There were no actual efforts to establish communism in eastern europe. Only autocratic regimes backed by soviet russia.
In what sense was it not an actual effort? Just because it quickly slid into non-marxism doesn’t say anything about the initial idea of the revolutionaries. Bakunin predicted exactly what would happen with Marxism, and it did every time.
If you are against an authoritarian state, the only viable way to communism is to skip the dictatorship part directly and just have anarchism.
I literally pissed a slow day at work away pointing out the many, many flaws in the USSR to a lemming whose primary response was LALALALA I CAN’t HEAR YOU, GO READ THIS BOOK
There is definitely a cadre of extremely disillusioned and extremely ill informed users who think the USSR was legitimate sunshine and candy communism
I’m no too learned in the subject but what would “true” communism even look like on the large scale like a country? Would it even be feasible?
True communism in a country is impossible.
You can have socialism, or anarchy, which we’ve seen before, but communism cannot function in one country alone, unless said country is completely and absolutely self reliant.
A major part of communism is internationalism, which is why socialist countries had the Comintern. (Communist International). Besides a political/social system, communism has a strong basis as an economic system. You can’t apply communist economic system principles to the capitalist market.
To my knowledge, no existing country is self reliant to the point that they can completely cut off trade with the rest of the world. USSR didn’t do it, China didn’t do it and they were the two biggest countries at the time.
That, of course is all a very surface level ELI5, and if you want to ask something more specific or in depth, feel free to.
Unless you’re an ultra-orthodox marxist, there is no such thing as trüe communism™.
There always have been many different ideas what „communism“ is, e.g. there have been various „nationalist communist“ ideologies (complicated by the fact that the Russian SFSR called everything „nationalist“ that wasn’t 100% aligned with its ideas of the Soviet Union, e.g. Hungary).
There are also no clear boundaries between communism, socialism, and anarchism, e.g. Kropotkin with his theories of anarchist communism.
That being said, I don’t think communism is a system (either social or economic), it’s strictly an idealogy, meaning it’s a way to achieve something, i.e. the classless and stateless society. If you follow that thought to its logical end, you cannot even „achieve“ communism at all, since at this point e.g. the proletariat ceases to exist, and as a result you cannot have a „dictatorship of the proletariat“.
It’s… complicated.
In feel like you make it complicated to arrive at your conclusion here. Communism, as described by Marx and Engels and to some degree Lenin, is something very specific that covers most aspects of the society. Political, social and economic. Marx himself wrote books upon books on the economy of a socialist, communist system.
It is not an abstract “I don’t like capitalism so let’s try something different” approach. And yes, many have tried to adapt it, as you mentioned which is why those different approaches carry a different name ‘anarchist communism’ in your example. Because they are different enough from flat out communism.
No, I have a very easy explanation what communism is, it’s just that nobody else agrees is the issue.
different approaches carry a different name
Yeah, well… So let’s see, we have: Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Titoism, Gulyáskommunizmus (both, as mentioned before, considered „nationalist communism“ by other communists), Rätekommunismus, Realsozialismus, Maoism …
So, which one of those is the true communism?
Joking aside, most of the 20th century was spent with people killing other people because they had slightly different opinions on what true communism means, so it’s really not me who made things complicated.
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What do you think is anarchy? Without searching engine please.
Without search engine and without going into detail that is out of the scope, anarchy is a different path to a classless system. Said classless system is different enough from communism to warrant discussion but close enough for that discussion to be devolving into anarchy vs socialism most of the time to differentiate the path to that system.
Said path in anarchy is comprised of setting up collectives that start small, neighborhood small, and gradually evolve. Each collective shares almost everything between its members and there’s no leadership or ranking across its members.
Anything deeper than that leads to a long discussion that is out of the scope of this thread and definitely out of the scope of the ELI5 the post I originally replied to needed or had the philosophical basis to understand possibly. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but they are quite different approaches to a similar goal, a classless society that money does not rule all.
