, what kind of weird ass non-brit uses Yank every sentence?
I think because they mod !noyank@lemmy.ml.
ETA: What a stupid, unproductive, corrosive thread this fucking was.
Go easy on them. These people can't point to countries on maps.
Please don't think that I'm necessarily agreeing with your stances and attitudes and so forth, but do think that I find ShimmeringKoi to be kind of embarrassing right now.
Take time out of your day and think about why you come across br*tish
When did I say anything like that? 🤣🤣🤣
Nobody mentioned Britain, like?
The reading comprehension on ye, honestly. Imagine being this thick and still trying to lecture foreign countries on their poltics and history.
How do youfigure that? It was the Brits and the U.N.
Again, showing your ignorance. Churchill hated us. He ordered the Black & Tans in here, who murdered three of my own relatives. He is a deeply reviled person here and in India.
The arrogance of Yanks is infinite. They think they can lecture people about Palestine/Ukraine/Tigray, when they can't even find countries on a map.
The one hammer in their thick minds is they black/white hammer, which makes no sense for interpreting 90% of things, e.g. authoritarianism in this case.
Honestly though, like our grappling with racism in the states smears our views of geopolitics so much. Like we struggle to imagine a culture not wrapped up in it.
Because propaganda works
Because mass media, manufactured consent, and regulatory capture are the “good” kind of coercion.
Because our bourgeois state propaganda and corporate media tell us that they are, because it’s in their best interest that we believe it.
I could say that bourgeois ownership of media and academia and the state means that those institutions will represent the biases and interests of the bourgeoisie, and so people in first-world capitalist countries end up living in a sort of self-propagating anti-communist media bubble; but the thing about propaganda is that people are rarely ever truly "tricked" by it, propaganda is always most effective when it reinforces something that someone already believes on some level.
This is why the second part to building anti-communist sentiment has to do with super-exploitation, imperialism, and the labor aristocracy. This is to say, workers in first-world capitalist countries are materially invested in capitalism, through various perks and "treats" that workers of "poorer" countries are deprived of. By being materially invested in capitalism, workers of the first world are primed to take on a sort of "bourgeois mindset", as it were.
There's more that can be said, too, I'd strongly recommend listening to this speech by the leader of Revolutionary Grenada, Maurice Bishop, but I think that's a good start...
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
super-exploitation, imperialism, and the labor aristocracy.
this speech by the leader of Revolutionary Grenada, Maurice Bishop
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I see a lot of comments saying they aren't. I'd disagree, but I agree they don't have to be. The issue is most of the major powers in the world have opposed leftist governments anytime they show up. The ones that didn't have a strong central power and cultural hegymony collapsed under the pressure. Any nation that had a weaker central power was either destroyed, couped, or undermined by the west.
There is nothing intrinsically authoritarian about leftism (really, I'd say it's less authoritarian in it's ideals), but authoritarianism is easier to hold together when outside pressures are trying to destroy you.
bc crackers got lucky 500 years ago by finding an entire hemisphere of free money, thus any "free commerce" after this date necessarily advantages crackers, and "authoritarian" (AKA anti-freecommerce) measures are necessary to avoid a horde of crackers (and one Iranian cuck) owning the entire oil deposits of Iran
bc crackers lie about everything including the 1st definition, and most people regardless of race only watch and listen to cracker media and learn cracker languages and spend their time in cracker echo-chambers, and also most people are just stoopid (way too stupid to be cognizant of this), so even when point #1 ceases to be true and commerce starts to benefit some Asian country who pulled themselves up against all titanic odds, you will still have billions of people agreeing with the worldwide cracker circlejerk
Damn you really hate white people
According to people like these, white people are the devil incarnate.
No, they're Saltines.
Cracka.
Let's do a fun thought experiment, shall we?
Ctrl+c, [super]+t, vim swap.txt, i, ctrl+shift+v, [esc], :%s/crackers/ni*****/gPost the results and see if that still has 31 up and 15 down..
Let’s not, we all already realize that.
Socialist countries are not, the entire Scandinavian block are super socialist, and not authoritarian.
As for Communist countries, no one has actually implemented communism, only in name. Communism means the workers, not the state, control the means of production. The state controlling them allows for bad actors to seize control.
