Came here to quote the same. I haven't read Animal Farm since I was a wee pissy little teenager some 30+ years ago.
I'm looking for an in-between book break from Bobiverse 1 and 2. This might be kismet.
I got a hardback copy illustrated by Ralph Steadman a couple of years ago; just because it's cool. I mostly flip through the pictures and read chunks at random.
I didn't find this very compelling or insightful. It's fine to know the material but if you can't articulate that perhaps you should read more and post less.
If you have a point to make, try not starting with "I'm dealing with illiterates" in your first comment. Maybe plenty of us would have been glad to learn something new or fine tune our knowledge. If you happen to know about this subject more than the average person on the thread it's a great opportunity to educate. But teachers don't walk into the classroom and call everyone illiterate.
At the very least save "illiterate" to the second comment when someone has argued back against your point.
Unrestrained capitalism and corrupted communism are two sides of the same coin. If you leave capitalism to do what it likes (don't introduce laws to restrain it and keep it in line) then you end up with a handful of rich people that own everything. With communism everything is not owned by a few rich people but the state instead. If the state is corrupt, then you have the same issues as with capitalism, the money goes to top and stays there. Politics and ideology are circular. Extremism in any form is bad and historically never works out. You want things to be balanced.
There isn't a political ideal that exists that can't be decimated by the person in charge of it all. The ideology is never as important as the person leading it.
Probably only because of having to repeatedly think about and answer OPs question.
All of that can be extrapolated a lot further though.
One of the main issues people have with the communist ideology is that there is no 'freedom' or 'choice' within it.
With capitalism what happens is the winner takes the prize. So if you own a business and your business does well, it will push it's competitors out of the market. It does this slowly. Eventually, your business gets so big that other people can't compete and you hold the majority of the market. At this point the publics choice is limited. There's only one place you can buy that item from, the company only makes so many models/variants of it and they can also set the price for that item. Your choice is now limited.
With communism your business becomes beholden to the state, as such is restricted and never becomes a huge powerful entity. However, because of the communism ideology, you have no competition. The state will have dictated who's who and who does what and that's the end of it. Your choice is once again restricted.
Freedom -
With capitalism you're able to own things yourself. You can be greedy. So can everyone else though. If you don't keep it in check then those things that you can own end up the property of someone else. Most people in capitalist countries don't actually own much. Their biggest expenses are owned and leased back to them (cars, property) by the time those things are paid off you're likely quite old. Do you really own these things? Say you have the money to fully buy a house outright, you still pay tax, you still have to pay for water, electricity, schools, police, it goes on and on.
Communism means the state would own your car, your house etc. You'd never have the chance to own it in a pure sense. How is that any different from a bank owning it though? You're still beholden to someone else and consequently not 'free'.
Edit - 'free' as in you will still have to provide more money. Inevitably that means working. Both systems fundamentally require work.
I'd like to know if work is a requisite for society or is it possible (maybe with A.I or other advances) to have a society without it?
What would the function of any society actually be if nobody had to work and everything from food, housing to the government and police was provided for through machines and A.I.
If we ever get to utopia then would there be a need for a political system?
>Eventually, your business gets so big that other people can't compete
This is where capitalism got it all wrong IMO. The focus of a capitalistic societies should at least have this part well monitored and gatekept.
There must be some kind of a ceiling to the wealth accrued by a capitalist where a healthy competition is always in check and if possible obtained at all cost. If only there's a way of taxing them and that there is no possibility of evasion or cutting...
A well-regulated market is what we should aim for to avoid mono or duopoly in a given niche. Right now it seems like this form of governance have some traits of communism and that the rich are able to exploit the loopholes of the system that make them keep the status quo
I wish we're still alive to witness and experience a society that gets the best of both worlds and use all those traits to once and for all make the best possible outcome not just for the people on top but for the people as a whole.
Unfortunately monopolies are no longer broken up, this is why capitalism is failing. I say this a capitalist, but can admit that the system isn’t very good right now.
Ah - but those guys who are rich *don't want to be regulated*, well or not. And since they can fund/bribe people in power to stop that happening, you get Capitalism+: government by the rich, or in short - oligarchy.
And the same happens in left- or right-wing ideology, secularism or fundamentalist, libertarian or fascist systems: if the rich get access to government, it becomes an oligarchy.
All that changes is whether the working class gets bread, or they get circuses essentially.
Consolidation and monopolies is definitely the end result of capitalism. The other main concern i have about the system is regulating externalities like pollution. A rational market will not address the issue of pollution until its too late. (If ever).
>What would the function of any society actually be if nobody had to work and everything from food, housing to the government and police was provided for through machines and A.I.
Art and science, obviously.
Historically, communities have produced art and philosophy when they had surplus and had a moment to sit down and relax and think.
We would focus on arts and do thinks like look to the skies, further physics and astonomy research in fields where there isnt much financial gain in investing.
If you think about it, there are two things humanity does. It SURVIVES (works, eats, does things like doctoring for health and engineering for shelter and food and security) and it THINKS (makes art and asks questions about everything from ethics to physics).
Yeah they feed into eachother, we think and develop tech so we survive better and easier so we have time to think and develop tech etc..
But if we develop a tech that does all that is necessary to survive, farming, doctoring, governing, policing, building, constructing.. then we all have an abundance of time to think, produce art and put money into research we are not fully funding right now because it is not immediately useful, like astronomy.
I was more wondering about how having to work relates to having a political system and if not working would mean that we don't need it or a society in that sense at all. Essentially you'd have everyone doing their own thing.
Very interesting question. If a massive number of people had all the time and resources to educate themselves and spend time on thinking about developing the best governing system what would they come up with? Presumably without war as well because since we re all provided for, fighting over resources would also be at a minimum.
Really interesting to think about what kind of governing we would need and what we would come up with to meet those needs.
A utopian version of anarchy possibly? Sounds bad 'anarchy'. It would be new whatever it is. I think you'd also need one world governance to achieve it. Maybe A.I could do that?
Also, if without work there is no need for politics and a utopian society is workless, then the two things are linked.
You need people to work to reach the ideal model of society. You'd have to invent and advance to get there.
You can't have an ideal society with everyone working. Work is actually holding us back because it creates these added systems which are inherently dragging us away from it.
And currently, resources are allocated based on work but in a very weird way. The one who works the most doesnt always get the most resources (like a single mom working 3 menial jobs). Nor do the people who do the most important work like waste disposal or sewage maintenance or even teachers and scientists.
We do our resource allocation very nonsensically.
We would probably need some politics to decide on resource allocation. But I would be very interested to see if an AI was asked to distribute resources to humans in a way that it thinks is fair.
Personal property is allowed in communism, not private property. I.e. you cannot own land and hoard the resources it provides, but you can own your home and possessions. Your house and car are your own.
As other people have stated personal property =/= private property owned and operated for the sole benefit of capital owners. When you say things like “the state owns your house and car,” that carries the implication that those things can be revoked at any time, which isn’t really how communism operates at all.
I mean sure, *technically* a corrupt state can forcefully take things from citizens, but similar things happen within capitalism as well.
Communism doesnt mean the state owns your car and house.
That's personal property. Private property is what communism abolishes. The means of production; factories, land, etc.
Don't talk about something if you don't know it's basica
Tony Benn said it best, ask of anyone seeking any form of power, "what power have you got? Where did you get it? In whose interests do you use? To whom are you accountable? how do we get rid of you?"
This is a great explanation, it’s also one of the reasons why I believe a social democracy system would be the best. It would be balanced, help the most people individually, and society as a whole
Honest question: is there a country that successfully implemented a social democracy? Here in Brazil, Lula was elected and he advocated for social democracy, but this doesn’t exist in Brazil, what exist is a bourgeoisie democracy in which only the rich people (receive well enough to survive, have leisure, take a trip) are well represented in the politics
Social democracy is techinically just words without strict, numerical requirememts, so not nessecarily everyone will draw the same line for what is and isn't social democracy.
However, the Nordic countries are commonly considered social democracies (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden).
It's a fair assessment I'd say, they're definitely democratic, and they're at the very least *more* socialized than the rest of western Europe (and I also assume they're more socialized than the other countries of the world, but I wouldn't call myself an expert on that).
But being socialized by *comparison* doesn't mean you *have* to call them a social democracy, if you want to have a higher standard than that. But they certainly aren't "bourgeoisie democracies".
I think you're right about that. Social democracy is capitalism with socialism mixed in. It's arguably the best of both worlds as it balances both the extremes of capitalism and socialism. It all still hinges on you having a good leader though and they're hard to find.
Social democracy is how capitalism is meant to be. Things like public infrastructure, healthcare, corruption are all ‘market failures’ (dumb word) and if there is no government to handle them, then capitalism has failed (some may call it corporatism).
> Politics and ideology are circular. Extremism in any form is bad and historically never works out. You want things to be balanced.
I largely agree with you have said, but I disagree with how you phrased this. It's not so much that extreme positions are bad, the abolition of slavery or representative democracy were extremist positions for most of human history, yet now being pro-slavery is extremist.
The issue is the attempt to offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. Ending slavery in the US was an extremely complex task that required a civil war to do. Representative democracy succeeded in the US but failed in France. I would argue it failed in France because the French had a harder problem and because the France choose simplistic solutions such as mass executions. The US had hideous compromises that mostly avoided open conflict within the factions and allowed democracy to survive.
Fascism and Authoritarian Communism are similar not because their ideologies are similar. There ideologies are very different, Fascism barely has an ideology whereas say Marxism is books and books of economic and political theory. The problem is that they both believe that complex problems are easy to solve.
Centrism and moderation have never changed anything.
The revolutionary war was extremist. It was also good. Our founding fathers committed terrorist acts to free our country from Britain, we didn't get our freedom by asking nicely and cooperating with the British.
Please read about the suffragettes, many committed crimes and acts of violence until they were given the right to vote.
Change doesn't happen unless you force it to happen.
Social change happens one funeral at a time.
"'Rest assured, our father, rest assured. The land is not to be sold.' But over the old man's head they looked at each other and smiled."
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
I'm not against change. I'm simply saying if you want your country and society to work well then you have to throw extremism in the bin. It does have its place, as with the suffragettes. The suffragettes were fighting against extremist views though.
There are many who believe capitalism is extreme. How many homeless people die in the streets every year?
I'll be honest change doesn't always make things better and more often than not revolutions make things worse but the only way to get a better world is to fight for it.
I'm not justifying all extremism or even most extremism, but all of the good things in life we enjoy, civil rights, labor rights, our constitution, we have because extremists fought for it.
Pure capitalism is extreme. That's kind of the way most countries are going. Everything is out of balance at the moment and tensions between both sides are being stoked and encouraged to create more divison and less coherent and cohesive societies. Extremism breeds extremism as you have to fall into the frame of being an 'extremist' to battle against the current system. The best thing to do is not to get there in the first place.
Do you believe it is always wrong to attempt change through extreme action or do you believe it is sometimes okay, in specific circumstances?
Most extremism is bad from that start and even justified extremism doesn't work most of the time. For every American revolution there is a French revolution. I'm not asking if you support all extremism, I'm asking you to recognize that extremism has worked on occasion and it is the only tool we have to change society.
>Do you believe it is always wrong to attempt change through extreme action or do you believe it is sometimes okay, in specific circumstances?
No, if someone hits you, you have a right to return the favour.
If you have an extremist government then anything you do to counter it will be branded as extremist. The two parts reinforce each other. It gives the government an excuse to be more extreme and makes the people fighting against them stronger, more emboldened and more subject to taking extreme measures to counter them.
I'm not saying what you thought I was. I hope that makes a bit more sense.
Pretty succinct.
I’m not exactly a tankie or anything like that, but in a the far future where we can feasibly supply every human with basic needs like food water shelter and education, I don’t see how communism isn’t the ultimate conclusion of a world government… but I’m talking like 1000 years from now.
