zedgeistBoth sides are the same
That’s not far left IMO, that’s just left. This is a recurring problem we have in France too, where medias call “far left” parties that are just left. This is a slippery slope, the one on which Overton window slips towards the (far) right…
Far left is: “We’re going to destroy the very concept of private ownership and wealth accumulation”
bufalo1973“… to met everyone’s needs”
NikeluiLiterally yes. Housing, employment, education, healthcare and pensions are guaranteed in Cuba, and were guaranteed in the USSR, both in theory and in practice. What are you exactly talking about?
Communism is just impossible to implement. It only takes one human’s greed to destroy the system. Center-left is far more plausible where the economy is capitalist with lots of checks and balances to counter extreme capitalists’ greed and the state having control over essential industries and important parts of the economy (energy, water supply, transportation, education, healthcare and stuff) while abolishing religious systems to nil the discrimination on that end.
The entire concept of life itself is very capitalist — You have to exploit all resources available to you so you can survive and thrive. Only some species share resources — that too if they are in abundance for them.
I gave you a plethora of actual evidence of human rights in an actually existing socialist country, and you went with the “gommunism impossible because hooman greed”.
But please elaborate: why is the nationalization and collectivization of means of production so vulnerable to greed? A system in which power is distributed among all workers is actually less prone to greed issues than one in which a single human is in control of the whole company. The whole “human greed” argument is a hollow sophism without any actual analysis of everything
I gave you a plethora of actual evidence of human rights in an actually existing socialist country
Yeah, Cuba. Where everyone is poor w/o any major scientific and cultural influence in the world.
And yeah, USSR. They did try to influence the world but its internal economy was so shit that it couldn’t even exist for 100 years and was a one party authoritarian regime. In the end it started to shift towards to capitalism. Also they supported the Nazis during Poland’s invasion. The population who was so frustrated with their country that they toppled the Berlin Wall when USSR was collapsing.
But please elaborate: why is the nationalization and collectivization of means of production so vulnerable to greed?
Because the very nature of life I explained to you earlier. Life evolved in such a way that it is the survival of fittest, which requires hogging up all the resources as much as you can. Greed is ingrained in every living being’s DNA.
Even you are greedy to want to divide all the wealth equally because for you it might be the only way to get richer than you currently are. It is not a matter of if being greedy is right or wrong, it is a matter of if your greed is so high that it destroys other people’s lives and where to draw that line as a civilized society.
All the “center-left checks and balances” with strong union membership in the 1960s-1980s disappeared overnight
They never existed in practice in the U.S after the collapse of the USSR because communism failed and thus the perception swayed towards the extreme capitalist way. Later the extreme lobbying by the wealthy and anti-left got rid of the whatever regulations of systems that didn’t allow them to be absurdly rich. It is called lobbying in the west while we call it corruption.
Before that when the governments didn’t used to only work for the wealthy, the system was performing better than any other one. Europe’s War Torn economy was improving, The US was in its golden economic age and all this while people overall had more rights and freedom than any socialist and communist regime. It started to go haywire when the extreme capitalists started to take over and the government stopped working for all the people but only for the rich.
There is no point in living in an extreme capitalist and a fascist country nor there is a point living in a poor socialist or communist country.
Yeah, Cuba. Where everyone is poor
Source: émigré gusanos living in Madrid, Spain. Life expectancy is higher in Cuba than in the USA, and that’s despite the island country suffering the most comprehensive and long lasting economic blockade in human history. The blockade itself, according to the Office of the Historian of the USA, was put in place, and I quote: “to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”. Seeing you’re so concerned with poverty caused by economic blockades, you may be interested to know that according to recent medical research US and EU sanctions murder above half a million humans per year since 1971.
USSR […] its internal economy was so shit…
…so shit that it took backwards feudal Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, etc. where 85% of the population were destitute peasants with a life expectancy of 27 years in 1929, and by 1970 turned into the second world power, rose life expectancy to close to 70, and did all this without exploiting the global south.
Totally terrible economy, much worse than anything before or after, right?
Also they supported the Nazis during Poland’s invasion
Wrong, wrong and more wrong. I’ve answered to that in a separate comment because of how wrong that is, feel free to read it and give me a well-informed opinión afterwards on my comment. “Le evil Soviets invaded poor wittle Poland” is pure historic revisionism that you’re regurgitating from some other Lemmy comment you’ve seen.
As for the rest of your comment I won’t bother because it’s just more “hooman greed” nonsense.
Praising few successes shouldn’t mean ignoring the other side i.e repression, shortages, lack of political freedom, stagnation, mass emigration and the fact that the USSR collapsed under its own economic structure.
We don’t have to choose between “uncritical communism” and “unchecked capitalism.” I’m centre left. I believe in a regulated market, social safety nets, labour rights, universal healthcare/education and checks on corporate power without abolishing private enterprise, scientific development or democracy. Capitalism with strong regulation has lifted millions from poverty too.
I’d rather live in a system that mixes market efficiency with social protection not one that sacrifices freedom and innovation for state control.
That’s my final comment and I won’t be reading anything further. Thanks.
Praising few successes
Few successes like the lack of exploitation of the Global South? You’re just a racist who doesn’t give a shit about the billions suffering under capitalism.
What political freedom do we have in capitalism? I’m a European, and for the past 20 years we’ve been able to choose between either austerity policy (socialdemocrats) and harsh austerity policy (conservative/neoliberals). This applies to every country in the EU without exception, to the point that Greece tried something different with Syriza during the 2010s and elected a party more akin to your ideas and their political power got essentially couped by the EU’s Troika and central bank when they threatened that if Greece were to revise its sovereign debt, the central bank would stop working for Greece. Now in France a majority of people voted for something akin to your ideals with La France Insumise and Macron is preventing them from reaching government, furthering the advance of fascism. I’m Spanish and we had a left party called Podemos in the 2010s which got demolished in the elections after accusations of funding by Venezuela and Iran. Turns out the ministry of interior had fabricated false evidence and given it to the media to circulate it. In the USA, they can choose between orange fascist supporting genocide in Gaza, or female state prosecutor supporting genocide in Gaza. What an array of Democratic options we have in capitalism, mate. Meanwhile, China, with its single party government, enjoys the highest rates of satisfaction with the central government in the world.
You just spew and repeat bullshit anticommunist propaganda. I showed you the insane and continuous GDP growth of the USSR and you keep falsely talking of stagnation (I’m Spanish and under capitalism the living standards of 2025 are worse than those of 2005, in Germany, quality of life just dropped to the lowest level in 40 years). You aren’t even making coherent arguments because I can literally show you numeric evidence that you’re wrong, but your cognitive dissonance is too strong to listen and you keep repeating the same shit despite being literally proven wrong two comments above.