Scandinavian countries are not "super socialist" - sure, we have robust social welfare systems, but these are funded through taxation on regulated market economies with private ownership. That is not socialism.
I know that there were some experiments with trying to transfer into a socialist system here in Sweden during the 70s (I think?), but those failed in a spectacular fashion and were rolled back. They are the reason that many famous "Swedish" brands such as IKEA aren't actually based in Sweden.
Some might call it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy
Most large-scale attempts at communism were managed in a centralized way top-down by force. One strong leader, usually with a cult of personality. Glorification of the military. Devaluation of individual life and emphasis on sacrifice for the common good. Suppression of dissent by violence.
You can see the parallels with fascism. I'd even argue that what we know as communism and fascism mainly differ in their approach to the economy.
On the other hand, capitalism exists and thrives in chaos. It doesn't exclude authoritarianism - actually it tends to produce it when capitalists capture the government. But some capitalist countries manage not to slide all the way and have been keeping up some kind of freedom for decades, so it kinda works.
Ah yes, the legendary capitalist freedom to go homeless and die of preventable diseases. And the awful authoritarian communism of providing full employment and eliminating poverty.
If you don’t think the USA is the most authoritarian country ever, your definition of authoritarianism is useless.
Let me guess, you're an American who has never been outside of the USA, never read anything about other countries, and believes 'Murica is the greatest one forever and only one that matters (even in evil)
This. This post right here is why no one takes this place seriously.
World Incarceration Rates If Every U.S. State Were A Country
That chart is pretty great, because it shows that only a tiny minority of US states have smaller incarceration rates than Russia.
Oh yeah, the whole blue state red state thing is just degrees of awful.
I’m not going to stick up for the U.S. carceral system, but it does not really speak unequivocally to the matter at hand now does it?
Yeah, the legendary communist free world, where you went to gulag, if you dared to think of your own. And the awful authoritarian capitalists of bringing up the average quality of life that much since ww2. /S
Sorry, but this view is very much too simple.
What country has the biggest prison population both by raw numbers and on a per capital basis?
By raw numbers obviously the US, followed by china with not too many less. Per capita El Salvador and Cuba are on the first two places. So what's your point? Per Capita and in raw numbers there is a capitalist country and a country which calls itself socialist on place one and two.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
Better check your facts before next time.
Now include Guam and Puerto Rico, which are US territories.
? I really don't know what you are hinting at. In raw numbers the US will still be number 1 followed by China and per capita adding in countries with a lower incarceration rate and less people than the USA won't lift up the USA in the ranking.
Perhaps, if NATOpedia’s raw data is to be trusted.
So who really knows what the quality of the data is without further investigation. But it seems to have been originally created by the UK’s military-intelligence-industrial complex.
Yeah, nice thing that everything not fitting your view is propaganda. I mean also what does not fit? If Wikipedia is just a pro US propaganda machine and the source they give, too: Why would the US still be on place one when looking at the absolute numbers?
Also the raw data is not from "NATOpedia", but from the source you gave. What even is your point? They are lying about China being second place in raw numbers or what? Feels a bit like killing the messenger before thinking about what he said.
I flubbed one stat that doesn't really move the needle on the point I was trying to make. I was thinking of world powers and didn't double check to make sure nations scorned by empire didn't barely hedge the US out of the top 5 on per capita (though another of its territories made it).
America is a remarkably "authoritarian" country by all standards whether they be prisons, police spending, or military spending.
I do agree with the US being quite authoritarian and that the US are a good example why capitalism in this form is very bad.
My only points are, that the world is not black and white. There may still be points where the US are doing good (national parks may come to ones mind) and China is surely no workers paradise.
You know absolutely jack shit about how Lenin came to power, or what Stalin did to maintain it do you?
Communism sounds great on paper and if anyone ever works it out successfully irl I am in.
The problem is they always try to use power to achieve their goals and that corrupts a society from the beginning.
Grown organically it might work but for some reason people really hate communists
Lenin is great, and Stalin literally saved the world. The USSR was a great success. It was as authoritarian as any western “democracy”. Prove me wrong bozo.
How did they go about it though?
At the barrel of a gun.
The same way they kept it going.
Discuss what they achieved all you want, you can be a great man without being a good one.