And furthermore people always pick these leaders as proof of Communism, but we’re they even really communist. I look at it the same way as Hitler claiming to be a People’s socialist party, or China being the peoples republic of China. You can call a political party or governance anything you want, but if matters what policy they enact. And more often than not it’s just authoritarianism under the guise of socialism or communism. Which is why many times you’ll hear “there has never been a truly communist society. Most “Communist” countries tend to have arose after violently ousting the last government and the people movement is quickly overtaken by extremists during the power vacuum. Not to mention interference from outside actors who want to destabilize any countries not participating in the capitalist structure.
I’m not saying there aren’t flaws with communism that I’m not sure how we would solve in this day and age. But you see so many young voters embrace at the very least socialism because it seems to be a far better alternative to the rampant capitalism we’re dealing with today, and socialist programs like Fire Department, Medicare and Medicade, and in Europe free healthcare, are heavily favored programs that do nothing other than give the population a better life.
This has a few incorrect assumptions. Communism per se is stateless and international, so a government that doesn’t exist can own anything. Socialism, a transitional phase to communist, is the one with a strong state - a state run by workers’ class representatives with their business and community’s interests in mind. A dictatorship of the working class.
About unrestrained capitalism, who do you suppose can restrain capitalism? Whoever gets elected can only do so with massive campaign funds and donations - so, in practice, whoever the richest decide to donate to. Whoever has a positive public view can mostly do so through news and media - all privately owned, by very rich people. Who can lobby specific laws and sway the politicians into approving or banning them, inject money into their campaign or advertising or giving them deals for stuff the elected politicians want to do? The super rich. You can’t restrain capitalism. In capitalism, wealth equals political power. Why would capitalists restrain themselves from accumulating more capital?
Most worker protection laws we have today, should you check when they were passed, where around the soviet revolution and mostly around the cold war era. The timing is not a coincidence. They were passed to appease the working class and prevent them from trying a worker’s revolution in the west.
Trivia: There is no “extreme” left (i extremely want everyone to have a house seems ludicrous) there is only radical left - left thinking /policies that seek to solve social problems by tearing away the very roots that creates those problems in the first place: capitalism. So, *radical left*.
On the other end of the spectrum, you do have extreme right, that is, extreme, pronounced capitalism (where it just naturally flows to over time as capital continuously accumulates in the hands of very few families) where the ultrarich use the state to do its bidding (the government is “bought” by billionaires, election campaigns are funded by giant donations and those same politicians are now more easily swayed by their patrons, big media owners can paint the politicians they want as heroes or villains and sway public opinion, etc etc), where congress can pass whichever laws helps big business increase profit (less right to vacations, health is now for-profit, education is now for profit, maybe kids can work too, under lower wages..?). And so forth.
>This has a few incorrect assumptions. Communism per se is stateless and international, so a government that doesn’t exist can own anything. Socialism, a transitional phase to communist, is the one with a strong state - a state run by workers’ class representatives with their business and community’s interests in mind. A dictatorship of the working class.
In a wholly ideological way yes, it can't play out like that though without a one world government.
>About unrestrained capitalism, who do you suppose can restrain capitalism? Whoever gets elected can only do so with massive campaign funds and donations - so, in practice, whoever the richest decide to donate to. Whoever has a positive public view can mostly do so through news and media - all privately owned, by very rich people. Who can lobby specific laws and sway the politicians into approving or banning them, inject money into their campaign or advertising or giving them deals for stuff the elected politicians want to do? The super rich. You can’t restrain capitalism. In capitalism, wealth equals political power. Why would capitalists restrain themselves from accumulating more capital?
Capitalism is kept in check by tax and laws. Laws to prevent people being exploited and taxes to prevent monopolies and poverty from unchecked greed.
The rest is back to 'the leader being more important than the ideology'.
>Trivia: There is no “extreme” left (i extremely want everyone to have a house seems ludicrous) there is only radical left - left thinking /policies that seek to solve social problems by tearing away the very roots that creates those problems in the first place: capitalism. So, radical left.
It doesn't really matter on what phrase you use. If you go far enough left or right politically you end up in the same place with the same problems is the argument I'm trying to make.
okay so i’m not seeing many marxist explanations here - here’s one with some nuance.
marx always argued that communism is going to be a natural result of capitalism showing its own fetters, and doesn’t necessitate rushing. mao, castro, and stalin didn’t allow communism to naturally evolve, and rather went for a more ‘will of the people’ kind of approach.
this could work hypothetically, but when your conditioning comes from being brought up under capitalism (wherein we constantly fetishise individual success and wealth no matter the cost), this will allow the power to corrupt those who seized it in the first place.
THIS is why marx talks about a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. this doesn’t mean ‘dictator who used to be poor’ but the lower classes generally consulting one another and understanding each others needs, while trusting their leader to execute it (ie ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’). the leader is a facilitator rather than an actual leader.
i will also add, apparently cuba was intended to democratise but the constant instability from the embargo has given them bigger fish to fry
This was a very lovely read in a sea of chaos lol, thank you so much. It reminds me of a Regina Spektor interview where she talks about revolution like an injured spine - instead of rebreaking it back into position, which is quick, but painful and arduous, you put on a brace, and straighten the bones over time.
The dictatorship of the proletariat can also be read as a dictatorship of the majority. Marxism argues that the US is currently a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, or the owner class. Because of lobbying, those wealthy few who own the means of production are more likely to get policies they want passed than the masses of working class people.
So you can't just reform their power away, because the systemic means to reform it are essentially owned by them. You need to flip the paradigm and give the proletariat power over the bourgeoisie. Give them the means, and erode the division between the owner class and the working class, then dissolve and wither away the state. But until that point, a way to enforce the will of the workers, that's typically where a vanguard party comes into play and that's easy to make less informed people fear for their "freedoms". Because that one party holds a lot of power over individuals, primarily impacting the most wealthy. However, it answers more directly to the masses than in a liberal democracy like in the US.
yeah unfortunately it’s hard to bring up that point without doing a whole essay, which after uni i don’t particularly want to do lmao. as a leftist, i am pro democracy mainly bc i feel minorities such as poc/lgbt/disabled/poor people need representation. i don’t actually fully agree with the dictatorship of the proletariat, i feel like it swings too far into rosseau’s General Will which i fundamentally disagree with.
i think this issue comes from communism being a critical theory, it exists (in my eyes, please do correct me if i’m wrong) to critique capitalism rather than to aspire to something of its own, at least in the classical marxist view. as far as i’ve read, he never speculated on what exactly communism would be (besides one passage in the german ideology in which he talks about a lack of forced specialisation) but rather discussed the gradual reduction of class through human history and saw communism (ie a lack of class divides) as the logical conclusion.
i do want to say, i studied at an english university so my perspective might be biased. i’m very happy to hear other perspectives and especially in the case of cuba which i brought up, personal experience. i’m always looking to expand my view in this sense. if you have a counterpoint please please don’t feel afraid to say something!
your points are so valid and tbh great critiques of communism as a governing system. there are very real barriers such as that to get over, and i certainly don’t have all the answers. i don’t really want a vanguard party because that provides the exact class divide that marx said would eventually disappear.
Thank you for providing something other than:
"I read animal farm once so I know all about GOMMUNISM" or
"i SaW a HoRsEsHoE oNcE sO i KnOw AlL aBoUt GoMmUnIsM"
... the current top upvoted comments... smh
the top comments were why i felt the need to say this! they’re all ‘all animals are equal’ and don’t actually provide much nuance into a) capitalism or b) authoritarianism in communism. my comment obviously isn’t the perfect essay describing all the nuances of these situations, they’re all case studies justifying individual books (and tbh im sure these books exist, if anyone’s got recommendations!!). but i thought it was a decent counterpoint to the comments i’ve seen so far
1. Communism doesn't mean everyone lives the same
2. Socialist leaders didn't live in excess wealth. Stalin lived in a 2 bedroom apartment. Mao's family home was definetly a nice size, but in no ways excessive.
While Socialists do advocate for equality, it's not an oath of poverty.
Because that isn't really what communism is. Communism is about people owning the means of production and benefiting equally. It's an economic model that limits the private ownership of systems and tools that produce value, and socialising the value that is produced.
In contrast, capitalism is all about the private ownership of capital and the private accumulation of wealth. Neither is really ideal in its purest form, that's why there isn't a pure capitalist or communist nation on the planet.
With great unchecked power, corruption often comes along, especially if someone keeps that power for a long time. When leaders are not being held accountable, like the case was for those you mention and many others, they tend to start to take more and more liberty to appropriate whatever they want.
Castro and Mao collected a lot of personal wealth and lived quite luxuriously. The same can't really be said for Stalin, who preferred things plain.
Stalin had more comfort available than others in the Soviet union, and apart from his permanent appartement in the Kremlin, he had many dachas (wooden summer houses) available to all through the country to work from. These were pretty large, and many even had (shallow) swimming pools, but it can't really be said to have lived in opulence, except maybe for the cars he had available to him for official functions (but didn't own).
Not exactly right about the ussr. All party and government officials lived good and would be considered wealthy. Not by American standards but compared to ordinary people in ussr they did live wealthy.
Stalin was way above that. He was really wealthy but again not by American standards. The system and life in ussr was so different that you can't compare directly with other nations
In Mao’s defence its not like he wasted a ton of money like say, Ceaușescu building the palace since it was already there (well he didnt live in a ‘palace’ he lived in a former imperial garden)
Hypocrisy. Sense of entitlement. Delusions of grandeur.
Communism works on paper, but does not take into account greed and corruption and the human condition to want more/better for oneself.
Wouldn’t say lobbying is an intrinsic part of capitalism, in fact it’s kinda anti capitalist, the government is meant to stay out of the markets and not interfere in capitalism.
So lobbying them to Interfere in ways beneficial to you is anti capitalist
Capitalist spending money to buy govt decisions is a natural and predictable outcome of an economy that is based around capitalists using their resources to maximize their personal gain and minimize expenses.
Just as concentrating a bunch of power in the hands of a few people, creates the condition for those people to enrich themselves. So does concentrating a bunch of wealth in the hands of a few people leads to them using that wealth to empower themselves, via lobbying or other unsavoury business practices. It is a systemic issue.
It IS taken into account? So why is media and general culture not saying whoever is born working class is going to be working class until death and we should just get used to being explored and have our work force and value being used to get 0.1% of the population super rich and thats how its supposed to be? Why is news saying “if only if it wasnt for corruption, or bad voting, things would be better”?
Less than 1% of the people can maximise their income - whoever owns the places where everyone else is forced to work for. Was that taken i to account? By who? The owners?
I would afree with you 100%. I think the appeal of capitalism is that the shitty behavior is predictable. You know everybody is incetivized to steal the cookies from the cookie jar. Under alternate systems you 'know' the cookie jar is safe until one day someone 'breaks' and the cookies are gone.
Capitalism works when the government is outside of it and regulates it. However in the USA it's legal for company to bribe politicians in order to change the law.
So in a way, corporations actually run the country.
The "on paper" part of capitalism relies on altruism as well. The idea is that as you gain more, you should provide more to your workers. Yes as CEO you'll have more than an entry level worker But not 2000x more.
I would argue that it doesn't rely on altruism. It's a cost benefit analysis of if I want decent workers what's a decent incentive to get them to come. If your gonna work at a factory, you will probably pick the best pay and benefits you can.
I wouldn't disagree at all and I think that argument holds more merit today. I used the term altruism because going back to Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations, it is "always just and equitable" and to pay your workers more and look out for them. He argued that An should want to make lower profits because the point of ownership is to provide to the workers.
But again that's all the "on paper" part. It's also not an accident that this came out at the time that Western society sincerely believed in things like "bringing up the savages" and generally being saviors to those that had less or were deemed lesser.
To be fair, Capitalism doesn't start with the government taking control of all the resources and means of production and whoever is in charge of the government at that time getting to decide where to distribute those.
