There were no actual efforts to establish communism in eastern europe. Only autocratic regimes backed by soviet russia.
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.
There’s a lot a reasonability in the space between neoliberalism and “Stalin did nothing wrong”
And not everything left of Eastern European nationalism is communism. In fact 90% of the political spectrum lies between these two extremes.
There’s a lot of space in the left that isn’t stalinism. You can be a communist and have a deep critique of how 20th century communism worked, a learning from it and not wanting to repeat the bad parts.
In leftist circles in the US, weird Stalin and Lenin fans are loud, but ultimately not that common.
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boomers destroyed the earth beyond all belief, poisoned everyone with sketchy ass chemicals, destroyed the economy more than once (twice in my life), most of us will NEVER own a home because the housed your grand pappy paid 100k for is now worth 2.5 million and average yearly wage is less than 30,000… among a million other things. The greed and entitlement is baffling, mix that in with delusional red scare propaganda that a ton of people fall for and yall mfers spending time defending all this insane shit.
we effectively live in a corporate government where what the people want doesn’t matter alongside the million other ways we are lied to and exploited. Billionaires and trillionaires run the world and they keep pushing for “the next thing” like the metaverse, blockchain and going mars while most of us cant even afford to fucking eat. Suck it. I guarantee that you cant even define communism and point out how it differs from social policies even on a very basic fundamental level. Fuck dude
And Soviet communism was… better how? Just as (if not more) destructive to the environment, and their “billionaires” were called “party members” instead. What an improvement! Now they can jail/deport political dissenters without even having to pretend to hold a fair trial.
Now of course this is where communists usually go No True Scotsman, but consider for just ONE MOMENT that the concept of wealth inequality is not, in fact, unique to capitalism. Any economic system is vulnerable to greed. And that the countries with arguably the strongest social welfare, highest human development, etc. are… the Nordics. Hardly capitalist, hardly hellholes.
This is why people say communists are angsty teenagers. Capitalism is a deeply flawed system, but all of what you just pointed to is, in fact, not unique to capitalism. That’s just Americana. Pointing to the U.S. as a reason why “capitalism bad” is just as silly as pointing to N.K. as a reason why “communism bad”.
Typical American with a viewpoint so narrow you can’t see further than your nose. I’ve had lots of interesting discussions with French communists, and I agree with some of their viewpoints, but to start with you have to realize that capitalism is not the root of ALL evil, only of some specific systemic issues, which are only a small part of what’s wrong with the US.deleted by creator
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Yes literal tons of fascists, Nazis, extreme nationalists, imperialists, colonialists, some of the worst criminals, and CIA agents. If you check the Victims of Communism, that’s literally what you’re going to find btw.
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
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.
Hell even Obama was right wing to many countries.
…this was before we all dove headfirst into facism as a trauma response
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.
It doesn’t, but in this thread’s we see a simultaneous claim of “We aren’t tankies, of course Stalin and Mao are not good examples of communists” and “Eastern european people were better off under the USSR”. Of course, I don’t think the same people are making both claims, but just the fact that some people can claim the latter and not get collectively shunned is indicative of a huge problem in leftist spaces, it’s disgusting frankly. Tankies are significant force, at least partially representing leftism to everyone else.
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.
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McCarthy propaganda go brrrr
Top: Filthy rich capitalists and Boomers that lick up their cool aid
Bottom: Global South that produces both their wealth
Blocking you I don’t want another reddit experience
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.
Another hungarian here. Definitely before 1989 Hungary was probably known for having one of the best living conditions under the USSR’s sphere. It went pretty good in terms of spending power (heavy censorship in media if not aligned with the regime’s view, forced labor, government spying agents everywhere, couldn’t talk about 1956, etc.) until the 70’s when Kádár (the dictator of the country) realized that he can’t keep up these living standards, except if he takes up debt. So he literally taken up debt to keep up this facade, which really hit to us when we replaced the regime, and since the people have been so used to this kind of populist leadership type, they have chosen Orbán (current president) several times, despite the horrendous amounts of corruption, stomping freedom of speech, fearmongering, spying on opponents phones etc, just because he is really good at continuing the populist ideology which Kádár has done.
EDIT: I’m not saying capitalism is good, I rather support a hybrid model which the EU does currently. Too much state intervention is bad, and too much freedom for corpos are also bad too. In my case my government happily accepts building factories in this country which 100% is better for agriculture, and these corpos doesn’t have to pay much tax, can overtime workers and only pay them like 4 years later (yes this is legal).
The EU doesn’t do any hybrid model. Social democracy is still capitalism, being less shitty than the US doesn’t make the EU any less capitalist.