Damn revolution bad? I guess we should just lie down and accept how things are then. Better the death of millions of people, billions very soon, from the system that exists; than thousands from a revolution. You are very wise.
Have all of the revolutions you want, just don’t force others to live by your choices.
If you have the support, then good.
If not, go start your own thing.
Buy some land and start a community, support each other and grow larger through shared experiences and work.
If you get enough, you can start your own town.
Yeah you kind of still have to play by other rules as far as taxes, but you could be self-sufficient and off the grid.
Residential windmills and solar panels have come a long way, recycling would be easier, and if you get the right machine, you can actually burn trash for power.
Move in more people like yourself and you can probably go big enough to take over a county by sheer weight of legitimacy.
That’s probably as big as you could go though, the Mormons have kind of got Utah, but they’ve been working on that since like the 1850’s I think, and they still only have influence, a rather large amount of influence, but not control
Totalitarianism, AKA authoritarianism. Hannah Arendt came from wealth and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. This is a bourgeois liberal, intentionally anticommunist construct that lumps fascism and communism in the same bucket.
Monthly Review, The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited
If fact almost all of the “Western left” (that wasn’t crushed by red scares) was captured by the imperial core’s propaganda machine: Imperialist Propaganda and the Ideology of the Western Left Intelligentsia: From Anticommunism and Identity Politics to Democratic Illusions and Fascism
Marketing
Authoritarianism has nothing to do with economic systems and everything to do with government structure. The Soviet bloc/China and other communist countries were authoritarian because the populous allowed their governments too much power. China is ultra capitalist now and they're as authoritarian if not more so.
People remember communist countries as more authoritarian because they're the more taught examples. Pinochet was a turbo capitalist and he was one of the most authoritarian rulers in history.
This is a good comment, I think. Authoritarianism is defeated with democracy, not economic systems.
Democracy can in essence just be tyranny of the majority, as well. It simply isn't enough of a safeguard against authoritarianism.
some people have to be forced into being a part of a social system.
IE, there are people who would rather let others die in the streets than have their taxes raised. some people are just terrible human beings who believe 'i got mine, fuck everyone else' which is antithetical to socialism, and requires a heavy hand via regulation.
Because they are. They are all very bad at social justice, probably because no matter the best intentions, humans are going to fuck it up. China isn't even communist, it's capitalist through and through. They have lousy worker protections, banks, housing markets, stock markets. The USSR was as expansionist and militaristic as any fascist regime, just like the current Russian one. Korea is essentially a tyrannical monarchy, no real communism to be found there. Why do you think the first ones to go up against the wall after a revolution are the true believers? Because they know it's all gone wrong.
When you have a lot of bullets, you will never run out of targets. Or in other words, if your revolution involves killing a lot of people in the name of the people, you're doing it wrong.
Edit: added another post that should go here, deleted the other one.
From a Swedish standpoint, this is just nonsense. The Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Island and Denmark) are all in the top six most democratic countries in the world (according to The economist, England). These are were much socialist countries and most definitely democratic.
Then you have china, soviet and alike. Those are countries that call(ed) themself communist. I will argue that that's however mostly used as a label to legitimate the government and to obscure what they really are, in the same manner north Korea is formaly named the democratic people's republic of Korea (DPRK). Those countries does/did not operate as communist states the way that Marx and other political theorists imaginend them.
https://redsails.org/losurdo-on-china/
if you want an analysis of China that isn't just based on vibes
Thanks, but what should i get out of this apparat from Soviet and Chinese history? What is it you are trying to say with this?
Neoliberal corporate media are defining what is to be considered “democratic”? You don’t have to drink this Kool-Aid.
Yes i know it's not perfect and the exact positions might not be completely accurate but I still think the overall picture it paints it useful. Maybe we aren't the most democratic countries but we're defently democratic. You can check this whit whatever source you happen to prefere
The only thing it's useful for is an approximate answer to the question "Who does the Economist Group want to lionize?"
I'd like to add that the nordic countries are not socialist by any metric.
Also, we shouldn't be so quick to trust western media on the DPRK, who have gotten to the point that they can literally say anything about their enemies, and have it be believed.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
not socialist
Is north korea a totalitarian dictatorship? Are they all really required to get the same haircut? A short documentary.