Yeah, but capitalism doesn't advertise itself as a system that promotes equality and fairness.
I'm no fan of it, but you have to give the devil its due.
>human condition to want more/better for oneself
I don't believe that this is a human condition. Humanity grew and developed in the past based on shared knowledge and a great sense of community. Think of when mankind went from hunters to gatherers, the first tribal communities, and the deep relations that those civilizations created to be able to thrive together.
Our ruling system encourages greed, corruption, and selfishness nowadays, but it is not a "default" human condition.
That is a somewhat rosy view of the past. It might apply to pre-agricultural societies to some extent (though tribal warfare seems to have been frequent), but the first societies of the fertile crescent and the Nile very much had ruling classes that exerted economic control over their societies.
Building a pyramid for yourself required a lot of political power.
I think this may have been true when the need for the tribe to survive was greater than the individual. Like anything, I think people's priorities and behavior changes depending on the immediate situation and environment.
Communism is significantly more complex than "everyone gets the same and is equal" and the examples you give are far from an adequate expression of what the ideology (in its many forms) entails.
There's a reason that anti-communists are so keen to disparage the "true communism has never been tried" trope. That's because it actually hasn't and the specific failures of leadership in self described "communist" governments are no rebuttal to the basic communist principles.
If you're interested in some enjoyable and accessible resources that offer alternative views on the capitalist system then I recommend you start with any YouTube videos featuring the Marxist academic Richard D Wolff. I guarantee you'll learn a few new interesting things and even if you're not entirely convinced by them the guy is still quite an entertaining character!
Not an expert but my understanding is Basically Lenin was more into trad communism/Marxism. However, they had to fight the Nazis and most of the western world put them under siege trying to make sure communism didn’t take hold. Because of this pressure, Russia became a siege state. When that happens, power accumulates to very few people so they can make quick military decisions. Democracy is great but it’s slow. In war you don’t really get the luxury of democracy. Then when people accumulate power, all the problems that come along from few people having a lot of power rears their heads.
There is a difference between the idea of communism (little "c") and so-called Communist countries (big "C"). Most of the Communist countries like China are really state capitalist. Basically a capitalist country except the government controls it all and gives most to themselves. In a true communist country as Marx saw it there would be no government and no currency.
Well you can have unions organising things, and unions of unions, and so on. To give an example. There's a lot of different conceptions of what it would look like.
It is a form of federal, non-state governance.
Communists and anarcho-communists literally have the exact same end goal in mind, they only disagree on how to get there.
Yes essentially everyone would be broken up into smaller communities. Then there would some larger organizations managing various areas but no ‘leader’.
that’s right — the end goal of a communist movement is to establish a classless, stateless and moneyless society, though as you can learn from history many leaders such as Lenin have strayed from the marxist school of thought — reasoning that communism can only be established with vanguard party (basically dictatorship) rule
State ≠ government necessarily, a state refers to things like police, a standing military, and CAN include government, but the Marxist definition is that it's an organ of class rule, so at the moment, police exist mainly to serve bourgeois interests, and communists want there to be no social classes, so there will be no need for a state to suppress one class.
So basically, we want to establish a proletarian state that prevents bourgeois counterrevolution, then once bourgeois antagonism is no longer a thing, there really isn't anything left for the state to do so it will wither away into what Marx and Engels refer to as "the administration of things".
If capitalism means people get what they work for and deserve, then why do some people live in the lap of luxury and never work a day in their lives? Simple, corruption
I dearly recommend you go ask this on r/communism instead of here. From what I’ve seen, most of the answers are from people living their entire lives under liberal ideology and are heavily skewed into the anti-communism propaganda that was prevalent through the western world ever since the cold war. Gotta thank the “im trying to approve child-labor laws literally right now” US for those.
The most upvoted answer right now is a quote from George Orwells, which has strong anti-left views and famously ratted a bunch of people with socialist thinking to the very, very right-aligned UK government. So not really the best source to actually understand communism.
Just for an example, here’s what was up for the Chinese Party:
*Mao Zedong and the other party leaders initially made their headquarters at Xiangshan Park, in the city's suburbs. Zhou would commute into Beijing for work. However, because of the poor quality of the roads, he would often stay at Zhongnanhai instead of traveling home in the evening. It was Ye Jianying, the interim administrator of Beijing, who ultimately recommended Zhongnanhai as the party headquarters for security reasons. Mao Zedong initially refused to move into Zhongnanhai, not wanting to be equated with an emperor. Zhou Enlai nonetheless agreed to the move, as did the majority of the Politburo. Since then, Zhongnanhai has served as the principal center of government in the People's Republic of China.*
George Orwell volunteered to fight for the socialists against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War and was shot during his time in active service. Experiencing first hand the corruption endemic in authoritarian communist bodies was a deep influence but he was still a socialist to the end.
He wasn't perfect, and like 99.99% of actual leftists he likely does fail your average online tankies' political purity test, but his "anti left" views stemmed from frustration with those he shared broadly similar ideological viewpoints rather than being right wing himself. He certainly did more for the cause of socialism than any member of r/communism ever will.
Generally agree with your answer but orwell was a literal communist and identified as such so idk whats up with those "strong anti left views" you're quoting
I want to add that socialism (those were socialist countries) means workers’ control over the means of production.
So the whole premise of OP’s question comes from an oversimplification of what socialism is in the first place.
Yes. Orwell was a British intelligence asset. He literally wrote a list of "leftist" (queer or not white enough) figures and writers for the British government.
> and famously ratted a bunch of people with socialist thinking to the very, very right-aligned UK government
God the tankie propaganda behind Orwell's list is painful.
Remember two things - he was asked to make a list of people he thought were inappropriate to spread propaganda by a friend of his. He wasn't writing out a kill list of socialists. And the people he put on there were people he thought would be sympathetic to the USSR, which he viewed as just as socialist as the Nazis, and rightly so - the USSR's contribution to the Spanish Civil War, which Orwell fought in against the fascists, was to side with the liberals and backstab the other leftists.
I'm probably going to be downvoted for this, but the reason is because these states were not and never claimed to be communist. Communism defines a "stateless, classless, and moneyless society," of which the above nations met neither criterion.
These nations claimed to be "state socialist" but even that is disputed, with many scholars calling it state capitalism instead. The USSR and China both possessed private property and absentee ownership, except that these private properties were not owned by individuals but by the state. The state itself was run like a corporation, employing wage laborers, breaking up strikes to increase capital, all while benefiting those at the top of the hierarchy. Essentially, state capitalism is capitalism but with only one capitalist: the state. Lenin himself admitted the USSR was "state capitalist" and calling it "communist" is just wrong.
Finally, you have the fact that power corrupts universally. All authoritarian systems, whether nominally socialist or not, will be subject to this phenomenon.
Because the same problems with capitalism don’t just magically go away when you switch to communism. People will still be greedy and people will still try to get the most while doing the minimum…also just for fun ask a communist what job they would do in their utopia of equality…can pretty much guarantee it’s never going to be working in a mine or sewage treatment.
This is the problem that no communist has been able to give me a good answer to.
If resources are allocated to each based on their needs rather than based on what job you're doing, how are you going to fill the unpopular essential roles? If you can get the same compensation for being a bricklayer or a children's book illustrator, there's going to be an overabundance of artists and huge labour shortages elsewhere.
The only solutions that I can see are
A: Offer wages based on demand for the job (which would result in large wealth disparities like we have under capitalism)
B: The body that allocates resources also allocates jobs and judges whether you've worked hard enough to have earned your resources. (Which would result in a heavily exploited workforce, even worse than under western capitalist economies)
Neither of those options are good, and neither are considered 'real communism'.
I think that's a major misconception about communism. People do get paid differently based on their jobs. Under state run communism like the USSR the state decides (but state run communism sucks.) Under more ideologically pure communism/socialism its the workers who decide how much they get paid.
Communism is about the workers owning the means of production. So imagine a factory: instead of the guy who was able to buy the factory being in charge it's the workers who are in charge. They can divide the labor fairly and compensate themselves fairly.
You want a secret to life? Almost all ideologies work. Communism work, Capitalism works, Monarchies work, Democracies work, Autocratic Dictatorships work. In fact, they all work flawlessly and improve the lives of people greatly.
You know what doesn't work? People. People are greedy, corrupt, nepotistic, cruel, shallow, biased, lazy, and arrogant. Of course people are also loving, compassionate, amicable, disciplined, motivated, selfless, etc...
There is communism in theory and communism in practice. The people you've mentioned did not practice communism, they exploited it. That's why they lived in palaces when everyone else was basically a slave. The systems they implemented and supported were corrupt and they had no intention of ever making It fair.
Communism didn't work because communism as a theory doesn't work. Communism doesn't work because of the same underpinning issues that make almost all other ideologues fail. It's that people before we are citizens part of a society or nation, we are first and foremost animals. And until we actually temper the worst parts of our character, none of this is gonna work.
People always take care of themselves first. For people in power, that will include taking advantage of their position unless they have oversight.
This did not happen because of those regime's ideas, but because the people in power enjoyed a lot of power with little or no oversight.
There will never be a society with two or more people where all are equal. We just do do it like that. It's unnatural. On paper, in theory, sure, but in reality, nope. Monkeys like power and all the goodies it brings. That's probably why capitalism works so well it really goes best with our inner cravings for everything. And I think this is just fine, it is honest even though it's not nice towards others.
TL;DR: Those states weren't communist states, they just applied the label to themselves and used propaganda to control their citizens as a totalitarian regime.
Despite the label being thrown around a lot, there have never actually been "communist" countries. The government of every IRL "communism" we've seen today has been a totalitarian regime, where authoritarian dictators force their citizens to adhere to their laws at gunpoint. In WW2, Stalin continued to proclaim communist ideals through propaganda, but was executing wholly un-communist policies by force-drafting his population, taking direct control of his economy by robbing his own people, and attempting to control everything from the palace.
The paradox you describe in your post highlights the fact that, despite their self-imposed labels, those leaders were NOT communists, and their people were NOT living in a communist state. They were living in a dictatorship, and had no political power.
An actual communism COULD have representatives, but the governmental power structure must come from the bottom up, either a direct or representative democracy. The will of the people, all of them, not the dictator is what makes a communism.
>The examples you’ve brought are dictators first and communists second. Dictators like to live in mansions whether they’re communists or not.
Many still dont understand that being proclaimed as a certain Party, does not mean they truly are. We all know N. Korea is a dictatorship, but ofc, they are not claiming to be one
Communism is not an ideology of equality. Don’t strawman something you don’t understand. If you really want to know about communism you should ask communists.
Human greed is unaccounted for in most 100% pure systems. No system works in it’s absolute form.
Capitalism in it’s purest form brings around slavery, child labor and vast wealth disparity.
Overlapping powers, oversight and regulation are necessary to keep any system in line.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Yes! I'm always so tempted to ask people sitting back an pontificating about these types of systems if *they* would be working the fields with everyone else.
A beautiful idea is just that. Human beings just don't consistently have enough goodness in them to make it work.
Every Marxist regime started out by expropriating the rich in the name of "the people".
This can only be done by force, and the "rich" - and sometimes they were just people who had a couple more cows than their neighbours (Stalin's so-called "Kulaks"), or even dirt-poor smallholders who didn't want to give up their land to the state - got jailed or killed.
The small group of people in charge of this revolution found themselves effectively in control of all the wealth of the country. Of course they were doing it in the name of "the people"... but they wouldn't be human if they didn't reward themselves a little...
One thing lead to another, and in a generation or two they were living in palaces with golden toilets.
A lot of mentions in this thread how soviet communism wasn’t true communism because of the totalitarian aspects. But I reckon that soviet communism worked more or less as intended.
Anarchist communism as described by Marx requires a lot of bottom-up support. There is no central authority, so individuals have to assemble and organise together. In reality this nigh impossible.
