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[+] -6 points 11 months ago (11 children)

The problem is not the communist utopia, is how the means to build it will always end up in a totlitarian police state. Because we can't have nice things.

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  • [+] 22 points 11 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] -5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Socialism, probably yeah. But here it's communism thats displayed

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  • [+] 15 points 11 months ago (3 children)
  • [+] -7 points 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago

    You literally said:

    Socialism, probably yeah. But here it's communism thats displayed

    That person explained why that's a flawed way of understanding previous socialist experiments and that the distinction you're making doesn't make much sense, and instead of listening and admitting you don't know much about the topic you decided to accuse that person of a logical fallacy that doesn't even apply.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago*

    (Looks like the comment I replied to got deleted, so mind the context was in response to "Not true communism TM")

    This is an ignorant way to respond, although I can appreciate these terms have several meanings that can be difficult to follow.

    Communist parties of the 20th century knew and openly stated that what they had built was a socialist system and communism was the endgame. The goal of 20th century socialists was to gradually progress to that point that scarcity is abolished and distribution follows the principle of need. At which point they might declare communism achieved, so long as other things have happened like completing the (gradual) dissolution of the state.

    It is not an attempt to distance from a bad word - we/Marxists/Communists don't see it as a bad word.

    And the 20th century movements & their states were "real communism" in that they were a genuine expression of the movement for communism, and furnish us with both positive and negative examples.

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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    So I will admit that I am ignorant of a method of attaining Communism that isn't at the end of a rifle, and thus authoritarian by nature (and fully accept that, to a degree, Capitalism is also at the end of a gun, but typically less overt, or often directed without instead of within). The only nations I've seen flying the red flag have appeared highly authoritarian (and I'm not going to get drawn into a "USSR and PRC aren't/weren't authoritarian, and DPRK is actually a utopia!" discussion, so if that's the direction this is going, let me know and I'll politely see my way out).

    I've seen in the lower comments that Socialism would be used as a gateway to Communism, but I am unclear about the transition from "everybody's basic needs are met via taxation and distribution" to "personal property is abolished" (as I understand Communism to mean, please correct me if I'm wrong). Plenty of European countries have had (for the west), strong seemingly socialist systems, but they don't seem to be deliberately angling toward Communism, for example.

    So I'm curious what this peaceful Capitalist to Communist timeline would look like.

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  • [+] 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    I appreciate the write-up, thank you! I feel like a lot of this is semantic differences. I've always thought of socialism as any public funds used specifically to help citizens (e.g. social security, medicare, unemployment, UBI, etc) and Communism to be the public owning and running the means of production, and distributing goods thereof, and the stateless, classless, moneyless society to be the ideal utopia it aspired to (similar to Star Trek). From your comment, I see that what I call Communism, you call Socialism (which explains a lot of confusion from discussions in the past with self-described Communists I've known), and the nameless Star Trek post-scarcity system you would call Communism.

    Do you think it is possible to slow-roll the transition peacefully, though? If, for example, instead of the government bailing out industries, they bought out industries on the cheap, slowly growing and monopolizing like Google or Amazon have? Or do you think the rich would simply block that from happening?

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago*

    The problem here is your understanding of socialism. European countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (etc.) have not had socialism. They have had social democracy, capitalism with social safety nets.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago*

    No. The people making these criticisms like the totalitarian police state part. It's the communism that pisses them off.

    Like, idk what % of local and national resources went to cops/domestic intelligence operations in the USSR on its worst day, certainly too fucking much, but I bet it wasn't half what american municipalities and fedgov spend right now.

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  • [+] -8 points 11 months ago (2 children)
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