Are north korean defectors really paid to lie by the south? A short documentary.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
They Nordic countries type of socialism may not be a replacement for capitalism (I live in Sweden so I'd know) but works alot more like the type of socialism that's common in Europe.
This terminology might not be on spot but I still think the Nordic countries are what most people would refere to as at least a little bit socialist. Maybe the proper term is social democratic?
The proper term is social democratic. Socialism has a simple and specific definition. Those Nordic countries have changed nothing about who owns the means of production and therefore have no relation to socialism.
i.e. not the socialism of Marx
If you ignore that country with 1.4 billion people and a few others, i.e. the majority of country calling their countries socialist.
Yes, that is the proper term
The Nordic countries are at best welfare capitalist states, and that welfare relies on the super-exploitation of the Global South. No Nordic country is even gesturing toward the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. In fact they’re moving in the opposite direction, toward the neoliberal privatization of more and more of the commons and the financialization of everything, which is burying the working class in debt. The Eurozone is just the cartel of the European private banks, and it was designed to enforce neoclassical economics and preclude Keynsian economics.
Du høres ut som meg når jeg var 15. Har du faktisk lest Marx og disse "andre teoretikerne"?
Jag hae inte läst Marx (men har en kompis som håller på med det) och jag är faktiskt 15. Men jag vet en del om vad han tänkte/skrev t.ex. att Marx inte uppmanar till att döda demonstranter och bygga murar för att stänga inne folk. Han beskriver ett samhälle styrt av arbetetarna, inte ett samhälle styrt av en liten majoritet med enorma klasskillnader som i dagens Kina.
For en tilfeldighet! Jeg kan respektere ærligheten, i det minste. Jeg virkelig burde slutte å tenke at alle på Internett er like gamle som meg.
Jeg virkelig ville anbefalt å lære mer om Marx og Engels sine idéer, for eksempel Engels skrev "Om autoritet" (svensk oversettelse her — veldig kort!)
What do you believe Marx envisioned a country building Communism to work like?
Why are you calling Social Safety Nets "Socialism?"
They also have huge Union power and have nationalized some industry. To say the Nordic country just have social safety nets would be a disservice.
mccarthyism, red scare, American and western Europe propaganda. listen to Blow Back podcast it explains a lot of political meddling and how capitalism is working in its best interest in crippling socialism
Wew lad but can you ever tell this is .ml.
So, thought experiment for you. What do you need to overthrow a government and oust a bunch of rich assholes from power? Well, you need power of your own, right? You need loyal comrades.
And say you actually manage it. Chances are it was tough. Some didn't make it. But now you're sitting on all this wealth and power. Are you just going to give it back? To who? What if someone abuses it?
You're the one who did the work. You're the one with a vision for the future. And now you have these loyal comrades and surely they deserve something for their sacrifices and hard work?
And so it goes.
Anyway, it's less about Communism as a set of ideas and more about what power does to revolutionaries and how that mixes with the local culture.
Or the CIA made it all up because Mao and Stalin et al did nothing wrong. 🙄
They made mistakes. But overall their countries were a gazillion times better from their influence.
e.g. From 1950 to 1980, life expectancy at birth in China grew from between 35 and 40 years to 65.5 years, one of the most rapid sustained increases in documented global history
I've never seen it put so well. But yeah, it's super hard for anything nice to actually follow a revolution without outside support.
And there is always outside influence too. That outside influence might make even the best of socialist experiments fail because of embargoes and assassinations. Or maybe the outside influence wants the socialism to succeed, but maybe it has to be their brand of socialism, or else.
Under communism, sovereign authority is attributable. If you ask the US president, they'll say they have little power. If you ask senators, or congresspeople, or local representatives, the media, the bourgeoisie, neither do any of they wield power. Where authoritarianism occurs under capitalism, apparently no one is responsible for it. Under communism, it's directly attributable to communists.
Both are often authoritarian, but the argument that communists are more authoritarian is simply an easier one to make.
We haven’t had a “communist” country yet. Communism is a spontaneous, free market for voluntarily donated goods and services.
Communism is basically how groups of people under about 100 behave naturally. Any group of friends on a road trip is inherently communist, as is any tribe of people, as is any family.