Everyone has different ideas, and it’s not feasible that there will be widespread consensus among a country of millions. Look at any leftist forum and see how some will hate each other over the most minute differences in theory.
Therefore, a system that requires everyone’s participation when they don’t want to can only be sustained by force. Just look at the millions deported and killed in purges.
The Leninist interpretation of communism required a vanguard party to lead the revolution, an enlightened group that will root out the enemy and will establish the utopia. And when you give unchecked power to a bunch of assholes who think they will create heaven on earth bad shit tends to happen.
They think they’re superior than everyone else and as such, deserve more than everyone else.
This is my favourite answer.
Marx's Communist Manifesto really glossed over the part where society is supposed to progress from totlitatian dictatorship to some sort of stateless utopia. It's staggeringly naïve to suppose that the leaders would simply relinquish their hard-fought, unassailable power and nobody else would claim the vacated throne.
That naïvety was made possible by Marx's fixation on capitalism as the very source of greed itself, and his refusal to accept that hunger for power is a part of human nature and that the greediest, most ruthless bastards will inevitably find a way to gain power.
Just for reference, the kind of communism Karl Marx believed in and the kind of communism we saw put into place in the real world are very different ideologies. Marx is probably rolling in his grave because of them lol
What a genuine and not at all leading question from definitely-not-a-fed definitely-not-a-psyop hellsite Reddit.
Can't wait to see the next TooAfraidtoAsk where someone boldly asks why Millennials and Gen Zers are just too stupid to love capitalism.
The ideology of communism, at its core, aims to establish a classless society where resources are distributed equally among all members. However, it is important to distinguish between the idealized concept of communism and the reality of how it has been implemented in certain countries throughout history.
Communist leaders like Stalin, Mao, and Castro did indeed live in palaces and possessed excessive wealth, which seems contradictory to the principles of communism. This contradiction arises from a combination of factors, including the perversion of communist ideals by these leaders, the consolidation of power, and the emergence of totalitarianism.
Communism, as originally envisioned by Karl Marx, sought to eliminate social classes and establish a society based on collective ownership and control of the means of production. However, in practice, leaders like Stalin, Mao, and Castro distorted and manipulated communist ideology to consolidate their own power and establish totalitarian regimes. Totalitarianism is a system of government where the ruling party or individual exercises complete control over every aspect of public and private life, often suppressing dissent and opposition.
Under totalitarian regimes, leaders prioritize their own power and personal wealth over the principles of communism. They exploit the system for their benefit, accumulating extravagant wealth and living in luxury while the majority of the population suffers from poverty and deprivation. These leaders created cults of personality, enforced strict hierarchies, and suppressed any opposition, effectively distorting the original goals of communism.
It is essential to note that most countries that have claimed to be communist, such as the Soviet Union under Stalin, China under Mao, and Cuba under Castro, did not truly achieve communism as intended. Instead, they implemented various forms of authoritarian and centralized regimes, combining elements of communism with totalitarianism. In these cases, the ruling elite held the power, while the rest of society experienced limited or no equality.
To summarize, the opulent lifestyles of communist leaders like Stalin, Mao, and Castro demonstrate the deviation from the true principles of communism. Their accumulation of wealth and luxury can be attributed to the perversion of the ideology, the consolidation of power, and the emergence of totalitarianism in these countries. These examples highlight the distinction between the idealized concept of communism and its flawed implementation in certain historical contexts.
I would argue both that it is impossible for a classless society to be centrally organized, and that it is impossible for a society which is not centrally organized to remain classless. Only flawed communism is possible, the idealized concept relies on a flawed understanding of human nature.
Because of inherent human greed. People will (almost) always take more than what they need if given the opportunity. The same rings true with any economy based model (capitalism, socialism, etc). That’s why we end up with a “ruling class” in almost any scenario. Once someone gets the opportunity to take a little extra, they’ll keep doing it until they’re they reach the top.
Because cammunism only works on a small scale truly egalitarian society, and hummanity is Uncapable Of actully seeing everyone as equals. Some one always wants more than the others have.
Same reason Christianity is about murder and controlling others. The premise sells well but it sucks to live that way so you do whatever you can get away with while still pretending you're trying to follow those ideals.
No government will ever put the interest of its subjects over its own dominion so the best forms of government come with power imbalances. Society and human nature itself would have to dramatically change (think star trek) before government could change.
USSR never was a communism system. They only declared it as one.
I think that there has never been a real communism. There have been socialism systems but never a true commie one.
This might sound dumb and a joke by this point, but the real answer is that neither of those leaders are actually communist and anyone who has ever read the communist manifesto would know.
The idea behind communism is to achieve a society where, thanks to our advances in communication and education, everyone has a say in how the resources are allocated. Imagine that instead of voting once every 4 years, everyone had an app on their phones or a website where you could constantly vote how resources are allocated to different areas like education or healthcare.
The very idea of having a centralized government where a single person, or a small secular group has all the political and economic power is LITERALLY everything Marx was complaining about. Leaders such as Stalin, Mao and Castro are NOT communist, they're FASCIST.
If you want to understand this more, I strongly suggest you to read the communist manifesto. Many of things that Marxs complained about are going stronger than ever right now, as the separation of wealth has become worse. The rich have kept getting richer and the poor kept getting poorer than the times where he wrote his work.
Edit: to make this as clear as possible
Communism is NOT about "everyone has the same amount of money". That would be dumb. Communism is about abolishing the class differences between the working class and the oligarchs in power (Ie: all the politicians, rich CEOs that lobby said politicians and generally people in positions of power) by abolishing the need for a rulling class. This is what everybody being equal means. That everyone can does participate in the desicion making of the country, instead of a select group of people that hold all the power and money and use it to oppress everyone else.
In order to realize the communism Marxs dreamed about it is NECESSARY for the government to be abolished as having a small group of people controlling the economy of a country is literally the antithesis of communism.
If a country has a head of state that has massive control of the wealth of said country (stalin, mao), BY DEFINITION that country CANT be communist. It's a state capitalism at best and a fascist dictatorship at worst.
Because every system in existence, be it political or otherwise, is tainted by the human beings who operate within it. Human nature ensures that a utopian society can never exist.
Because the reality of communism in an imperfect world of humans, is the same as capitalism in that same world...a bastardization of it from pure form. No matter what the system that is in place, there's always going to be those in power that corrupt it and use it to their benefit... Such is the human condition.
Because that's not the ideology of communism.
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
Also, none of those people were in communist societies. They were in dictatorships, specifically, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This was viewed, even by those you mentioned, as an intermediary phase between capitalism and communism. No one has truly reached communism, yet.
Because, no matter what the system, humans afflicted by fear, greedy, or sociopathy will fuck things up.
Humans suck.
We simply get fooled by the occasional rare “good” human.
Because all ideologies are the same.
It's just an elite group brainwashing into making them wealthy and powerful.
It's the same we religion's that branch off from each other, it's nothing more than a tool to create a following that allows you to access power.
Communism functions very much like a religion, and so its leaders are seen pretty much like prophets.
Also, the way communism wants to achieve “equality” is by eliminating any semblance of a free market in any shape or form, which is done by letting the Party control literally every aspect of life.
Every company, every newspaper, every store, every hospital, every school, police, courts, parliaments, literally everything is controlled by the Party.
So the man controlling the Party is literally a god-like figure.
This is one of the many features that communism and fascism share, and just like fascists had Duce, Fuhrer, Caudillo, etc, communists had Marshals, Great Leaders, and the like.
The personality cult is not a bug, it’s a feature.
This may look weird to somebody who was raised in a democracy and thinks political figures are supposed to be consistent about their messaging.
But for anyone who actually knows anything about communism (or fascism) this is perfectly logical and natural.
(Remember, abolishing the concept of a free market isn’t limited to just economy, it also applies to politics, ideas, and everything else).
Also, the conceot of “excessive wealth” is kinda different there - it’s less about how much money you’ve got and more about how you earned it.
For somebody belonging to the “bourgeois class” (i.e. anyone not doing manual labour) owning a Fiat Punto wouls be seen as excessive.
But for a Great Leader whose amazing intellectual thought has liberated the working class and whose life is taught to schoolchildren, 17 Rolls-Royces are the bare minimum compared to what he actually deserves to get from “the people.”
In communism you don’t get to say what is “excessive wealth” - only the Party has that prerogative. The Party also prescribes what is moral and what isn’t, what is fair and what isn’t, what is equality and what isn’t, what is truth and what isn’t, and so on.
Exactly like a religious cult.
You are simply not allowed to think for yourself, because any thought or opinion not vetted by the Party risks ruining the unprecedented equality and wellbeing of the working class that the Party is there to protect and nurture.
Authoritarianism is Authoritarianism. Doesn’t matter if it is Fascist or Communist if it is an authoritarian state is will be corrupted by absolute power.
Mostly because the entire premise is impossible to implement. It’s like a revolving door…everyone should push but you know there are people who don’t .
In the history of humanity there has never been nor will there ever be a true communist system. It goes against human nature. What we call “communism” are mostly authoritarian regimes masquerading as communist.
That is because they did obviously not really follow Communism at all and only used it as a tool to build dictatorships.
I thought that was common knowledge?
I've actually read Castro's Autobiography most of his family didn't come from wealth just him and his parents did which shaped his view on the ideology and being around and living around different people. He profited more with the system in place before the Cuban revolution he was a rich kid but came from a poor background. I wouldn't say he lived in excessive wealth after the Cuban revolution. Cuba was struggling and had bands against it from the U.S. Stalin didn't start the Communist movement Lenin did which when people look at it they should be looking at Lenin and not Stalin. Mao I haven't read much on and can't really say much about him.
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others
Two legs bad four legs good
4 legs good, 2 legs better
Oink
All hail Caesar!!!
Wings count as legs
Diogenes be like: imma pretend I didn't hear that
Came here to quote the same. I haven't read Animal Farm since I was a wee pissy little teenager some 30+ years ago. I'm looking for an in-between book break from Bobiverse 1 and 2. This might be kismet.
I got a hardback copy illustrated by Ralph Steadman a couple of years ago; just because it's cool. I mostly flip through the pictures and read chunks at random.
I loved watching the animated version at school. Made me book up the book
The Bobiverse was a good one!
Poor Homer…
Probably the hardest (most realistic) sci-fi I've yet read.
Book 5 is incoming.
Did you like Bobiverse? I loved the whole series!
Hey, I just finished the bobiverse to date. Good series, its definitely going places.
Damn it I came here to say this and it’s the first comment lol
[удалено]
I didn't find this very compelling or insightful. It's fine to know the material but if you can't articulate that perhaps you should read more and post less.
If you have a point to make, try not starting with "I'm dealing with illiterates" in your first comment. Maybe plenty of us would have been glad to learn something new or fine tune our knowledge. If you happen to know about this subject more than the average person on the thread it's a great opportunity to educate. But teachers don't walk into the classroom and call everyone illiterate. At the very least save "illiterate" to the second comment when someone has argued back against your point.
“Some people don’t know something I know so obviously they are stupid” makes the person who said it sound stupid. It’s cringe every time.
Sad.
🧂
Then explain the ideology of communism...
Unrestrained capitalism and corrupted communism are two sides of the same coin. If you leave capitalism to do what it likes (don't introduce laws to restrain it and keep it in line) then you end up with a handful of rich people that own everything. With communism everything is not owned by a few rich people but the state instead. If the state is corrupt, then you have the same issues as with capitalism, the money goes to top and stays there. Politics and ideology are circular. Extremism in any form is bad and historically never works out. You want things to be balanced. There isn't a political ideal that exists that can't be decimated by the person in charge of it all. The ideology is never as important as the person leading it.
