I have never seen it functioning outside of theory and doubt that it can. I like social democracy with a lot of regulation.
Where have you seen capitalism work? Or what are your metrics for “it works”? And which states do you consider being failed communist states? And why did they fail in your opinion?
Capitalism works pretty well for me…
Ok. and surely there’s nobody that could say the same about communism?
Well, everyone seems to think communism hasn’t been effectively enforced in any country. So, no, nobody could say that and keep that argument valid.
If you look at countries like Cuba, I’d argue that it’s working pretty well considering the circumstances.
Cuba has the highest ratio of doctors per 10k capita (95), their life expectancy was constantly rising until covid happened.
The biggest issue they have is being isolated by the USA, which also enforce that isolation across the northern hemisphere.
Its ironic you bring that up considering Cuba is one of the worst developed nations to be a doctor.Yeah and those doctors make 60 bucks a MONTH. They have to work abroad, or hold second jobs. Even when they work abroad a huge percentage of the money is funneled back to the government. They have a tremendous problem with corruption. Electricity is out constantly. They also have a horrific track record with political prisoners and massive human rights abuses in said prisons. They have zero freedom of speech and can be put in prison for even participating in threads like this one. I’d say thats a poor example.
Well, in the US you can easily get into ICE camps if you look like you could be not white enough, if you study medicine you’ll start your life with hundreds of thousands in student debt (that you won’t get rid of, even with a bankruptcy), and I’d argue that the current US administration is as corrupt (or worse), so I am not sure what you’d be looking for in a Country to consider it better or as good as a capitalist country?
Ah, but all those states aren’t TRUE capitalist states. That’s why we can’t point to a successful example.
It’s never existed. Not in it’s pure form anyway. But neither has capitalism, or socialism either for that matter.
A theoretical system is always in some way perverted and coopted by the people implementing it. Humans are the weak part of the equation because humans are greedy and focused only on themselves and their own small group of friends/family. So scaling any political system up from theoretical to an actual national policy always ends up with a perverted form where one group ends up over another group despite the original theoretical intent of the system in question. That goes for Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, as well as religion too.
Humans suck and can’t have nice things without fucking them up.
yep. but every ‘true believer’ believes they are different and they totally wouldn’t be like that…
The truest truism that ever did truism is that “power inevitably corrupts”
Works great until people become involved.
That being said, you can say the exact same about capitalism.
Only takes one person pissing in the punch bowl to make it a piss bowl.
Good on paper, never works in practice.
The classic line
That we should be striving for it even though it may take a while
Why
just wait. it will work. we promise.
no, don’t be critical of us not being able to give you any details. that’s mean. just trust us. we know better than you.
It works well for communes where small groups live together and are capable of holding one another accountable. It does not work when a small number of individuals control the state including power over law enforcement and the military. That concentration of power destroys communism and instead becomes exploitative and fascist.
i live in a “communist country” and communism does not exist
How do you mean?
there’s nothing communist about it. it’s as capitalist as anywhere else, with even less regulation than somewhere like the united states. communism is just a brand, like “democracy”. no government that im aware of is actually trying to create it or wants to create it.
I’m willing to try it, capitalism sucks!!!
Greedy people are going to fuck everyone out of power and resources no matter what.
if people actually studied it in college, you wouldnt be so quick to supporting it without knowing the ins and outs of the system. people/tankies fantasizes it alot, without actually reading the whole meaning behind it. thats why fall very easily for the extremes of politics.
The reason lots of manifestos, communism, bell hooks, whatever, are these 50 page outlines is because… well fleshing out the details would quickly make the idealism of the utopia collapse.
Notice how they never talk about enforcement mechanisms? yeah…
Makes the problems of capitalism even worse. Instead of the owner class you get an even smaller political class controlling all means of production - the party leadership. It becomes even more prone to corruption than capitalism.
Adding to problems is the planned economy - it always results in misaligned incentives, bad allocation of resources, constant shortages…
Third, possibly the worst, is the constant insistence on ideological purity and severe punishment of “thought crimes”. Or as they like to call it “counterrevolutionary activity”.
Even though it was created out of good intentions, I don’t believe a lot positive aspects can be salvaged.
Good in theory, problematic in practice. A goal to strive towards but not achieve.
The main problem is that the dictatorship of the proletariat is so easily corrupted into a regular ol dictatorship. It’s supposed to be a transitional period, but when that much power is in play, it’s hard for people to give it up - and even when they’re willing, they can just get ousted by less scrupulous people.
Making it safely through that passage is like a Great Filter of socio-economics
Communism is old, and young. The principals of communal living are the oldest form of human organization. It’s also the most common form today if you count small groups like family.
But as an organizing principal for government, it’s a baby. The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. The Bolshevik revolution was in 1917. So the whole idea of communism is < 150-200yo. Compare to capitalism at this age and it’s all slavery and settler colonialism; the most massive redistribution of wealth through theft in history.
The logic that communism is a bad system because the Soviet Union should also condemn capitalism because the Dutch East India Company.
Everyone I’ve ever met who lived under it says it’s was fucking awful. Not a single endorsement. That’s significant because even capitalism has boosters. Not communism.
Our current socioeconomic system is basically built on many intersecting hierarchies of coercion, oppression and control - i.e. some measure of power you can use to make someone do something they otherwise wouldn’t want to do. A few examples of those hierarchies include patriarchy, religious authorities, the state, and capitalism.
All of those hierarchies must be abolished. If any of them remain in place, then you will end up with exploiters and the exploited. Eventually, this will stratify over time, as we’ve seen through history a number of times - the rich get richer, accumulate wealth and power until it becomes unbearable, then the current ruling class are overthrown and replaced by a new ruling class.
We need to NOT create a new ruling class. We need to abolish the ruling class and NOT EVER REPLACE THEM.
That’s the mistake made by communism in the USSR - replacing the existing ruling elite with another ruling elite. No matter how cool and revolutionary the leaders of the revolution are, as soon as they have power, they WILL be corrupted by it.
So the solution to our shared problem is anarchism. We need to abolish all forms of coercive control, oppression, hierarchies, ensure that no one has power over anyone else. We need to learn to co-operate, work together, instead of competing and fighting.
Humans are the most co-operative animals in the world. We don’t act like it, because the powers that be discourage us from co-operating. Because if we co-operated, we’d immediately realize the problems we have are coming from above.
We need to abolish all forms of coercive control, oppression, hierarchies, ensure that no one has power over anyone else. We need to learn to co-operate, work together, instead of competing and fighting.
Any system that has any hope of being sustainable, after the destabilization of heirarchies, needs to distribute resources across and not from the top down. It’s exhausting watching capitalists and democratic socialists fight against each other in western countries, with little to no anarchist presence whatsoever, when they both miss the point in a pretty glaring way.
I guess the major question is who redistributes the resources without a hierarchy? If no one can exert their will over another, how do you take resources from the wealthy?
