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.
not “fuck unchecked communism”, “fuck communism”. You have picked your side, it looks like
Just because you don’t understand what words mean doesn’t mean they’re “empty slogans”.
The very concept of a free loader best represents the ruling class of capitalists interests. The ruling class does not contribute in any way to society, and instead steal billions of dollars of labor value from the working class and use it in ways that benefit only themselves. Allowing people to survive even without providing a capital benefit to the ruling class wouldn’t enable free loading, it would mean society actually does what its supposed to and looks out for the wellbeing of all people.
You shouldn’t have to work to exist. You shouldn’t have to be useful to anyone else to be a part of a community. Food and shelter are human rights. Water is a human right. Healthcare and education are human rights.
Toppling capitalism and wage slavery is the only way to a just world. Socialism doesn’t inherently belong to the soviet union. And the soviet union did not categorically fail at every single thing they did. Don’t mistake my words for endorsement of stalinism or of any of the many horrible things they did. But there were other aspects of their society and governance that were actually pretty great. Its not all black and all white. Life isn’t that simple in reality. A flat condemnation of communism is rooted in propaganda more than it is in reality.
And I’m an anarchist, before you accuse me of being a tankie. I do not advocate state communism. But to say “fuck communism” and be done with it just shows your bias towards socialism.
you shouldn’t have to work to exist, you shouldn’t have to be useful to anyone else to be part of a community
While I largely agree with your points (or at least some of the core of them) I think you’d have to flesh this out. For anything alive to exist, work needs to be done. And for anyone to be in a community people must mutually agree on membership. The “freeloader” problem isn’t a problem of ability where individuals “not useful” (and that gives me chills as much as it probably does you) to society can’t work, though it’s often framed that way to varying extents from both sides. I feel that it’s a problem where a large enough segment of the population would not be productive at what they could be doing simply because they don’t have to.
Our brains are literally wired to seek out more for less energy.
Again, I agree with most of your points, but these two could probably use a bit more explanation (at least to me)
We live in a time of unprecedented efficiency and automation. We over produce how much we require massively. Optimized, no not every human has to work. Work should be voluntary and without exploitation. Food water and shelter should be shared resources that no one is deprived of. We have the abundance to do this, we only don’t because of the capitalist economic political and social systems which promote wage slavery (the concept that you don’t deserve to live if you’re not capable of producing labor value for capitalists).
Everyone should be encouraged to work and contribute. But no one should face death for being unable to do so. All work should be voluntary and people should be encouraged to work for their benefit, their family’s benefit, and their community’s benefit. Universal basic income should exist (in our society today) so that if you’re being exploited you don’t face either further exploitation or literally death. Supporting yourself and your family and society should be done because you believe in those things and you see the direct benefits of your contributions. The problem is capitalism has indoctrinated people to believe that work is not a mechanism of direct survival. It is a mechanism for attaining capital value, which is traded for direct survival.
It goes beyond that even, they indoctrinate us to believe that:
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Capitalism is natural and can be found in nature.
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Human beings are inherently uncooperative and hate each other. Plenty of human beings are uncooperative, but capitalism literally makes people uncooperative by continually reinforcing the hopelessness of helping others. How can you cooperate when your own survival solely depends on you being willing to give your labor value to capitalists in exchange for indirect survival?
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The homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, all those who are unable or unwilling to give up their labor value to capitalists - they’re all the picture of sin and vice and they are to be derided and hated for their inability to provide labor value to capitalists. That they are worthless, and should be treated like wild animals.
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On that note, they also indoctrinate us to believe that homelessness is natural. That its a personal failing.
When examined separately you can see that they pre-construct people’s opinions to cooperation among the labor force. “Don’t be a failure by not giving us your labor value.” “Don’t help those who we deem failures.” “Being a failure, by our definition, is a personal choice and not a product of exploitation.” “Our system is natural, the natural world has capitalist-type hierarchies. So it is unchallengable.”
Bear in mind that politically I am an anarchist. In my eyes no society has ever done nearly enough to create real equality. And I fundamentally disagree with all social hierarchies.
Communism and socialism are completely different things. At least learn what they are before spouting nonsense about them
Not sure how you are defining them, but they are, and aren’t, the same. Socialism is a transitionary government to communism. It isnt the ‘exact’ same thing, but when a communist party is in charge, they create socialism, with goals to move towards communism.
Socialism is also a lot of things, but all those things are considered communist.
Democratic socialism is what Cuba has for example. Socialism run by a democracy.
Socialist democracy is what Sweden has, currently. It’s still capitalist, so is not communist at all, but regulates capitalism better than America and most of Europe does. They are slowly loosing the fight to Nazis though. Like literal Nazis, they call themselves nazis, That’s not a joke.
They aren’t completely different no. Communism is a form of socialism, socialism being the political movement that focuses workers rights to varying degrees. Communism came first though, and socialism just includes other things like democratic socialism. Socialism when discussing theory is often used widely to mean the global anti capitalist movement as it has existed since the beginning of worker’s rights.