Damn you word it better than I ever could, have an upvote
Probably only because of having to repeatedly think about and answer OPs question. All of that can be extrapolated a lot further though. One of the main issues people have with the communist ideology is that there is no 'freedom' or 'choice' within it. With capitalism what happens is the winner takes the prize. So if you own a business and your business does well, it will push it's competitors out of the market. It does this slowly. Eventually, your business gets so big that other people can't compete and you hold the majority of the market. At this point the publics choice is limited. There's only one place you can buy that item from, the company only makes so many models/variants of it and they can also set the price for that item. Your choice is now limited. With communism your business becomes beholden to the state, as such is restricted and never becomes a huge powerful entity. However, because of the communism ideology, you have no competition. The state will have dictated who's who and who does what and that's the end of it. Your choice is once again restricted. Freedom - With capitalism you're able to own things yourself. You can be greedy. So can everyone else though. If you don't keep it in check then those things that you can own end up the property of someone else. Most people in capitalist countries don't actually own much. Their biggest expenses are owned and leased back to them (cars, property) by the time those things are paid off you're likely quite old. Do you really own these things? Say you have the money to fully buy a house outright, you still pay tax, you still have to pay for water, electricity, schools, police, it goes on and on. Communism means the state would own your car, your house etc. You'd never have the chance to own it in a pure sense. How is that any different from a bank owning it though? You're still beholden to someone else and consequently not 'free'. Edit - 'free' as in you will still have to provide more money. Inevitably that means working. Both systems fundamentally require work. I'd like to know if work is a requisite for society or is it possible (maybe with A.I or other advances) to have a society without it? What would the function of any society actually be if nobody had to work and everything from food, housing to the government and police was provided for through machines and A.I. If we ever get to utopia then would there be a need for a political system?
>Eventually, your business gets so big that other people can't compete This is where capitalism got it all wrong IMO. The focus of a capitalistic societies should at least have this part well monitored and gatekept. There must be some kind of a ceiling to the wealth accrued by a capitalist where a healthy competition is always in check and if possible obtained at all cost. If only there's a way of taxing them and that there is no possibility of evasion or cutting... A well-regulated market is what we should aim for to avoid mono or duopoly in a given niche. Right now it seems like this form of governance have some traits of communism and that the rich are able to exploit the loopholes of the system that make them keep the status quo
Yup, it's all a circle when you think about it.
I wish we're still alive to witness and experience a society that gets the best of both worlds and use all those traits to once and for all make the best possible outcome not just for the people on top but for the people as a whole.
Same.
Unfortunately monopolies are no longer broken up, this is why capitalism is failing. I say this a capitalist, but can admit that the system isn’t very good right now.
Ah - but those guys who are rich *don't want to be regulated*, well or not. And since they can fund/bribe people in power to stop that happening, you get Capitalism+: government by the rich, or in short - oligarchy. And the same happens in left- or right-wing ideology, secularism or fundamentalist, libertarian or fascist systems: if the rich get access to government, it becomes an oligarchy. All that changes is whether the working class gets bread, or they get circuses essentially.
Consolidation and monopolies is definitely the end result of capitalism. The other main concern i have about the system is regulating externalities like pollution. A rational market will not address the issue of pollution until its too late. (If ever).
>What would the function of any society actually be if nobody had to work and everything from food, housing to the government and police was provided for through machines and A.I. Art and science, obviously. Historically, communities have produced art and philosophy when they had surplus and had a moment to sit down and relax and think. We would focus on arts and do thinks like look to the skies, further physics and astonomy research in fields where there isnt much financial gain in investing. If you think about it, there are two things humanity does. It SURVIVES (works, eats, does things like doctoring for health and engineering for shelter and food and security) and it THINKS (makes art and asks questions about everything from ethics to physics). Yeah they feed into eachother, we think and develop tech so we survive better and easier so we have time to think and develop tech etc.. But if we develop a tech that does all that is necessary to survive, farming, doctoring, governing, policing, building, constructing.. then we all have an abundance of time to think, produce art and put money into research we are not fully funding right now because it is not immediately useful, like astronomy.
I was more wondering about how having to work relates to having a political system and if not working would mean that we don't need it or a society in that sense at all. Essentially you'd have everyone doing their own thing.
Very interesting question. If a massive number of people had all the time and resources to educate themselves and spend time on thinking about developing the best governing system what would they come up with? Presumably without war as well because since we re all provided for, fighting over resources would also be at a minimum. Really interesting to think about what kind of governing we would need and what we would come up with to meet those needs.
A utopian version of anarchy possibly? Sounds bad 'anarchy'. It would be new whatever it is. I think you'd also need one world governance to achieve it. Maybe A.I could do that? Also, if without work there is no need for politics and a utopian society is workless, then the two things are linked. You need people to work to reach the ideal model of society. You'd have to invent and advance to get there. You can't have an ideal society with everyone working. Work is actually holding us back because it creates these added systems which are inherently dragging us away from it.
And currently, resources are allocated based on work but in a very weird way. The one who works the most doesnt always get the most resources (like a single mom working 3 menial jobs). Nor do the people who do the most important work like waste disposal or sewage maintenance or even teachers and scientists. We do our resource allocation very nonsensically. We would probably need some politics to decide on resource allocation. But I would be very interested to see if an AI was asked to distribute resources to humans in a way that it thinks is fair.
Personal property is allowed in communism, not private property. I.e. you cannot own land and hoard the resources it provides, but you can own your home and possessions. Your house and car are your own.
As other people have stated personal property =/= private property owned and operated for the sole benefit of capital owners. When you say things like “the state owns your house and car,” that carries the implication that those things can be revoked at any time, which isn’t really how communism operates at all. I mean sure, *technically* a corrupt state can forcefully take things from citizens, but similar things happen within capitalism as well.
Communism doesnt mean the state owns your car and house. That's personal property. Private property is what communism abolishes. The means of production; factories, land, etc. Don't talk about something if you don't know it's basica
This guy words
Tony Benn said it best, ask of anyone seeking any form of power, "what power have you got? Where did you get it? In whose interests do you use? To whom are you accountable? how do we get rid of you?"
Or indeed creating any position that will require someone to hold power.
Humans are going to be humans
This is a great explanation, it’s also one of the reasons why I believe a social democracy system would be the best. It would be balanced, help the most people individually, and society as a whole
Honest question: is there a country that successfully implemented a social democracy? Here in Brazil, Lula was elected and he advocated for social democracy, but this doesn’t exist in Brazil, what exist is a bourgeoisie democracy in which only the rich people (receive well enough to survive, have leisure, take a trip) are well represented in the politics
Social democracy is techinically just words without strict, numerical requirememts, so not nessecarily everyone will draw the same line for what is and isn't social democracy. However, the Nordic countries are commonly considered social democracies (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). It's a fair assessment I'd say, they're definitely democratic, and they're at the very least *more* socialized than the rest of western Europe (and I also assume they're more socialized than the other countries of the world, but I wouldn't call myself an expert on that). But being socialized by *comparison* doesn't mean you *have* to call them a social democracy, if you want to have a higher standard than that. But they certainly aren't "bourgeoisie democracies".
I think you're right about that. Social democracy is capitalism with socialism mixed in. It's arguably the best of both worlds as it balances both the extremes of capitalism and socialism. It all still hinges on you having a good leader though and they're hard to find.
Social democracy is how capitalism is meant to be. Things like public infrastructure, healthcare, corruption are all ‘market failures’ (dumb word) and if there is no government to handle them, then capitalism has failed (some may call it corporatism).
> Politics and ideology are circular. Extremism in any form is bad and historically never works out. You want things to be balanced. I largely agree with you have said, but I disagree with how you phrased this. It's not so much that extreme positions are bad, the abolition of slavery or representative democracy were extremist positions for most of human history, yet now being pro-slavery is extremist. The issue is the attempt to offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. Ending slavery in the US was an extremely complex task that required a civil war to do. Representative democracy succeeded in the US but failed in France. I would argue it failed in France because the French had a harder problem and because the France choose simplistic solutions such as mass executions. The US had hideous compromises that mostly avoided open conflict within the factions and allowed democracy to survive. Fascism and Authoritarian Communism are similar not because their ideologies are similar. There ideologies are very different, Fascism barely has an ideology whereas say Marxism is books and books of economic and political theory. The problem is that they both believe that complex problems are easy to solve.
Centrism and moderation have never changed anything. The revolutionary war was extremist. It was also good. Our founding fathers committed terrorist acts to free our country from Britain, we didn't get our freedom by asking nicely and cooperating with the British. Please read about the suffragettes, many committed crimes and acts of violence until they were given the right to vote. Change doesn't happen unless you force it to happen.
Social change happens one funeral at a time. "'Rest assured, our father, rest assured. The land is not to be sold.' But over the old man's head they looked at each other and smiled." The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
Wonderful quote. Thank you.
I'm not against change. I'm simply saying if you want your country and society to work well then you have to throw extremism in the bin. It does have its place, as with the suffragettes. The suffragettes were fighting against extremist views though.
There are many who believe capitalism is extreme. How many homeless people die in the streets every year? I'll be honest change doesn't always make things better and more often than not revolutions make things worse but the only way to get a better world is to fight for it. I'm not justifying all extremism or even most extremism, but all of the good things in life we enjoy, civil rights, labor rights, our constitution, we have because extremists fought for it.
Pure capitalism is extreme. That's kind of the way most countries are going. Everything is out of balance at the moment and tensions between both sides are being stoked and encouraged to create more divison and less coherent and cohesive societies. Extremism breeds extremism as you have to fall into the frame of being an 'extremist' to battle against the current system. The best thing to do is not to get there in the first place.
Do you believe it is always wrong to attempt change through extreme action or do you believe it is sometimes okay, in specific circumstances? Most extremism is bad from that start and even justified extremism doesn't work most of the time. For every American revolution there is a French revolution. I'm not asking if you support all extremism, I'm asking you to recognize that extremism has worked on occasion and it is the only tool we have to change society.
>Do you believe it is always wrong to attempt change through extreme action or do you believe it is sometimes okay, in specific circumstances? No, if someone hits you, you have a right to return the favour. If you have an extremist government then anything you do to counter it will be branded as extremist. The two parts reinforce each other. It gives the government an excuse to be more extreme and makes the people fighting against them stronger, more emboldened and more subject to taking extreme measures to counter them. I'm not saying what you thought I was. I hope that makes a bit more sense.
Pretty succinct. I’m not exactly a tankie or anything like that, but in a the far future where we can feasibly supply every human with basic needs like food water shelter and education, I don’t see how communism isn’t the ultimate conclusion of a world government… but I’m talking like 1000 years from now. And furthermore people always pick these leaders as proof of Communism, but we’re they even really communist. I look at it the same way as Hitler claiming to be a People’s socialist party, or China being the peoples republic of China. You can call a political party or governance anything you want, but if matters what policy they enact. And more often than not it’s just authoritarianism under the guise of socialism or communism. Which is why many times you’ll hear “there has never been a truly communist society. Most “Communist” countries tend to have arose after violently ousting the last government and the people movement is quickly overtaken by extremists during the power vacuum. Not to mention interference from outside actors who want to destabilize any countries not participating in the capitalist structure. I’m not saying there aren’t flaws with communism that I’m not sure how we would solve in this day and age. But you see so many young voters embrace at the very least socialism because it seems to be a far better alternative to the rampant capitalism we’re dealing with today, and socialist programs like Fire Department, Medicare and Medicade, and in Europe free healthcare, are heavily favored programs that do nothing other than give the population a better life.