Regulated capitalism can be a lot of things. Even good things, I claim. Furthermore, unregulated capitalism turns into feudalism, which is someything we see now in digital sphere a lot. EU tries to regulate capitalism to get the best parts of it, like rewarding fair competetive environment - paradoxically, fair competetion favors collaboration. An alternative to favoring individual and collectove agency is authocracy, and dictors never remain benevolent for long.
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Hungarian here. We had ten good years, then the same ruling class started to do the same shit they did back then but under a different name. But at least nowadays you can leave the country, which many do since – the frequent attempts to do so were an important cultural touchstone here in the 45 years of soviet occupation.
Trust me, no one wants the same shit back, that’s just a political talking point propping up Orbán’s pro-russian bullshit.
Of course nobody wants the same shit, I don’t want the same shit either, I know for sure that the hard left of mszp sit around where I am. Things can be so much better.
They did lead our last good government. And yes, I’d like that too, I voted for the coalition they were in in every election since I had the right to vote. I’m just saying that things being better is not the same as reinstating the same regime we had under the soviets, that would be pretty universally things going worse.
We’re in a failing capitalist system, but it still manages to be less oppressive than the failing socialist/communist/call it whatever you want system we had before.
Just wait until climate collapse hits and the food supply goes through cascading failures creating famines affecting 6 billion people. Then we’ll see when shit really hits the fan.
These polls are really out of date. These numbers have since improved substantially in capitalism’s favour.
These polls are really out of date. These numbers have since improved substantially in capitalism’s favour.
Feel free to give citations that are better than 2010-2016 lmao.
According to the absolute majority of respondents (54%), the majority of Hungarians had a better life under the Kádár regime (pre-1990) than today
The Kádár regime was the communist government.
there were even more respondents (61%) who said that the conditions for individual financial prosperity were more favorable under the Kádár regime.
lol
It is also worth noting that almost two-thirds of Hungarians (63%) said that there was predictable order and social peace under the Kádár regime
lmao
I like this research. Thanks for sharing.
EDIT:
The older an age group, the higher the proportion was of those who agreed that the majority lived better before the regime change. A significant correlation can be observed when looking at the educational background: citizens with lower education tend to believe that most Hungarians lived better under Kádár. Among the lowest qualified citizens, 62 and 27 percent are the share of the two sides, but even according to the relative majority of graduates (45%), most Hungarians lived better before 1990 than today.
So the older the Hungarian the more likely they are to believe that things were better under communism. So the people that actually lived in communism support it even more. Oh and the more educated people are the more likely they are to support that position too. I think the age thing will explain why the stat is slipping over time, the people that actually lived in communism are the people that support it more, and as they are dying they are being removed from the data.
Yeah but anecdotes from my Eastern European relatives who left (no selection bias there) say otherwise, so you’re wrong.
7 out of 11 countries believe the end of the USSR harmed their countries rather than benefited them
That’s because USSR was designed intentionally so that its end would be a catastrophe. To prevent that end. However, since it was simply unable to exist further even on life support, what happened happened still.
End of USSR being bad doesn’t mean USSR being good. It’s just a choice between horrible end and horror without end.
I live in Russia and you do not.
I live in Russia and you do not.
Which area of Russia do you live in and what do the local people over 60 that actually lived in the USSR have to say? I already know of course and could post video interviews of such, but perhaps you could tell the thread what those people say.
Forgive me for assuming but I’m willing to bet you’re in your teens or twenties, making you at best 10 years old when it ended, meaning you have little to no actual recollection of what living and working was like. I could be wrong of course.
Which area of Russia do you live in
Moscow, I also had relatives in SPb (not anymore), other relatives in Nizhny Novgorod, other relatives in Voronezh, and some in Rostov-on-Don.
and what do the local people over 60 that actually lived in the USSR have to say
Different things for different people.
Educated people in general have to say on politics the same things that I said earlier, but they are very nostalgic over less criminalized popular culture, better technical education and rules being followed. So am I to some extent actually.
Less educated and poorer people would have uncritical approval of whatever they approve now. USSR, because “people had everything and everything was cheap and deficit is a lie”, even though they lived to see it and themselves mention it in unconnected conversations, but it’s always some enemies behind it, or maybe of Putin and so on.
Can be seen with my aunts in Armenia too, one of them is a pharmacist and sees things adequately, if pessimistically. Another is an accountant and goes into complete denial in any honest conversation about anything political, she just can’t bear it as some people can’t bear honest conversations about sex.
There may be gradations.