At larger scale, this kind of “just pay attention and do what needs doing” approach to economic distribution breaks down. Marx believed that with enough material abundance, humans would naturally behave communistically at larger scales as well. I think he’s wrong, but it remains to be seen.
So far we’ve never had communism at the scale of a county. We’ve had socialism, which is where the government forcibly redistributes wealth.
The reason that socialist countries are more authoritarian is that socialism is by definition the non-free-market version of that process.
Under capitalism, if you have an acre of farmland, that’s your acre of farmland until you decide to sell it. Under socialism, whether it’s your acre of farmland is the decision of the central economic planning committee, and in order for that committee to be able to decide whether you keep your farm or not, it needs to have the authority and power to take it from you. And the policy to do so.
Do you see why this requires a more authoritarian society?
Let’s look at it another way. Under capitalism, ie under what we call the “free market”, you own the farm. That means you have authority over it. You have authority over yourself. There’s just as much authority; it’s just that the authority is broken into little bits and distributed to people who own capital.
Under socialism, the people own the farm. Except “the people” can’t effectively operate with anything like a will, due to a lack of borg hive mind telepathy mechanics unifying their will into a single instrument, and so “the people’s” authority is wielded by the Central Committee.
When authority is centralized in this way, taken away from individuals and given instead to the state, we call this an “authoritarian” state.
Authoritarian therefore doesn’t refer to more authority; it refers to the authority being concentrated in the center.
And the authority over economic decisions being concentrated in the center is, by definition, “socialism”.
Just to clarify since I don’t think I did in the above comment: by the above explanation communism is not authoritarian. Communism is the free, distributed decision-making version of socialism. Communism is a free market scenario, just like capitalism. It’s just a gift economy instead of a trade economy.
To be more accurate when talking online its better to distinguish between who is intended to be in charge (capitalism vs socialism) and what political systems are in place to implement it.
China for example has some state capitalist characteristics meaning the state is ran in part and for the owners of capital. This is where some of their strongest economic intervention its policies stem from.
Another example would be community cooperatives operating outside of the state. They clearly are not "capitalistic" by their nature but also are not a form of central planning.
Another weird breakdown of these dichotomyies are inside of a megacorps operations, which while the corp is clearly owned by, and operated by the owners of capital (as virtual representation of shares) internally it is ran as centrally planned entity with no free market between departments (though some entities do expirment with heavily regulated market like Amazon does).
Tldr
Its a complicated subject, but boiling everything down to a false dichotomy based on 50 years of evidence does it a huge disservice. A better one to separate the intended stakeholders and what is the intended ways allowed for conflict resolution and coordination.
A socialist business (exanple worker owned cooperatives) A capitalistic business (publically traded companies)
Of course most modern organizations have multiple interest groups so you can have a state that has both capitalist favored laws, and working class and small business owner and NGO and etc etc
"single party state"
Yes, they have a single party: the dictatorship of the proletariat, also known as proletarian democracy.
But we too have a single party: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, also known as bourgeois democracy.
[Princeton] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
A dictatorship is bad whether it carries a hammer and sickle or a wad of $100 bills
Politically they have ended up authoritarian in many instances. However, capitalism has as much "authoritarianism", just economically. Try whatever -ism you like, enough percentage of population is psychopathic and will climb to a position of power in some form or another. It's in our collective nature.
I believe it's inherent to the system. The whole point of a communist system is a centrally planned, and controlled, economy. This gives the state immense control and as inherent to every form of government, self preservation at any cost.
As discussed in "rules for rulers" by cgp grey, there is no such thing as a benevolent or kind dictator. All politicians and leaders will use any means available to themselves to further their own ambitions.
This has not been universally true among socialist states.
All states have immense control by virtue of having a monopoly on violence.
The capitalist class controls the state in capitalist countries, including ostensibly democratic” ones. They use the state to to rule the working class and to protect their private property.
This is practically every state that has ever existed.
🤣
An interesting point against communism is the lack of drive for innovation it creates. If you're living in a truly classless society (which has never and does not exist), you have no drive to do better, there is no personal reward to innovate besides progressing your society in ways you'll likely never see / be rewarded for.
This sounds like a neoliberal just-so story that may have come out of The Road to Serfdom.