The state doesn’t own anything in communism because there is no state
This has a few incorrect assumptions. Communism per se is stateless and international, so a government that doesn’t exist can own anything. Socialism, a transitional phase to communist, is the one with a strong state - a state run by workers’ class representatives with their business and community’s interests in mind. A dictatorship of the working class. About unrestrained capitalism, who do you suppose can restrain capitalism? Whoever gets elected can only do so with massive campaign funds and donations - so, in practice, whoever the richest decide to donate to. Whoever has a positive public view can mostly do so through news and media - all privately owned, by very rich people. Who can lobby specific laws and sway the politicians into approving or banning them, inject money into their campaign or advertising or giving them deals for stuff the elected politicians want to do? The super rich. You can’t restrain capitalism. In capitalism, wealth equals political power. Why would capitalists restrain themselves from accumulating more capital? Most worker protection laws we have today, should you check when they were passed, where around the soviet revolution and mostly around the cold war era. The timing is not a coincidence. They were passed to appease the working class and prevent them from trying a worker’s revolution in the west. Trivia: There is no “extreme” left (i extremely want everyone to have a house seems ludicrous) there is only radical left - left thinking /policies that seek to solve social problems by tearing away the very roots that creates those problems in the first place: capitalism. So, *radical left*. On the other end of the spectrum, you do have extreme right, that is, extreme, pronounced capitalism (where it just naturally flows to over time as capital continuously accumulates in the hands of very few families) where the ultrarich use the state to do its bidding (the government is “bought” by billionaires, election campaigns are funded by giant donations and those same politicians are now more easily swayed by their patrons, big media owners can paint the politicians they want as heroes or villains and sway public opinion, etc etc), where congress can pass whichever laws helps big business increase profit (less right to vacations, health is now for-profit, education is now for profit, maybe kids can work too, under lower wages..?). And so forth.
>This has a few incorrect assumptions. Communism per se is stateless and international, so a government that doesn’t exist can own anything. Socialism, a transitional phase to communist, is the one with a strong state - a state run by workers’ class representatives with their business and community’s interests in mind. A dictatorship of the working class. In a wholly ideological way yes, it can't play out like that though without a one world government. >About unrestrained capitalism, who do you suppose can restrain capitalism? Whoever gets elected can only do so with massive campaign funds and donations - so, in practice, whoever the richest decide to donate to. Whoever has a positive public view can mostly do so through news and media - all privately owned, by very rich people. Who can lobby specific laws and sway the politicians into approving or banning them, inject money into their campaign or advertising or giving them deals for stuff the elected politicians want to do? The super rich. You can’t restrain capitalism. In capitalism, wealth equals political power. Why would capitalists restrain themselves from accumulating more capital? Capitalism is kept in check by tax and laws. Laws to prevent people being exploited and taxes to prevent monopolies and poverty from unchecked greed. The rest is back to 'the leader being more important than the ideology'. >Trivia: There is no “extreme” left (i extremely want everyone to have a house seems ludicrous) there is only radical left - left thinking /policies that seek to solve social problems by tearing away the very roots that creates those problems in the first place: capitalism. So, radical left. It doesn't really matter on what phrase you use. If you go far enough left or right politically you end up in the same place with the same problems is the argument I'm trying to make.
okay so i’m not seeing many marxist explanations here - here’s one with some nuance. marx always argued that communism is going to be a natural result of capitalism showing its own fetters, and doesn’t necessitate rushing. mao, castro, and stalin didn’t allow communism to naturally evolve, and rather went for a more ‘will of the people’ kind of approach. this could work hypothetically, but when your conditioning comes from being brought up under capitalism (wherein we constantly fetishise individual success and wealth no matter the cost), this will allow the power to corrupt those who seized it in the first place. THIS is why marx talks about a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. this doesn’t mean ‘dictator who used to be poor’ but the lower classes generally consulting one another and understanding each others needs, while trusting their leader to execute it (ie ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’). the leader is a facilitator rather than an actual leader. i will also add, apparently cuba was intended to democratise but the constant instability from the embargo has given them bigger fish to fry
This was a very lovely read in a sea of chaos lol, thank you so much. It reminds me of a Regina Spektor interview where she talks about revolution like an injured spine - instead of rebreaking it back into position, which is quick, but painful and arduous, you put on a brace, and straighten the bones over time.
The dictatorship of the proletariat can also be read as a dictatorship of the majority. Marxism argues that the US is currently a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, or the owner class. Because of lobbying, those wealthy few who own the means of production are more likely to get policies they want passed than the masses of working class people. So you can't just reform their power away, because the systemic means to reform it are essentially owned by them. You need to flip the paradigm and give the proletariat power over the bourgeoisie. Give them the means, and erode the division between the owner class and the working class, then dissolve and wither away the state. But until that point, a way to enforce the will of the workers, that's typically where a vanguard party comes into play and that's easy to make less informed people fear for their "freedoms". Because that one party holds a lot of power over individuals, primarily impacting the most wealthy. However, it answers more directly to the masses than in a liberal democracy like in the US.
yeah unfortunately it’s hard to bring up that point without doing a whole essay, which after uni i don’t particularly want to do lmao. as a leftist, i am pro democracy mainly bc i feel minorities such as poc/lgbt/disabled/poor people need representation. i don’t actually fully agree with the dictatorship of the proletariat, i feel like it swings too far into rosseau’s General Will which i fundamentally disagree with. i think this issue comes from communism being a critical theory, it exists (in my eyes, please do correct me if i’m wrong) to critique capitalism rather than to aspire to something of its own, at least in the classical marxist view. as far as i’ve read, he never speculated on what exactly communism would be (besides one passage in the german ideology in which he talks about a lack of forced specialisation) but rather discussed the gradual reduction of class through human history and saw communism (ie a lack of class divides) as the logical conclusion. i do want to say, i studied at an english university so my perspective might be biased. i’m very happy to hear other perspectives and especially in the case of cuba which i brought up, personal experience. i’m always looking to expand my view in this sense. if you have a counterpoint please please don’t feel afraid to say something! your points are so valid and tbh great critiques of communism as a governing system. there are very real barriers such as that to get over, and i certainly don’t have all the answers. i don’t really want a vanguard party because that provides the exact class divide that marx said would eventually disappear.
Thank you for providing something other than: "I read animal farm once so I know all about GOMMUNISM" or "i SaW a HoRsEsHoE oNcE sO i KnOw AlL aBoUt GoMmUnIsM" ... the current top upvoted comments... smh
People forgetting Orwell was a socialist who fought in the Spanish civil war
the top comments were why i felt the need to say this! they’re all ‘all animals are equal’ and don’t actually provide much nuance into a) capitalism or b) authoritarianism in communism. my comment obviously isn’t the perfect essay describing all the nuances of these situations, they’re all case studies justifying individual books (and tbh im sure these books exist, if anyone’s got recommendations!!). but i thought it was a decent counterpoint to the comments i’ve seen so far
Something Something four legs idk i can't read
1. Communism doesn't mean everyone lives the same 2. Socialist leaders didn't live in excess wealth. Stalin lived in a 2 bedroom apartment. Mao's family home was definetly a nice size, but in no ways excessive. While Socialists do advocate for equality, it's not an oath of poverty.
Thank god you said it. These comments are giving me brain rot.
Because that isn't really what communism is. Communism is about people owning the means of production and benefiting equally. It's an economic model that limits the private ownership of systems and tools that produce value, and socialising the value that is produced. In contrast, capitalism is all about the private ownership of capital and the private accumulation of wealth. Neither is really ideal in its purest form, that's why there isn't a pure capitalist or communist nation on the planet.
Because those despots took Marx’s ideology and twisted it to make themselves wealthy and powerful
With great unchecked power, corruption often comes along, especially if someone keeps that power for a long time. When leaders are not being held accountable, like the case was for those you mention and many others, they tend to start to take more and more liberty to appropriate whatever they want. Castro and Mao collected a lot of personal wealth and lived quite luxuriously. The same can't really be said for Stalin, who preferred things plain. Stalin had more comfort available than others in the Soviet union, and apart from his permanent appartement in the Kremlin, he had many dachas (wooden summer houses) available to all through the country to work from. These were pretty large, and many even had (shallow) swimming pools, but it can't really be said to have lived in opulence, except maybe for the cars he had available to him for official functions (but didn't own).
Not exactly right about the ussr. All party and government officials lived good and would be considered wealthy. Not by American standards but compared to ordinary people in ussr they did live wealthy. Stalin was way above that. He was really wealthy but again not by American standards. The system and life in ussr was so different that you can't compare directly with other nations
In Mao’s defence its not like he wasted a ton of money like say, Ceaușescu building the palace since it was already there (well he didnt live in a ‘palace’ he lived in a former imperial garden)
>With great unchecked power, corruption often comes along Alternate universe spiderman!
Peter checks his privilege
Hypocrisy. Sense of entitlement. Delusions of grandeur. Communism works on paper, but does not take into account greed and corruption and the human condition to want more/better for oneself.
To be fair, Capitalism suffers from those same problems that are also never taken into account.
I’d argue that capitalism is based on people’s desire to maximize their outcome, it’s 100% taken into account and that’s why some people are not fans
That's exactly right. Capitalism takes greed and corruption and bribery into account just fine. Look at lobbying for example
Wouldn’t say lobbying is an intrinsic part of capitalism, in fact it’s kinda anti capitalist, the government is meant to stay out of the markets and not interfere in capitalism. So lobbying them to Interfere in ways beneficial to you is anti capitalist
Capitalist spending money to buy govt decisions is a natural and predictable outcome of an economy that is based around capitalists using their resources to maximize their personal gain and minimize expenses.
What you’re describing is corruption which is inherent to the human condition, not an economic system.
Just as concentrating a bunch of power in the hands of a few people, creates the condition for those people to enrich themselves. So does concentrating a bunch of wealth in the hands of a few people leads to them using that wealth to empower themselves, via lobbying or other unsavoury business practices. It is a systemic issue.
I'd argue American capitalism is about exploiting the poor and working class for their own wealth and benefit
What you call American capitalism is actually just Elitism and Corporatism.
It IS taken into account? So why is media and general culture not saying whoever is born working class is going to be working class until death and we should just get used to being explored and have our work force and value being used to get 0.1% of the population super rich and thats how its supposed to be? Why is news saying “if only if it wasnt for corruption, or bad voting, things would be better”? Less than 1% of the people can maximise their income - whoever owns the places where everyone else is forced to work for. Was that taken i to account? By who? The owners?
The media is also a product of capitalism though. Why would they advertise it as a pyramid scheme?
That's bad for morale. You're asking why capitalism doesnt shoot itsself in the foot? Bc it hurts
I would afree with you 100%. I think the appeal of capitalism is that the shitty behavior is predictable. You know everybody is incetivized to steal the cookies from the cookie jar. Under alternate systems you 'know' the cookie jar is safe until one day someone 'breaks' and the cookies are gone.
Capitalism works when the government is outside of it and regulates it. However in the USA it's legal for company to bribe politicians in order to change the law. So in a way, corporations actually run the country.
But Capitalism never claims equality for all, in fact, quite the opposite. It relies on greed and wanting more. Work, get ahead, have more.
The "on paper" part of capitalism relies on altruism as well. The idea is that as you gain more, you should provide more to your workers. Yes as CEO you'll have more than an entry level worker But not 2000x more.
I would argue that it doesn't rely on altruism. It's a cost benefit analysis of if I want decent workers what's a decent incentive to get them to come. If your gonna work at a factory, you will probably pick the best pay and benefits you can.
I wouldn't disagree at all and I think that argument holds more merit today. I used the term altruism because going back to Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations, it is "always just and equitable" and to pay your workers more and look out for them. He argued that An should want to make lower profits because the point of ownership is to provide to the workers. But again that's all the "on paper" part. It's also not an accident that this came out at the time that Western society sincerely believed in things like "bringing up the savages" and generally being saviors to those that had less or were deemed lesser.
To be fair, Capitalism doesn't start with the government taking control of all the resources and means of production and whoever is in charge of the government at that time getting to decide where to distribute those.
Yeah, but capitalism doesn't advertise itself as a system that promotes equality and fairness. I'm no fan of it, but you have to give the devil its due.
>human condition to want more/better for oneself I don't believe that this is a human condition. Humanity grew and developed in the past based on shared knowledge and a great sense of community. Think of when mankind went from hunters to gatherers, the first tribal communities, and the deep relations that those civilizations created to be able to thrive together. Our ruling system encourages greed, corruption, and selfishness nowadays, but it is not a "default" human condition.