Anarchist checking in, so, y’know, bias and all that. But I’d say it’s just as impossible to have anarchism in one country. Bearing in mind, I’m an anarcho-communist, and not terribly familiar things like mutualism, so that may be different. I tend to view, as do (to my knowledge) most ancoms, communism and anarchism as synonyms. The difference is how we get to the end point, not the end point itself. A stateless, classless, moneyless society. We’ve had the Spanish anarchists, and some examples of societies like Madagascar, where there are villages and region that function in an anarchistic way, but True Anarchism™ couldn’t function in a single country/region. It needs to be international in it’s scope for all the same reasons communism needs to be international in it’s scope. Anarchist political methods can function at a smaller scale, but we can’t have a fully anarchist society until it’s global.
Which all just means that I’m an anarchist because I prefer the methods to achieving the shared goal, not because I disagree on the goal itself, if that makes sense.
Realistically, it would look something like how the Anarchists organized society in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, or how Rojava is organizing today with communal federations. Anarchism sidesteps the inevitable authoritarian regime that various Marxist theories have by not installing a ‘temporary’ vanguard state that quickly becomes autocratic and dictatorial, they just jump straight to decentralizing power immediately by giving it to the people.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War
Rojava is organizing today with communal federations
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Well, it is feasible. You just need to give people replicators and free living space, and they will eventually learn to use their skills to enrich the world we live in. And boldly go where no one has gone before.
There were no actual efforts to establish communism
Period. Relying on the “temporary” government to relinquish their power is…foolish. If you’re building a system for the greater good, hierarchy will always undermine that goal. Unequal amounts of power does not a just system make.
And here comes the guy who thinks he can do it better, this time without mass killings.
Hey, I can think what happened in Eastern Europe was just authoritarian dictatorships, backed by Muscovite colonialism & branded as communism just the same as what happened in parts of South America was just authoritarian dictatorship, backed by American imperialism & branded as laissez-faire capitalism.
Also I can think communism has never actually been tried, and that it’s functionally impossible (therefore people should stop advocating for it).
Can’t critizise something that has never been tried! Also we already got a comment critizising capitalism as a counter argument :D
Communism fails every time it is tried because it goes against human nature of constantly comparing yourself to others and trying to improve yourself. You will never do harder work if you can get the same reward for easier work, and you will look for other, less moral ways of getting the bigger reward.
Communism sounds great but it will never work until we have unlimited resources and completely automated labour.
The US political spectrum is leaning so far to the right. A US left is a France center or moderate right. So what Americans consider communism is merely what French consider moderate leftist.
- I’m French living in the US
Hell even Obama was right wing to many countries.
…this was before we all dove headfirst into facism as a trauma response
Yeah, it’s basically “If you keep calling all of the stuff I like ‘communism’, then I guess that makes me a communist.”
Or if you’re not a Nazi you’re a communist, then I’m a communist I guess.
Sure, but the meme refers to the communities on the internet that unironically go full tankie, praising Stalin and Mao.
Worst of all, tankies tend to inflitrate sane leftist spaces and slowly transform them. I’ve witnessed it many times, and that just makes me think that Marxists-Leninists are just the most dominant form of leftism on the internet, which is horrible.
This doesn’t mention Stalin or Mao.
I think a lot of people give Mao a bad wrap.
For what it’s worth, Stalin is a monster, and the state of China right now is repugnant.
Mao didn’t intentionally lead tens of millions of people to starve in the same way Stalin did. Mao was trying to revolutionise agriculture (The Great Leap Forward) but didn’t understand the ecological and logistic principles required.
I’m convinced his intentions were good, he just wasn’t educated enough to implement something like this.
McCarthy propaganda go brrrr
Also a terrible person. The world’s big enough for there to be many terrible people in it. You need to create a very robust bureaucracy to keep corruption out and maintaining one is a very unglamorous job. Revolutionaries rarely have that skill set.
Almost like we need a large state apparatus…
counterpoint and some reading material for capitalism stans on here https://ia800309.us.archive.org/26/items/fp_Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum/Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum.pdf
Based comrade
Redditors try not to froth and post anticommunism for 120 seconds challenge (impossible!!!)
Meanwhile in the real world
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To be honest, I’ve been using Lemmy for a week now, and I’m kind of concerned with all the communism stuff around here.