I already know of course and could post video interviews of such
That’s not an argument. You can make video interviews with all kinds of people of all kinds of demographics to say what you want. That’s what propaganda does since “video” became a thing. Discarded.
but perhaps you could tell the thread what those people say.
Yes, see the above.
Forgive me for assuming but I’m willing to bet you’re in your teens or twenties, making you at best 10 years old when it ended, meaning you have little to no actual recollection of what living and working was like. I could be wrong of course.
No recollection at all, I’m 1996, but since transition from USSR to modern Russia didn’t happen in an instance, in various institutions and organizations you can still see in some ways how it was. More in my childhood than now, but still.
Also naturally I have parents and grandparents, and friends’ parents and their grandparents, and parents’ friends, and so on, you get the idea.
I live in this society and you don’t, so I know more than you, which could help you if you weren’t in denial.
Educated people in general have to say on politics the same things that I said earlier, but they are very nostalgic over less criminalized popular culture, better technical education and rules being followed. So am I to some extent actually.
In Moscow? You’re not being fair. Educated people in the soviet union from Moscow lived extremely well and have very positive views. Engineers, scientists, etc will all say positive things. You know as well as I do that hundreds of video interviews will confirm this. Be fairer, claiming that everyone that supports the ussr among the over 60s is just uneducated is definitely untrue. This particular video series is in Moscow and this lady is exactly what I am talking about.
You can’t live in Moscow and say this is untrue. You’re being unfair.
No recollection at all, I’m 1996, but since transition from USSR to modern Russia didn’t happen in an instance, in various institutions and organizations you can still see in some ways how it was. More in my childhood than now, but still.
Brought up in shock therapy then.
if you weren’t in denial.
I’m not in denial. I’m asking you to be fairer. The data does not support your position. You know as well as I do that 75% of the country consider the soviet era to be when the country was at its greatest (and that this is easily verifiable from many sources), and you know damn well that 75% of the country aren’t all uneducated people. You are not being fair.
Gallup, not working web, spiegel. All propaganda.
Spiegel? Propaganda? It’s literally the largest German news website mate. Trying to attack the authority of the source here is nonsense. And gallup is one of the most internationally recognised polling companies in the world largely for its refusal to do polls funded by any political party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Spiegel_(online) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallup,_Inc.
Authority source? What? It clearly shows where you come from (not referring to a specific country, just your environment). And yes, of course, those are “news” outlets like fox news and rt, right? /s. Oh look, Wikipedia article, it must be truth. /s. Sorry, I can’t be nice with propaganda agents. Bye.
The polls quoted are not representative because of the demographics change. The oldest part of the population, who grew up after WW2, prefers soviet union, but it’s because it was their youth. Their children, who spent most of their lives in “developed socialism” are much less happy about it. Young people, who grew up in independent states, are overwhelmingly against soviet baggage. And since 2010, when some of the quoted polls were made, older people died.
The only ones who actually regret the decay are russians who morn loss of their empire. Soviet union was just another incarnation of it. Also serbs and hungarians who are a bit isolated in their space.
It is especially strange to see this comment while ukrainians, one of the largest postsoviet states, overwhelminly support and enact literal fight against russian restorational imperialism which tries to bring russian-dominated soviet state back. Or are you questioning this proposition too?
Every single left wing party in ukraine was banned, and my friends in the country were arrested for being socialists. Speech in the country can not be considered free and opinion can not be measured accurately at the current moment in time. It would also be sort of foolish to attempt this with the country split into 4 regions between Ukraine proper, Crimea and the two Donbas republics. Ideally you would include all of them in that data, and if we went back in time and looked pre-2014 (when the civil war started) we’d see a lot of support in those regions. But now? Everything is a mess and I wouldn’t trust either states at war to give us reliable data.
I of course don’t consider the factions pursuing a restoration of the Russian empire to have anything to do with socialism either. For the record.
What is banned is communist party, and not because it was communist (it was not) but because it was pro-imperialist restoration, and also just for old people who wanted to remember their youth.
I am ukrainian and have ukrainian communist friends, and they are now just as fiercly antirussianimperialism as every one I know in Ukraine. It just shows that the leftist ideas live on, especially among young people (but also their parents, who in 2014 protested for ideas of their children, when children were assaulted for now good reason, starting all the violence). The problem is that any explicit reference to communism or state socialism is very tainted. So you can see why the title meme makes a lot of sense.
You’re skipping the 11 other parties that are banned. Very free.