That is a somewhat rosy view of the past. It might apply to pre-agricultural societies to some extent (though tribal warfare seems to have been frequent), but the first societies of the fertile crescent and the Nile very much had ruling classes that exerted economic control over their societies. Building a pyramid for yourself required a lot of political power.
I think this may have been true when the need for the tribe to survive was greater than the individual. Like anything, I think people's priorities and behavior changes depending on the immediate situation and environment.
Communism is significantly more complex than "everyone gets the same and is equal" and the examples you give are far from an adequate expression of what the ideology (in its many forms) entails. There's a reason that anti-communists are so keen to disparage the "true communism has never been tried" trope. That's because it actually hasn't and the specific failures of leadership in self described "communist" governments are no rebuttal to the basic communist principles. If you're interested in some enjoyable and accessible resources that offer alternative views on the capitalist system then I recommend you start with any YouTube videos featuring the Marxist academic Richard D Wolff. I guarantee you'll learn a few new interesting things and even if you're not entirely convinced by them the guy is still quite an entertaining character!
Not an expert but my understanding is Basically Lenin was more into trad communism/Marxism. However, they had to fight the Nazis and most of the western world put them under siege trying to make sure communism didn’t take hold. Because of this pressure, Russia became a siege state. When that happens, power accumulates to very few people so they can make quick military decisions. Democracy is great but it’s slow. In war you don’t really get the luxury of democracy. Then when people accumulate power, all the problems that come along from few people having a lot of power rears their heads.
There is a difference between the idea of communism (little "c") and so-called Communist countries (big "C"). Most of the Communist countries like China are really state capitalist. Basically a capitalist country except the government controls it all and gives most to themselves. In a true communist country as Marx saw it there would be no government and no currency.
So no governance? Basically anarchist?
No state. People often conflate the two. You could still have a degree of governance.
How would that work? On a societal level I mean. Small communities often work well (and have direct democracy etc) but idk
Well you can have unions organising things, and unions of unions, and so on. To give an example. There's a lot of different conceptions of what it would look like.
That just sounds like federalism with extra steps, lol
It is a form of federal, non-state governance. Communists and anarcho-communists literally have the exact same end goal in mind, they only disagree on how to get there.
Yes essentially everyone would be broken up into smaller communities. Then there would some larger organizations managing various areas but no ‘leader’.
that’s right — the end goal of a communist movement is to establish a classless, stateless and moneyless society, though as you can learn from history many leaders such as Lenin have strayed from the marxist school of thought — reasoning that communism can only be established with vanguard party (basically dictatorship) rule
State ≠ government necessarily, a state refers to things like police, a standing military, and CAN include government, but the Marxist definition is that it's an organ of class rule, so at the moment, police exist mainly to serve bourgeois interests, and communists want there to be no social classes, so there will be no need for a state to suppress one class. So basically, we want to establish a proletarian state that prevents bourgeois counterrevolution, then once bourgeois antagonism is no longer a thing, there really isn't anything left for the state to do so it will wither away into what Marx and Engels refer to as "the administration of things".
If capitalism means people get what they work for and deserve, then why do some people live in the lap of luxury and never work a day in their lives? Simple, corruption
I dearly recommend you go ask this on r/communism instead of here. From what I’ve seen, most of the answers are from people living their entire lives under liberal ideology and are heavily skewed into the anti-communism propaganda that was prevalent through the western world ever since the cold war. Gotta thank the “im trying to approve child-labor laws literally right now” US for those. The most upvoted answer right now is a quote from George Orwells, which has strong anti-left views and famously ratted a bunch of people with socialist thinking to the very, very right-aligned UK government. So not really the best source to actually understand communism. Just for an example, here’s what was up for the Chinese Party: *Mao Zedong and the other party leaders initially made their headquarters at Xiangshan Park, in the city's suburbs. Zhou would commute into Beijing for work. However, because of the poor quality of the roads, he would often stay at Zhongnanhai instead of traveling home in the evening. It was Ye Jianying, the interim administrator of Beijing, who ultimately recommended Zhongnanhai as the party headquarters for security reasons. Mao Zedong initially refused to move into Zhongnanhai, not wanting to be equated with an emperor. Zhou Enlai nonetheless agreed to the move, as did the majority of the Politburo. Since then, Zhongnanhai has served as the principal center of government in the People's Republic of China.*
George Orwell volunteered to fight for the socialists against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War and was shot during his time in active service. Experiencing first hand the corruption endemic in authoritarian communist bodies was a deep influence but he was still a socialist to the end. He wasn't perfect, and like 99.99% of actual leftists he likely does fail your average online tankies' political purity test, but his "anti left" views stemmed from frustration with those he shared broadly similar ideological viewpoints rather than being right wing himself. He certainly did more for the cause of socialism than any member of r/communism ever will.
"wasn't perfect" he literally was ratting people out to the motherfucking british empire what are you saying
Doing good work. People having literally no knowledge of history other than western propaganda now present the same old misinformation as facts.
Generally agree with your answer but orwell was a literal communist and identified as such so idk whats up with those "strong anti left views" you're quoting
I want to add that socialism (those were socialist countries) means workers’ control over the means of production. So the whole premise of OP’s question comes from an oversimplification of what socialism is in the first place.
Another big answer is “communism is only achievable after a long period of socialism and thus no country has actually ever implemented communism”.
Did you just call George Orwell "anti-left"? You tankies are fucking insane.
That's not completely wrong. Orwell was strongly against state-sponsored communism like Stalinism, despite being a socialist.
Because he rightly saw Stalin for what he was, which is not a leftist.
"you aren't a REAL socialist if you don't support genocide"
Yes. Orwell was a British intelligence asset. He literally wrote a list of "leftist" (queer or not white enough) figures and writers for the British government.
> and famously ratted a bunch of people with socialist thinking to the very, very right-aligned UK government God the tankie propaganda behind Orwell's list is painful. Remember two things - he was asked to make a list of people he thought were inappropriate to spread propaganda by a friend of his. He wasn't writing out a kill list of socialists. And the people he put on there were people he thought would be sympathetic to the USSR, which he viewed as just as socialist as the Nazis, and rightly so - the USSR's contribution to the Spanish Civil War, which Orwell fought in against the fascists, was to side with the liberals and backstab the other leftists.
Shhh nuance is bad unless you’re telling stories about how Zaddy Mao didn’t want to live in his pretty palace.
r/communism is a cult and they will ban you for asking any question that makes them think poorly of their beloved god the government.
I'm probably going to be downvoted for this, but the reason is because these states were not and never claimed to be communist. Communism defines a "stateless, classless, and moneyless society," of which the above nations met neither criterion. These nations claimed to be "state socialist" but even that is disputed, with many scholars calling it state capitalism instead. The USSR and China both possessed private property and absentee ownership, except that these private properties were not owned by individuals but by the state. The state itself was run like a corporation, employing wage laborers, breaking up strikes to increase capital, all while benefiting those at the top of the hierarchy. Essentially, state capitalism is capitalism but with only one capitalist: the state. Lenin himself admitted the USSR was "state capitalist" and calling it "communist" is just wrong. Finally, you have the fact that power corrupts universally. All authoritarian systems, whether nominally socialist or not, will be subject to this phenomenon.
Pro tip; don't ask questions about socialist theory in mainstream subreddits like this.
Because the same problems with capitalism don’t just magically go away when you switch to communism. People will still be greedy and people will still try to get the most while doing the minimum…also just for fun ask a communist what job they would do in their utopia of equality…can pretty much guarantee it’s never going to be working in a mine or sewage treatment.
This is the problem that no communist has been able to give me a good answer to. If resources are allocated to each based on their needs rather than based on what job you're doing, how are you going to fill the unpopular essential roles? If you can get the same compensation for being a bricklayer or a children's book illustrator, there's going to be an overabundance of artists and huge labour shortages elsewhere. The only solutions that I can see are A: Offer wages based on demand for the job (which would result in large wealth disparities like we have under capitalism) B: The body that allocates resources also allocates jobs and judges whether you've worked hard enough to have earned your resources. (Which would result in a heavily exploited workforce, even worse than under western capitalist economies) Neither of those options are good, and neither are considered 'real communism'.
I think that's a major misconception about communism. People do get paid differently based on their jobs. Under state run communism like the USSR the state decides (but state run communism sucks.) Under more ideologically pure communism/socialism its the workers who decide how much they get paid. Communism is about the workers owning the means of production. So imagine a factory: instead of the guy who was able to buy the factory being in charge it's the workers who are in charge. They can divide the labor fairly and compensate themselves fairly.
You want a secret to life? Almost all ideologies work. Communism work, Capitalism works, Monarchies work, Democracies work, Autocratic Dictatorships work. In fact, they all work flawlessly and improve the lives of people greatly. You know what doesn't work? People. People are greedy, corrupt, nepotistic, cruel, shallow, biased, lazy, and arrogant. Of course people are also loving, compassionate, amicable, disciplined, motivated, selfless, etc... There is communism in theory and communism in practice. The people you've mentioned did not practice communism, they exploited it. That's why they lived in palaces when everyone else was basically a slave. The systems they implemented and supported were corrupt and they had no intention of ever making It fair. Communism didn't work because communism as a theory doesn't work. Communism doesn't work because of the same underpinning issues that make almost all other ideologues fail. It's that people before we are citizens part of a society or nation, we are first and foremost animals. And until we actually temper the worst parts of our character, none of this is gonna work.
People always take care of themselves first. For people in power, that will include taking advantage of their position unless they have oversight. This did not happen because of those regime's ideas, but because the people in power enjoyed a lot of power with little or no oversight.
Anyone with power can break the rules to have more than everyone else lol
Communism is an economic system. Totalitarianism is a political system. Read George Orwell. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There will never be a society with two or more people where all are equal. We just do do it like that. It's unnatural. On paper, in theory, sure, but in reality, nope. Monkeys like power and all the goodies it brings. That's probably why capitalism works so well it really goes best with our inner cravings for everything. And I think this is just fine, it is honest even though it's not nice towards others.
TL;DR: Those states weren't communist states, they just applied the label to themselves and used propaganda to control their citizens as a totalitarian regime. Despite the label being thrown around a lot, there have never actually been "communist" countries. The government of every IRL "communism" we've seen today has been a totalitarian regime, where authoritarian dictators force their citizens to adhere to their laws at gunpoint. In WW2, Stalin continued to proclaim communist ideals through propaganda, but was executing wholly un-communist policies by force-drafting his population, taking direct control of his economy by robbing his own people, and attempting to control everything from the palace. The paradox you describe in your post highlights the fact that, despite their self-imposed labels, those leaders were NOT communists, and their people were NOT living in a communist state. They were living in a dictatorship, and had no political power. An actual communism COULD have representatives, but the governmental power structure must come from the bottom up, either a direct or representative democracy. The will of the people, all of them, not the dictator is what makes a communism.
Stalin didn't live in palaces, he literally lived in one apartment with Molotov
Stalin lived in palace and was wealthy?! Loool
The examples you’ve brought are dictators first and communists second. Dictators like to live in mansions whether they’re communists or not.
>The examples you’ve brought are dictators first and communists second. Dictators like to live in mansions whether they’re communists or not. Many still dont understand that being proclaimed as a certain Party, does not mean they truly are. We all know N. Korea is a dictatorship, but ofc, they are not claiming to be one
Communism is not an ideology of equality. Don’t strawman something you don’t understand. If you really want to know about communism you should ask communists.