China files more patents than the next nine countries combined: https://www.wipo.int/en/ipfactsandfigures/patents
China is first country to hold over 4 million domestic patents
Ah, you know what you're clearly correct. China, who is not a communist state, has a population of a billion people, and an authoritarian regime who would love nothing more than for it to look like China's innovating having filed more patents than the next nine countries combined means that Communism drives innovation!
Besides common knowledge, you could also research why China files so many patents (subsidys per patent filed, and the fact China acknowledges utility model and industrial design patents that are not considered patents in most countries [AND these patents make up at least 75% of those filed in China, meaning their number of real (invention) patents is more like ~400,000, and that 75% is conservative.
That second paragraph isn't necessary though, your point never had legs to stand on.
I know a lot of people push back against this but it's true in many regards. The vast majority of soviet innovation is directly from government activity and investment. When the Soviet union surpassed western governments in certain fields, it was always heavily funded by the government.
If you step back and look at the small things, consumer products and especially computers, they were extremely behind.
For real, government funded space program ≠ innovation at scale
https://medium.com/international-workers-press/misconceptions-about-communism-2e366f1ef51f
It's masquerading.
from my own experience observing people migrating from the soviet union, they're considered more authoritarian for the efforts to keep the workers in the worker's paradise, the moment you have to put up walls and border checkpoints to keep people in, it's over. you're an authoritarian state, no longer actually socialist imho.
How is this a controversial take? If you need a wall to keep people in or attempting to emigrate makes you a "defector", or you've built up a huge surveillance network where your neighbours or even partners can report you for bullshit "crimes" , you're an authoritarian state.
tankies, I guess.
Well, us socialists have free health care and education. Most of us socialist states have female bodily autonomy. Were not big on banning books either. Most importantly we recognise a false dichotomy. Also we actually know what socialism is. Try visiting Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Europe. You'll notice that they're are not authoritarian at all. You might just be an American, but that's not your fault.
Historically, there have been more socialist and/or communist states associated with the USSR than not. Especially when measured by population.
I mean yeah, any successful socialist revolution will naturally seek good relations with the most powerful socialist state of all. Doesn't really answer their question though.
When a smaller nation aligns itself with a larger empire or coalition, it will gravitate towards that collective's philosophy. Sometime's it's imposed through political or military pressure, or "encouraged" through subversion, but it can just as easily happen through the natural influence of a larger and more prolific culture.
"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others"
I don't know why that comment is collecting downvotes. They are referencing George Orwell's "Animal Farm."
Context: "Animal Farm" is a story about how communism can devolve into dictatorship. In the story, the animals on a farm drive out their tyrannical drunkard farmer. They write on the barn wall: "all animals are equal" and live in communist utopia. But some animals, too, hunger for power and status. Rather than overturn the system, they undermine it by adding "...but some animals are more equal than others" to the barn wall, legitimizing a ruling class (themselves) because they are "more equal."
It's because there are some real naive kids on here that believe communism will work
Love that book!
For anyone interested they're currently releasing a modern retelling in comic book form called Animal Pound, next issue is #5 of 6, and the collected trade paperback will be along later after issue #6.
It's fantastic imo so far. The Pound has just found their new autocrat, their Napoleon, and shit is getting real for the poor lil bunnies.
Because countries that call themselves communist are just dictators lying about it...
I mean, you're asking about two separate political axis: economy, and control.
Look at the Nordic countries and even most Western Europeans and you'll see socialist countries that aren't authoritarian.
Theres not a single communist country tho. So when you talk like there are, people assume you have no clue what you're talking about about.
Like, what countries do you think are communist?
The nordic countries are not socialist:
What about social democracy / democratic socialism / the Nordic model? Isn't Sweden socialist?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
What about social democracy / democratic socialism / the Nordic model? Isn't Sweden socialist?
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Bruh...
Socialism is economic policy...
The economic policy of those countries is socialism.
They are also democracies.
Like if I asked what kind of car you had you could say "Honda" or "a red Honda".
Their not two different answers because one included unrelated information.
If someone asks what kind of government they have, "democratic socialism" would be correct, because only giving one of the main axises wouldn't tell the full story.