Fuck Communism and fuck unchecked capitalism. People deserve basic human rights. Free heallthcare, education, insurance and liveable basic income is a must. It doesn’t make your society full of freeloaders instead it gives all the people a chance to become what they want in the society. I hope that people can see this basic difference and we can work towards for a better future as humanity instead of whatever country title.
Capitalism always leads to monopolies and will always be in conflict with workers.
Fuck centralized power. By definition true communism shouldnt have any of that, and anyone considering the systems equal is butt chugging propaganda
How dare teenagers not become Neoliberals while growing up in a late capitalist hellscape where climate change can’t be taken seriously because it isn’t a profitable problem to solve.
More like: People on the internet being critical of the current system, Americans on the internet saying “COMMUNISM BAD” as if USSR style state capitalism is the only other possible option.
How else would it work? You need some power structure that actively forbids a free market and private ownership. And that power will sooner or later be abused.
You can’t just imagine some utopia where nobody has to work, and everything is free, and call that communism.
The core tenant of every form of Communism, regardless of if said party or organisation follows it, is as follows: that the means of production should belong to the workers who work them. If the means of production are not in the hands of the workers, then they are not communist. If they are in the hands of a CEO or a corporation, you have private capitalism or market capitalis like the US. If you put them in the hands of a state, they are in the state, you get state capitalism ala China or the USSR.
The power structure of the state protects an upper class, be it billionaires or “the party”. If you abolish the state, but not capitalism, capitalism will rebuild the state (which is why Anarcho capitalism fails every time) and vice versa (which is what happens with Marxist Leninism).
For a Communist or communalist society to work it needs to be Anarchist or classically Libertarian (aka like Bakunin or Kropotkin proposed, not “money first”). It needs to have a horizontal and democratic decision making process that is decentralised, federated, and involves all the members of the community or communities effected. If there is to be a state, it should be to facilitate the colaboration of communities in a bottom up manner. These are the features of almost every single effective or successful Anarchist or Socialist movements from Rojava or the Zapatistas, as well as non-political movements like the Open Source Movement, railway preservatiion movement, and even the early RNLI.
The power structure thant would forbid a free market would be the collective weight of everyone else rather than a state that, sooner or later, becomes the jackboot of capital.
The system you describe cannot exist. An anarchist or libertarian state in the real world can neither regulate nor defend itself from other states. It’s a fantasy that would collapse immediately upon implementation in all possible real world circumstances.
I am from Eastern Europe and I share this sentiment when I see anyone from the West defending communism. The issue is complicated but, to put it bluntly:
No, Timothy, communism didn’t fail in Eastern Europe because it was implemented wrongly. This is a very complicated topic but the tldr summary is “It is a broken idea, it did not work and it will never work. The natural and logical outcome of any attempt at Marxism is a bloodbath followed by autocracy.”
That being said, communism isn’t the only way to achieve a more equitable society. You have social democracy (in Lennin’s words - communism’s greatest adversary); organized labour movements; collectivist anarchism; communitariasm, etc.
Communism, as applied in the 20th century, violently fought against or oppressed all of these movements and is incompatible with any of them.
Not to mention that in most countries nowadays orthodox communists have been hugely discredited for excusing the Russian war of annihilation against the Ukrainian people.
In conclusion, if you live in the USA or Western Europe and you are unhappy with how corporate greed has ruined society, don’t look to communism for answers. There are many other proposed solutions out there - go and research these. Communism is very well known, which makes it easily accessible to people who want change - but it is never, ever the solution.
being from eastern Europe doesn’t automatically make your position on communism any more credible, especially when statistically most of your peers disagree with you
Also it’s really hilarious how you claim that communism is more accessible to westerners than social democracy, like ???
especially when statistically most of your peers disagree with you
There is not a single post-communist nation in Eastern Europe that feels anything other than hate towards communism on average. Its effects were worse than WWII.
Meanwhile, Eastern Europeans:
comment section frustratingly filled with McCarthy-brained liberals who have never critically examined their preconceptions about communism
I guess I just really don’t understand the draw. Communism is a nice thought, until actual people are involved. People are corruptible, which is why communism is seen as utopian. It’s an ideal that only works under perfect circumstances.