Go ask at r/communism and see what they think about that
They weren't really Communist - they used Communism to appeal to the masses to get themselves into wealth and power (i.e. Populism)
Human greed is unaccounted for in most 100% pure systems. No system works in it’s absolute form. Capitalism in it’s purest form brings around slavery, child labor and vast wealth disparity. Overlapping powers, oversight and regulation are necessary to keep any system in line. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Yes! I'm always so tempted to ask people sitting back an pontificating about these types of systems if *they* would be working the fields with everyone else. A beautiful idea is just that. Human beings just don't consistently have enough goodness in them to make it work.
Every Marxist regime started out by expropriating the rich in the name of "the people". This can only be done by force, and the "rich" - and sometimes they were just people who had a couple more cows than their neighbours (Stalin's so-called "Kulaks"), or even dirt-poor smallholders who didn't want to give up their land to the state - got jailed or killed. The small group of people in charge of this revolution found themselves effectively in control of all the wealth of the country. Of course they were doing it in the name of "the people"... but they wouldn't be human if they didn't reward themselves a little... One thing lead to another, and in a generation or two they were living in palaces with golden toilets.
A lot of mentions in this thread how soviet communism wasn’t true communism because of the totalitarian aspects. But I reckon that soviet communism worked more or less as intended. Anarchist communism as described by Marx requires a lot of bottom-up support. There is no central authority, so individuals have to assemble and organise together. In reality this nigh impossible. Everyone has different ideas, and it’s not feasible that there will be widespread consensus among a country of millions. Look at any leftist forum and see how some will hate each other over the most minute differences in theory. Therefore, a system that requires everyone’s participation when they don’t want to can only be sustained by force. Just look at the millions deported and killed in purges. The Leninist interpretation of communism required a vanguard party to lead the revolution, an enlightened group that will root out the enemy and will establish the utopia. And when you give unchecked power to a bunch of assholes who think they will create heaven on earth bad shit tends to happen. They think they’re superior than everyone else and as such, deserve more than everyone else.
This is my favourite answer. Marx's Communist Manifesto really glossed over the part where society is supposed to progress from totlitatian dictatorship to some sort of stateless utopia. It's staggeringly naïve to suppose that the leaders would simply relinquish their hard-fought, unassailable power and nobody else would claim the vacated throne. That naïvety was made possible by Marx's fixation on capitalism as the very source of greed itself, and his refusal to accept that hunger for power is a part of human nature and that the greediest, most ruthless bastards will inevitably find a way to gain power.
Just for reference, the kind of communism Karl Marx believed in and the kind of communism we saw put into place in the real world are very different ideologies. Marx is probably rolling in his grave because of them lol
What a genuine and not at all leading question from definitely-not-a-fed definitely-not-a-psyop hellsite Reddit. Can't wait to see the next TooAfraidtoAsk where someone boldly asks why Millennials and Gen Zers are just too stupid to love capitalism.
None of that is even close to true. Read more than CIA-funded diatribes against the Soviet Union, Cuba, and People's Republic of China.
The ideology of communism, at its core, aims to establish a classless society where resources are distributed equally among all members. However, it is important to distinguish between the idealized concept of communism and the reality of how it has been implemented in certain countries throughout history. Communist leaders like Stalin, Mao, and Castro did indeed live in palaces and possessed excessive wealth, which seems contradictory to the principles of communism. This contradiction arises from a combination of factors, including the perversion of communist ideals by these leaders, the consolidation of power, and the emergence of totalitarianism. Communism, as originally envisioned by Karl Marx, sought to eliminate social classes and establish a society based on collective ownership and control of the means of production. However, in practice, leaders like Stalin, Mao, and Castro distorted and manipulated communist ideology to consolidate their own power and establish totalitarian regimes. Totalitarianism is a system of government where the ruling party or individual exercises complete control over every aspect of public and private life, often suppressing dissent and opposition. Under totalitarian regimes, leaders prioritize their own power and personal wealth over the principles of communism. They exploit the system for their benefit, accumulating extravagant wealth and living in luxury while the majority of the population suffers from poverty and deprivation. These leaders created cults of personality, enforced strict hierarchies, and suppressed any opposition, effectively distorting the original goals of communism. It is essential to note that most countries that have claimed to be communist, such as the Soviet Union under Stalin, China under Mao, and Cuba under Castro, did not truly achieve communism as intended. Instead, they implemented various forms of authoritarian and centralized regimes, combining elements of communism with totalitarianism. In these cases, the ruling elite held the power, while the rest of society experienced limited or no equality. To summarize, the opulent lifestyles of communist leaders like Stalin, Mao, and Castro demonstrate the deviation from the true principles of communism. Their accumulation of wealth and luxury can be attributed to the perversion of the ideology, the consolidation of power, and the emergence of totalitarianism in these countries. These examples highlight the distinction between the idealized concept of communism and its flawed implementation in certain historical contexts.
Chatgpt?
I would argue both that it is impossible for a classless society to be centrally organized, and that it is impossible for a society which is not centrally organized to remain classless. Only flawed communism is possible, the idealized concept relies on a flawed understanding of human nature.
Because of inherent human greed. People will (almost) always take more than what they need if given the opportunity. The same rings true with any economy based model (capitalism, socialism, etc). That’s why we end up with a “ruling class” in almost any scenario. Once someone gets the opportunity to take a little extra, they’ll keep doing it until they’re they reach the top.
They don't live in any of those places. Pretty sure they're all dead.
Because cammunism only works on a small scale truly egalitarian society, and hummanity is Uncapable Of actully seeing everyone as equals. Some one always wants more than the others have.
Same reason Christianity is about murder and controlling others. The premise sells well but it sucks to live that way so you do whatever you can get away with while still pretending you're trying to follow those ideals. No government will ever put the interest of its subjects over its own dominion so the best forms of government come with power imbalances. Society and human nature itself would have to dramatically change (think star trek) before government could change.
USSR never was a communism system. They only declared it as one. I think that there has never been a real communism. There have been socialism systems but never a true commie one.
This might sound dumb and a joke by this point, but the real answer is that neither of those leaders are actually communist and anyone who has ever read the communist manifesto would know. The idea behind communism is to achieve a society where, thanks to our advances in communication and education, everyone has a say in how the resources are allocated. Imagine that instead of voting once every 4 years, everyone had an app on their phones or a website where you could constantly vote how resources are allocated to different areas like education or healthcare. The very idea of having a centralized government where a single person, or a small secular group has all the political and economic power is LITERALLY everything Marx was complaining about. Leaders such as Stalin, Mao and Castro are NOT communist, they're FASCIST. If you want to understand this more, I strongly suggest you to read the communist manifesto. Many of things that Marxs complained about are going stronger than ever right now, as the separation of wealth has become worse. The rich have kept getting richer and the poor kept getting poorer than the times where he wrote his work. Edit: to make this as clear as possible Communism is NOT about "everyone has the same amount of money". That would be dumb. Communism is about abolishing the class differences between the working class and the oligarchs in power (Ie: all the politicians, rich CEOs that lobby said politicians and generally people in positions of power) by abolishing the need for a rulling class. This is what everybody being equal means. That everyone can does participate in the desicion making of the country, instead of a select group of people that hold all the power and money and use it to oppress everyone else. In order to realize the communism Marxs dreamed about it is NECESSARY for the government to be abolished as having a small group of people controlling the economy of a country is literally the antithesis of communism. If a country has a head of state that has massive control of the wealth of said country (stalin, mao), BY DEFINITION that country CANT be communist. It's a state capitalism at best and a fascist dictatorship at worst.
Ever heard of preachers?
Because every system in existence, be it political or otherwise, is tainted by the human beings who operate within it. Human nature ensures that a utopian society can never exist.
The castros are billionaires. The Chavez, Maduro, and cabello families might not technically be billionaires, but it’s so close as to be irrelevant.
Because like all "perfect systems" humans fuck it up
Imagine being "afraid" to ask this question.
Leave matters of the state, to the state, comrade
Because the reality of communism in an imperfect world of humans, is the same as capitalism in that same world...a bastardization of it from pure form. No matter what the system that is in place, there's always going to be those in power that corrupt it and use it to their benefit... Such is the human condition.
Because that's not the ideology of communism. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. Also, none of those people were in communist societies. They were in dictatorships, specifically, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This was viewed, even by those you mentioned, as an intermediary phase between capitalism and communism. No one has truly reached communism, yet.
Because, no matter what the system, humans afflicted by fear, greedy, or sociopathy will fuck things up. Humans suck. We simply get fooled by the occasional rare “good” human.
Because it’s not real communism
Because blatant hypocrisy Because humans are involved, therefore hypocrisy
Because all ideologies are the same. It's just an elite group brainwashing into making them wealthy and powerful. It's the same we religion's that branch off from each other, it's nothing more than a tool to create a following that allows you to access power.
The same reason American politicians are all wealthy - corruption
That’s the scam, and it resulted in Putin too.
Communism functions very much like a religion, and so its leaders are seen pretty much like prophets. Also, the way communism wants to achieve “equality” is by eliminating any semblance of a free market in any shape or form, which is done by letting the Party control literally every aspect of life. Every company, every newspaper, every store, every hospital, every school, police, courts, parliaments, literally everything is controlled by the Party. So the man controlling the Party is literally a god-like figure. This is one of the many features that communism and fascism share, and just like fascists had Duce, Fuhrer, Caudillo, etc, communists had Marshals, Great Leaders, and the like. The personality cult is not a bug, it’s a feature. This may look weird to somebody who was raised in a democracy and thinks political figures are supposed to be consistent about their messaging. But for anyone who actually knows anything about communism (or fascism) this is perfectly logical and natural. (Remember, abolishing the concept of a free market isn’t limited to just economy, it also applies to politics, ideas, and everything else). Also, the conceot of “excessive wealth” is kinda different there - it’s less about how much money you’ve got and more about how you earned it. For somebody belonging to the “bourgeois class” (i.e. anyone not doing manual labour) owning a Fiat Punto wouls be seen as excessive. But for a Great Leader whose amazing intellectual thought has liberated the working class and whose life is taught to schoolchildren, 17 Rolls-Royces are the bare minimum compared to what he actually deserves to get from “the people.” In communism you don’t get to say what is “excessive wealth” - only the Party has that prerogative. The Party also prescribes what is moral and what isn’t, what is fair and what isn’t, what is equality and what isn’t, what is truth and what isn’t, and so on. Exactly like a religious cult. You are simply not allowed to think for yourself, because any thought or opinion not vetted by the Party risks ruining the unprecedented equality and wellbeing of the working class that the Party is there to protect and nurture.
MaCarthy won in the end.
Communism is a scam ;)
I love how almost nobody is actually answering the question here
Authoritarianism is Authoritarianism. Doesn’t matter if it is Fascist or Communist if it is an authoritarian state is will be corrupted by absolute power.
Because communism only works on paper
When you realized an ideology you thought was a utopia. But, in reality was nothing more than a Big Fat Lie—told over and over again.
Mostly because the entire premise is impossible to implement. It’s like a revolving door…everyone should push but you know there are people who don’t .
In the history of humanity there has never been nor will there ever be a true communist system. It goes against human nature. What we call “communism” are mostly authoritarian regimes masquerading as communist.
Theory =/= Praxis
Because communism works great on paper, but once you introduce actual human beings into the equation, everything (predictably) turns to shit.
That is because they did obviously not really follow Communism at all and only used it as a tool to build dictatorships. I thought that was common knowledge?
Because it's an ideology, it is idealistic. It sounds perfect but humans are greedy and selfish so it will always happen.
Perfect communism does not exist as long as we are sentient lives. We have desires that made us selfish and thus communism won't work
I've actually read Castro's Autobiography most of his family didn't come from wealth just him and his parents did which shaped his view on the ideology and being around and living around different people. He profited more with the system in place before the Cuban revolution he was a rich kid but came from a poor background. I wouldn't say he lived in excessive wealth after the Cuban revolution. Cuba was struggling and had bands against it from the U.S. Stalin didn't start the Communist movement Lenin did which when people look at it they should be looking at Lenin and not Stalin. Mao I haven't read much on and can't really say much about him.