You shouldn’t have to work to exist. You shouldn’t have to be useful to anyone else to be a part of a community
I guess I’m not well versed enough on communist principles but how does this work even on the simplest level? Work has to be done for a person to have shelter, food, etc and that is pretty much unavoidable for now.
How can people both be not obligated to provide anything to the community, while the community is obligated to provide things for them? Is it just assumed that enough people will still want to work to keep the system sustainable?
Automation and efficient machinery have made most labor significantly easier and require significantly fewer people. The rise of corporate desk jobs and call centers pretty well represents this. A huge portion of society is already doing meaningless work that only serves capitalist interests.
This means a couple things. First off, far fewer working hours are required to maintain a community. People don’t have to work 40 hour weeks just to get by. Secondly, people can rotate what jobs they’re performing based on how they feel like investing their efforts. I’m an anarchist, not a communist, so my beliefs surrounding division of labor are different from, for example, a marxist-leninist.
Western society is far too indulgent with many things that cost massive amounts of resources and provide very little in the way of human benefit. Public transportation should be the norm everywhere for instance, because cars and roads are wildly resource intensive for really no reason. Every human being does not need to possess a personal vehicle. It does not actually serve our interests. It just pushes the cost of transportation onto the workers, instead of the ruling class funding actual comprehensive functional public transportation. This is just one example, but the way we approach food is also extremely flawed. Instead of primarily relying on our host ecosystems and local food production to feed ourselves we ship food all around the world at another massive resource cost. We are also over-reliant on resource intensive livestock, when much less resources intensive options exist.
Put all things together, and it becomes firstly apparent that we are wasting the majority of our resources on stuff that has no actual real world benefit to us. So we could stop wasting those resources, and thusly not need to invest as many labor hours into production. So far fewer people need to work than currently do. And labor should be invested locally, into things that directly benefit you your family and your community. Instead of the present case where the majority of your labor hours are invested into things that have little to no tangible benefit for yourself or your community. So its much harder to see how your work is actually helpful.
Part of the propaganda you’re fed by capitalism is that cooperation can never work because everyone is selfish and uncooperative and “exploitation is just human nature”. Those things are not true. Exploitation is not human nature. Humans are naturally social and community oriented. We are naturally codependent and have adaptations for functioning within a community. Capitalism, and more broadly consolidation of power into a ruling class, has upset humans natural tendency to cooperate. Capitalism puts mortal pressure on our ability to expend labor hours for capitalists. You cannot help anyone else because it risks your own personal life, any time you spend money you’re spending your own survivability. It’s what means you can live at all. So people do not want to help anyone else. We are taught through propaganda that being homeless is a personal failing. That being poor is a personal failing. This is specifically to prevent human cooperation from expanding into a genuine desire to improve life for all workers.
So people don’t feel like they can cooperate, which leads to the general perception of human nature as being selfish. The idea that people will work to better the lives of everyone in their community is a completely normal idea.
You have the right not to be denied food or shelter… Are you saying everyone should receive free food and shelter? How will that work? I understand small scale communes can mostly work under that idea, but a country with millions of people? Scarcity is the basis of economic theory for a reason.
Currently, as much as 40% of food is thrown away in the US, while millions of people experience food insecurity. The scarcity is fully intentional.
Capitalism creates scarcity to generate profit. We live and have been living in a time of unprecedented efficiency productivity and abundance. Artifical scarcity is used to keep workers from resisting wage slavery.
Capitalism always leads to monopolies and will always be in conflict with workers.
Capitalism always leads to monopolies
No, no it does not. Competition for nearly everything exists, sure there might not be enough but saying “always leads to monopolies” is a lie. Anyway communism usually has monopolies too, just monopolies operated by the government
will always be in conflict with workers.
By workers I presume you mean employees. Yes, greedy people will try to abuse their workers but as the person you’re replying to said “unchecked capatilism is also bad”, we have minimum wage for a reason, and then there is also competition and if you have a valuable skill they can’t afford to exploit you
Fuck Communism and fuck unchecked capitalism
Interesting how capitalism needs the qualifier ‘unchecked’ while apparently communism has only one possible form.
People deserve basic human rights. Free heallthcare, education, insurance and liveable basic income is a must.
I think the irony is that a significant portion of conservatives (not only in the USA, I speak from Brazil) see that as “evil commienism”. That and anything that even remotely attempts to reduce inequalities, like taxing the rich.
Honestly, I think the way we argue over labels hurts us. If I use heavy regulation and government aid to limit the abuses in a capitalist system, at what point does the label change to “socialism”? I think we do ourselves a disservice to create these strict conceptions of systems like capitalism, socialism, or communism. Then when one fails we get to say “well that wasn’t true x”. And the labels allow people to boogeyman an idea. And worst of all, we eliminate the possibility to take good lessons from multiple different systems and incorporate them into our system. I think we would be better served promoting policies on a case by case basis instead of using these huge words. And to be clear, I’m a bit of a hypocrite here. I’ve been mostly telling people I’m a “social democrat” or that I support “capitalism with heavy regulations”. But even those words can get picked apart and don’t really capture nuance. My main point is that I think this thread is a perfect encapsulation of how these arguments stop us from getting behind good policies when we bicker about the definitions of words that mean different things to different people.
