Imagine if the Russian Revolution didn’t turn out horrifically in the end. Imagine if the Soviet Union was an actual Marxist polity in something other than nomenclature.
God. History is so full of disappointments.
I should take up drinking.
Communism works on paper. But in reality it’s impossible for humans to not be greedy, put themselves above others and not take power. You think the guys running the government are gonna give themselves an equal share to what a lower class person is getting?? Pffft.
Humans are too flawed for it to work. I like socialism but Socialism has to be snuck in there, cause even saying it’s socialism freaks out Americans
Yeah, for that reason I really struggle to imagine an actually stable communist state. It’s like balancing a top without spinning it, and even if you manage that, expecting that to be a permanent solution.
I wrap my head around that by thinking of communism as the limit of socialism. It doesn’t/can’t actually exist because greedy people will always exist to steal power from their neighbors, but a socialist society can approach it.
But the end goal of communism is that there isn’t a hierarchical government of professional bureaucrats in the final stage of communist society.
Sure, but what the other poster is saying is that getting there is nearly impossible because a significant number of people are always going to manipulate things so that they end up with authority. The people who go on to become psychopathic CEOS aren’t simply going to stop being born. The people who innately seek “more” aren’t going to stop being born either.
So you need a solid plan to deal with those kinds of people because they aren’t going to stop existing.
Sure, but what the other poster is saying is that getting there is nearly impossible because a significant number of people are always going to manipulate things so that they end up with authority.
You can, and groups regularly do, get there, in mostly stable communities.
It requires an active citizenry, but it is very much possible. The question is whether it is desirable, and whether it is competitive with other forms of communities. And I raise this question as someone who regards himself as communist and anarchist-sympathetic, but still skeptical of the desirability of the end-state.
In any case, anarchism and communism are not as utopian as they’re being presented here. There’s a considerable amount of writing on libertarian socialist dynamics and conflict resolution, including numerous real-world examples. The issue isn’t as simple as “It’s not possible” or “No one has thought of a solution yet”, but questions of relative efficacy, development material conditions, the circumstances for stability, etc etc etc.
Eh, small communes are a very different thing. First, they are much smaller than a country. And the most important part: they’re voluntary and pretty much consist of people who want to be there.
Unlike a country where millions of people want different things. So unless you want to go tribes again, it simply can’t ever work.
Marx’s “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” was envisaged as democracy though.
Bourgeois democracy (ie what we largely live in today) is “Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”.
It’s in reference to what class holds power, not an actual autocratic or oligarchic power structure.
"So what you had was that the world’s two major propaganda agencies, for their own quite different reasons were claiming that this destruction of socialism is socialism. And it’s very hard to break out of the control of the world’s two major propaganda agencies when they agree, and they agreed for different reasons, but they agreed, and then that becomes doctrine and dogma."
Noam Chomsky
Okay, thank you, but Red Khmer fan club is next door to the left.
Honestly, I give more leeway to Castro, who was in a bad position and didn’t pretend to be an original theorist, over Lenin or Stalin who fucked up their governments in new and exciting ways.
It doesn’t justify the authoritarianism of the Cuban regime, but I see Castro in a much more tragic light than Lenin or Stalin, who created most of their own problems and made those problems the rest of the world’s as well.
The Cubans have done pretty goddamn well considering. Among other things they have never had a higher percentage of their population in prison or subject to systemic racism than America.
What’s going to be interesting is what happens when Trump finishes expelling 500k+ Cuban refugees.
Among other things they have never had a higher percentage of their population in prison or subject to systemic racism than America.
If that’s true we need to all commit suicide and let th next species take over.
Thankfully human nature is cooperation and compassion, you know the things we explicitly evolved.
Every evolutionary biologist and behavioral evolutionary biologist accepted today agrees, humanity evolved through compassion and cooperation. Not competition. Not greed. Not war. Those are things that are subversive to human nature, not a part of it.
Jesus Christ.
I would strongly disagree that it’s impossible. There’s significant evidence of societies operating at or near a position that can reasonably be described as communism.
My point of contention would be whether communism is more desirable than socialist workers’ democracy, the supposed intermediate stage, rather than whether it is possible.
The desire for a stateless, moneyless society correctly identifies many of the problems of states and money, but often glosses over what problems states and money themselves address.
lumpenproletariat
PugJesus
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But_my_mom_says_im_cool
Buelldozer
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