You don’t seem to understand that your distinction between the theory of communism, and communism as practiced, are both equally valid and accepted uses of the word. One is a theory, one created reeducation camps and killed millions of their own people. It is not capitalism that convinced me of this.
Your comment is fair, but please allow me to deflect for a moment with a few questions:
The nazis called themselves national socialists, do you believe they were socialists?
The north korean government has called their country a democratic republic, do you believe that?
I’m guessing you answered no to both. If that’s the case, why do you believe the ussr and the ccp when they say they were/are practicing communism?
Additionally, who benefits more than capital if you believe socialism and communism equal authoritarianism?
If you guys understood marketing, you’d stop insisting on your version of the word being the one people should embrace. Socialism sells way better than communism even though it still gets people as riled up as Sen Kennedy reading “not all boys are blue” while pretending that it’s legally mandated to be given to white Christian boys at birth. 9/10 you guys rail against European social democracy, regardless of the fact that it would be a far easier reach for the US and would dramatically improve the lives of workers.
If the only way to defend communism is by claiming that no country has ever done communism correctly, then that’s a problem. You can’t point to a single successful communist country because there aren’t any.
China became far more successful since it abandoned communism for its own flavor of capitalism. Private ownership in China has led to a massive improvement in quality of life for most Chinese residents, and more opportunities for success than ever before.
Meanwhile, most complaints about capitalism have almost nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with laws and regulations or human greed (which is the worst part of any system).
Yeah, point to all the communist countries that failed with the US was relentlessly fucking with them despite the fact that “Communism will naturally fail if left to its own devices”
Pointing out greed as a problem of capitalism is valid when money is power and all decision making is based around profit.