But since we're talking economic systems, the democratic part is superfluous
Socialism requires that the workers have democratic control over the means of production. Nordic countries are not socialist, the working class isn't in control there.
Socialism does not refer to welfare states, but control of the Means of Production by the Proletariat.
I don’t know why you’re doubling down on your confident incorrectness when you don’t even have Wikipedia-level understanding. The very first sentence from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
And obviously the question who the state allows to own the means of production is very much political. Economics is politics.
None, as any communist country will tell you. They are socialist states working toward communism, meaning a classless society, and, by their own theory of state, a stateless society.
You may not realize that these are in no way orthogonal to each other, but the bourgeoisie certainly do, because they own the means of production, and they use the state to enforce the private ownership that perpetuates their control over the proletariat.
Their governments have more or full control
Im not sure what you mean by socialist countries. But communists countries are more oppresive:
And for the record, I agree that poverty is extremely oppressive as well and we need more socialist reforms in capitalist countries, tax harder the rich, break monopolies, foster more unions and so on, I just dont agree that communism is the magical land you all think it is and the solution to all the problems. Nobody seems to want immigrate to North Korea for a reason.
For communist countries, because they are.
Because authoritarians took over the Soviet Union and proceeded to try to run every other revolution.
Because communism doesn't work for large, heterogenous groups, so increasing amounts of coercion are used to keep the system running.
And new forms of government such as socialism are generally more succeptible to corruption as people find the new loopholes; as a government gets more corrupt, those who corrupted it seek to consolidate their power.
I think socialism can be made workable, as we examine and correct the problems with previous attempts. I don't think communism works well for human societies, as it requires people to act better than we know they do.
This is capitalism tho.
This is every system, but new systems have new avenues for corruption and usually no established defense against it.
The USA has by far the largest prison population in absolute terms and per capita. You have no idea what you are saying.
I hear a lot of variations of this "socialism can't work for a large heterogenous group" and its such a dumb lib brainworm. Its incredibly rascist for one (obviously too if you think about it for more than 1 second) and the population size argument is just nonsensical. The largest country in the world is communist and has a heterogenous population. The USSR had a large heterogenous population and that fact had nothing to do with the eventual dissolution, but did have much to do with its success
Leaving aside nonsensically calling the CCP socialist or the USSR a success, I'm curious about your racism argument.
I don't see how acknowledging that racism exists and is a barrier to class unity is racist. I tend to think acknowledging that racism exists is the first step towards fighting racism. What's your reasoning here?
I'll note as well that that criticism was towards communism, not socialism which I think can work just fine for both large groups and diverse ones.
You don't know enough about what you're talking about to be worth arguing with. I was just pointing out the stupid rascist lib talking point cause it comes up all the time for anyone who's actually interested in learning about things you have failed to investigate but want to run your mouth about
Edit: also considering it nonsensical to consider the PRC to be a socialist nation is also pretty rascist
I'm sorry, I shouldn't have included arguments in my request for clarification, that was extremely poor form and you were right to have been dismissive.
But if I have some previously unexamined belief that's rooted in racism, I do earnestly want to correct it. If you've got something to teach me that can help, I want to hear it and will thank you for telling me.
I already pointed them out and you doubled down, but I'll try to give a quick explanation.
The PRC is socialist and governed by a communist party. They have a series of 5 year plans that culminate in reaching full socialism by 2050.
The reason many westerners say they're "communist in name only" is partially because of the reforms under Deng that allowed for capital development in order to build the productive forces that could be utilized to build functioning socislism under the nose of US imperial hegemony. Those reforms were controversial amoung communists at the time, but the government under Xi is making good on the intention of those reforms right now, and history has proven them to have been effective. The other part of the reason is Western chauvanism/rascism. "Non-whites cant do socialism right - they're authoritarians." This arguement is leveled at every actually existing socialist project by Western "leftists."
So it isn't "nonsensical" to consider the PRC to be what it considers itself to be, and has demonstrated itself to be. You just have to actually be informed about it
The original point about "can't do socialism because of large, heterogenous population." Besides being obvioulsy wrong because there's examples of actually existing socialism that had or have large, heterogenous populations, i always point out that the statement is rascist. I do this because most people repeating it, haven't even thought about how its rascist.