7 out of 11 countries believe the end of the USSR harmed their countries rather than benefited them
Reflecting back on the breakup of the Soviet Union that happened 22 years ago next week, residents in seven out of 11 countries that were part of the union are more likely to believe its collapse harmed their countries than benefited them. Only Azerbaijanis, Kazakhstanis, and Turkmens are more likely to see benefit than harm from the breakup. Georgians are divided.
Hungary: 72% of Hungarians say they are worse off today economically than under communism
A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same. In no other Central or Eastern European country surveyed did so many believe that economic life is worse now than during the communist era. This is the result of almost universal displeasure with the economy. Fully 94% describe the country’s economy as bad, the highest level of economic discontent in the hard hit region of Central and Eastern Europe. Just 46% of Hungarians approve of their country’s switch from a state-controlled economy to a market economy; 42% disapprove of the move away from communism. The public is even more negative toward Hungary’s integration into Europe; 71% say their country has been weakened by the process.
Romania: 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism
The most incredible result was registered in a July 2010 IRES (Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy) poll, according to which 41% of the respondents would have voted for Ceausescu, had he run for the position of president. And 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism, while only 23% attested that their life was worse then. Some 68% declared that communism was a good idea, just one that had been poorly applied.
Germany: more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR
Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an “illegitimate state.” In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.
28 percent of Czechs say they were better off under the Communist regime
Roughly 28 percent of Czechs say they were better off under the Communist regime, according to a poll conducted by the polling institute SC&C and released Sunday.
81% of Serbians believe they lived best in Yugoslavia
A poll shows that as many as 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best in the former Yugoslavia -”during the time of socialism”.
The majority of Russians polled in a 2016 study said they would prefer living under the old Soviet Union and would like to see the socialist system and the Soviet state restored.
The above memes are almost always made by Americans, whose brains are riddled with red scare brainworms and are completely devoid of any knowledge or understand of what the left thinks in Europe because Americans do not have a left.
Most people who praise communism don’t know what communism is, and no, there have been no communist states ever, it’s just impossible for such system to exist.
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
They were still worse off than western europe
To quote a random politician who was talking about the eastern Germany wall: “Capitalism might not be perfect but at least we don’t have to build a wall to keep our citizens in”
Funny that you bring up East Germany, since they had some of the best living standards in all of Europe in general. Universal healthcare, right to a job, free daycare AND over a year of maternity AND paternity leave?? Come on. The Berlin Wall was to stop tourism and trade as a tactic in the cold war, it’s not like people were fleeing to West Germany (where many former Nazis were still in power) in droves. Dubious morally for sure, but not what you claim it to be. Maybe that random politician you’re quoting benefitted from the corrupt system he was endorsing? In the words of Assata Shakur, don’t let your enemies tell you who your enemies are,
a yes the mexican border wall the perfect example.
capitalist mexico and central america sure can keep people in their country 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Lol no. I’m in Eastern Europe, living standards are way better now. The only good thing the USSR did here was trains and houses and those are better now. Those 2 was not worth death camps and criminalisation of my culture and language.
And when people who actually lived in these area during that period almost ALL of them say communism was better! But OP and their ilk would rather focus on the imaginary eastern Europeans in their head, or perhaps the gusanos whose family ‘fled’ to the west after their fiefdom got collectivized
So they just built all those museums dedicated to the hardship and terror of those years as a little joke to mess with westerners like me as I traveled through their countries?
Interesting side fact, in places that were occupied by both sides in WW2, some museums could do double duty. The places the Gestapo used to imprison, torture, and murder were often the same places the communists used for the same purposes.
And when people who actually lived in these area during that period almost ALL of them say communism was better!
Lol. Almost all of my grandparents and greatgrandparents disagreed and personally told me about their life during USSR occupation, and the two that don’t were well connected with officials and generally lived much better than the average person, enjoying vacations to Cuba frequently, something tue average person could never afford.
Everyone else just lived in pretty poor, if stable, conditions. None of that “communism = starve to death” meme nonsense that some try to push, but it just wasn’t good. After fall of the USSR, things went worse before they became better, but now things are significantly better for the average person.
Back when I was a USSR style tankie I was very open about it and people would talk about communism with me at work. I had a Ukrainian woman join my team and I wanted to make sure I didn’t say anything to offend her because even though I thought at the time that the USSR system was ideal I acknowledged the evils that occured especially against Ukraine. So I asked her to tell me if I ever said anything that crossed a line and that I’d try and make sure I didn’t do that as well. Imagine my surprise when she told me she actually thought communism was great because before the USSR collapsed her city had everything they needed and her family was doing great. Her parents had higher degrees of education for free. It was when the USSR collapsed and capitalism came in that life in Ukraine got super hard again.
That’s why they built to Berlin Wall to keep all of those westerns from entering East Germany, right?
I really find all these posts entertaining, there are a bunch of reddit refugees that are trying to impose their ideology on Lemmy. It’s almost like they’re trying to ironically colonize the space.