I guess I just really don’t understand the draw.
CommunismCapitalism is a nice thought, until actual people are involved. People are corruptible, which is whycommunismcapitalism is seen as utopian. It’s an ideal that only works under perfect circumstances.Bullshit take. Show me one instance of communism implemented in a democracy and I’ll agree to your point, but you can’t because there isn’t one.
Pretty sure I explicitly struck out all references to communism so I don’t know what you’re talking about. My comment was about the fanciful idealism required to justify capitalism. Show me one instance of capitalism implemented in democracy (which didn’t devolve into cronyism).
Switzerland? Netherlands? Hell, even France, Germany?
Invoking cronyism as a downside in itself is silly. It’s not what matters, what matters is the quality of life. And just because US and a few other capitalist countries have drank from the neoliberal fountain and are unable to stop, it doesn’t mean that that is the only way. In fact social democracies, of which there are quite a few examples around the world, are pretty much still capitalist democracies whit none of the crap neoliberal ideas lead to.
Yes, I don’t disagree, except far more people benefit from our form of capitalism, and you don’t see the death numbers you do from the absolute rule that communism demands.
This isn’t to say there isn’t any death due to capitalism. Or any strife, just certainly not on the same scale. I would say out biggest death toll comes at the hands of our military-industrial-complex being capitolistic.
The problem is, there’s nothing better yet.
Add up chattel slavery, Trail of Tears, proxy wars, not-so-proxy wars, the general condition of the M-I-C you’ve mentioned, the general plight of the Global South, etc etc etc, and get back to me. I’m not sure the advantage is so definitive as you assert. “Externalities”, the economists call them.
It 100% does not even come close. Not saying those deaths weren’t terrible or unavoidable, absolutely not.
But also, you can’t blame a capitolistic society for trail of tears or any other mass genocide that came before that. We didn’t become capitolistic until 10 years after Trail of Tears ended.
Edit to add: granted, that doesn’t say much about how Native Americans were treated post TOT. Though, it’s certainly through capitalism that Indian casinos have become so successful. 245 tribes own casinos today, all of which rake in the funds.
Firstly, I know you’re not going to justify genocide by saying the survivors of that genocide get to have casinos. That’s so outrageously, ghoulishly evil that you can’t possibly have meant that and I must have misunderstood.
Secondly, where do you get the idea that capitalism started in America in 1860?
Thirdly, you ignored everything else I asked you to add up. You made no mention of slavery, or the Global South.
Fourthly, what’s fundamentally different between the colonial exploitations of mercantilism and private exploitations of capitalism?
I call your arithmetical integrity, or more laughably your ability, into question.
Lol. You definitely misunderstood. I didn’t say in my comment that TOT was okay because now they have cassinos. I’m not sure how you could possibly get that out of what I wrote. The claim I’m arguing against is that capitalism has caused more deaths than communism, which isn’t the case. Especially since capitalism wasn’t America’s economic governing factor until - yup - the 1860. Capitalism wasn’t the cause of the TOT, but it was the cause of the survivors ability to create wealth for their tribes.
Again, because you somehow twisted what I wrote into saying it’s okay that all those people died because casinos, the TOT was horrific. It shouldn’t have happened. Nothing can make up for that, even the wealth made by their survivors. But it wasn’t caused by capitalism, which is the original claim.
And no, I wasn’t ignoring everything else you pointed to in terms of deaths under capitalism, because slavery and other horrors certainly were due to capitalism here in America. Though, it has nothing against rhe numbers stacked under communist rule.
I also want to point out that there are going to be deaths under every form of economic governance, because that’s just human nature. There will always be people that kill other people, for a variety of reasons. The goal, then, is to find the one governance that kills the least amount of people in total.
I’ll also point out that it’s not like capitalism was absent one day in America, and then suddenly it was governing the country. Capitalism, like most forms of economic rulings, was a slow creep. It happened in small stages until the 1860s, when it became the dominating force in America.
No communism, but socialism yes.
And yes, I am from east Europe
It’s funny because if you look at living standards in eastern Europe during communism’s peak they were wayyy better than they are now