Its a brainworm people in the US use to explain why they can't have the kind of social democracy they have in Scandinavian countries - at least that's the context I've always heard it used. This is a "nonsensical" trueism. First, the Scandinavian countries they're refering to are 1) not socialist to begin with, they're social democracies. 2) they aren't homogeneous, they also have ethnic minorities and have rascism.
That statement is not a meaningful acknowledgement of rascism, its an acquiescence to it. Its an appeal to rascism as an arguement why something just can't happen in the US. It also ignores the actual reasons impeding social democracy, let alone socislism which is the entrenched position of capitalist hegemony, the power and depth of its propaganda apparatus, and the relatively privileged position of US workers vs those in the global south due to imperialist exploitation and extraction.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this out for me, especially the stuff about China's capital projects. I will certainly be less blithe about trotting out the party line on that topic.
No problem, you're welcome. I actually misread your last post and thought you were being sarcastic but thought I'd give that info anyway lol, sorry about misreading.
Yeah until i started learning about socialism and learning about actually existing socialism i had no clue about the nuances of China's development either. There was a lot of skepticism about Deng's reforms at the time and to the present, but the actions of the Party under Xi have begun the process of reigning the capitalist expansion in and redirecting those productive forces toward the goal of full socialism by 2050.
There's an important distinction that AES states recognize - that they're socialist projects even if they aren't currently in a state of full socialism. Socialism is diffucult to create. Marx theorized that revolutions would take place where fully developed capitalism already existed for the workers to then take control over, and use thise productive forces to build socialism. But the Revolutions in Russia and China (and the subsequent revolutions in the global south) required some reevalution. Generally speaking, the revolutionary potential was weak in the highly developed capitialist countries and was strongest in the areas ravaged by Western imperialism. But following the successful revolutions measures were required to industrialize and build the forces and conditions necessay to create socialism. Western left anti-communists chauvinisticly tend to point to full socialism not existing already in AES as them "not doing it right" despite the fact that they are actually creating socialism, while the Western left has achieved basically nothing.
Is this communism?
I'd argue that no system truly works for larger groups.
I couldn't disagree more. Any system is very susceptible to corruption. It's all about accountability and transparency, which those in power will never make themselves do, because it is actively harming them by stripping them of opportunities to amass more power and influence.
And that is true in any system. Communist states became totalitarian dictatorships, while Capitalist nations also grow more corrupt because of greed and power lust, to the point where you see things like "the revolving door" in the USA, or the Tory party donors essentially paying for peerages in the UK. And of course, there's also lobbying.
Corruption is everywhere and the common man gets screwed over regardless of the system or people in charge, because the good people are always too good to compete, fight, and play dirty against these politicians so the winners are always the evil ones.
That's not only an incredibly nihilistic way of seeing the world, but also it is exactly what the bourgeoise dictatorships want you to see: "everything is terrible but the dreaded others are worse, now shut up and work for my 10th yacht"
That's not what I said. I said everywhere is terrible.
And to be honest, yes, other places have it worse. I used to live in arguably the worst nation in Eastern Europe and I like in the UK now. I sure as hell know which one gibes me more life opportunities, higher quality and diversity of jobs, better education and higher quality of life.
And that's without even considering the places that are at war.
So yes, people in other places have it much much worse.
Now in terms of nihilism, I actually see myself as more of an absurdist, as ultimately I'll carry on living in this meaningless universe in spite of its lack of meaning and I will achieve a level of success and satisfaction with my own achievements, (hell, I kinda already have) in spite of the aforementioned
bastardspoliticians.Oh I completely agree.
Established systems, at least ones that last, tend to have checks on corruption or on consolidating power. These are not always effective, obviously, and corruption is always a danger. My critique was specifically how newer systems have new and unforseen avenues do these antisocial activities.
Because the communism is a convenient ideology for totalitarian states to exploit and control the population.
It's exactly like the middle-ages Christianity, with the Bible promoting humanitarian ideology, and the church exploiting the hell out of the population.
That's also why communists banned all religions, they don't want any competition.
Liberals' complete lack of materialist class-based analysis is always funny to see
Because the rulers under communism are still the political class and not the working man. And instead of being able to uplift yourself via entrepreneurship you have the state controlling every aspect of your life, your career, and your ability to own property