Those are just reformulation of the same concept which has nothing to do with communism, just with soviet state nostalgia. Plus a few were banned after Russia’s invasion for supporting the invaders (and they are related to the soviet nostalgia kind). Anyway they lost almost all support, I was even a bit surprised that any Ukrainian I know, even Russian-speaking pro-Russia-ties people are very anti-Russia now - being invaded feels even more like an betrayal for them. Of course I do not exclude that some Ukrainians genuinely support the Russia’s narrative, but among hundreds I know personally there is not a single one.
Banning certain parties is along the same lines as Germany banning Nazi party, or would you suggest that’s oppression of freedom as well?
Clearly, I do not enjoy this division with Russia, I have Russian family, friends, colleagues. But what their state did is just not the way to do things, it damaged irreparably relations and any remaining pro-Russian political parties or sentiments in Ukraine for a generation. I rather prefer some balance and discourse would continue but nobody did more to push Ukraine away from any pro-Russian politics (even shaped as soviet nostalgia with “communist” banner) than Russia itself.
And? Socialism does not mean not having a multiparty system. I get that you’re trying to imply that approving of a multiparty system or a market economy is somehow evidence of being against socialism but both of those things exist under socialism. Yugoslavia was a market economy in eastern europe under socialism.
Yugoslavia was a market economy in eastern europe under socialism.
There was a limited amount of pseudo-private “workers collective” (OOUR) companies starting from the mid 70s all the way to the breakup. It was certainly not a market economy in any meaningful way. The entire economy was propped up by foreign loans, which was a cause of so much inflation that the currency had to be re-adjusted twice, starting from the late 60s.
This is getting too semantic for my liking we would argue all day about whether Tito’s efforts were a market economy or not. You acknowledge that market economies and multiple parties do exist in socialist countries though correct?
The word “Socialism” is too broad to be useful here, it can refer to democratic socialism, which is the dominant political stance in Nordic countries, so yes, market economies and social programs can co-exist.
The nordic countries aren’t socialism ffs. They are social democracy, capitalist states with welfare policies and a ruling class of bourgeoisie. This is political illiteracy. Adding welfare to capitalism does not make socialism, it makes ““friendly”” capitalism (backed by imperialism of the global south). Read Imperialism in the 21st Century, it is suicide fuel for socdems.
A real example of democratic socialism to discuss would be any of the states created by the Bolivarian revolutions. Venezuela under Chavez. Bolivia under MAS. Etc. Socialist states with a proletarian ruling class.
All of that only speaks to western capitalism being shit, and not so much to soviet communism being any good tbh
Capitalism as it exists outside of the Imperial Core tends to be shit. Eastern Europe is still outside the core for the most part, as is most of the world.
It’s shit inside the Imperial Core as well. There are few people profiting a lot from it, and they try to give barely enough leftovers to enough of the population to stop them from resisting.
Wow, the level of dishonesty in your post is startling. Almost all (or perhaps all?) of your links have serious problems with them. I wish I had time to debunk them all, but let’s go with just the first one for now.
7 out of 11 countries believe the end of the USSR harmed their countries rather than benefited them
According to the article itself, there are 15 countries that came from the Soviet Union, not 11. And obviously Estonians, Latvias, and Lithuanians would not say that the fall of the SU hurt them. (For the fourth, Uzbekistan, I don’t know which way they would go.) But “7 (or 8) out of 15 countries believe the end of the USSR harmed their countries rather than benefited them” doesn’t have the same ring to it, so you didn’t post that, because you are dishonest.
And that the study didn’t conclude that these countries wanted to return to communism or return to the Soviet Union (they don’t, other than Russians, the imperialists), it concluded that they believe that the fall of the SU hurt them. Which is plausible: collapse events aren’t pretty, even if it’s the collapse of an evil regime (see Iraq with ISIS filling the void for another example). You of course conflate the these points to pretend that these countries want communism and the SU back.
Maybe if you didn’t have such a ideological agenda you wouldn’t dishonestly cherry pick headlines for propaganda purposes?
Agreed. Having in-laws in Romania I can tell you the sentiment about the Soviet union is generally not great.
Ahh yes the famous american communist propaganda outlet Gallup which certainly isn’t widely regarded worldwide.
This comment is dripping with sarcasm, in case you didn’t notice.
Nice job avoiding all my main points.
The only problem with the Gallup link is only the title, which is (probably unintentionally) misleading. I didn’t say anything about it being propaganda, that’s just more of your bullshitting.
“Speak to eastern europeans!”
“Wait not those ones!”
Ah, yes, the opinion poll, the best way to measure things objectively.
I’m sorry do you have any other way for scientists to measure opinion?
This… This is about people’s opinions tho…
Redditors try not to froth and post anticommunism for 120 seconds challenge (impossible!!!)
I mean there is, but all of the major nations fall somewhere in the middle of the capitalism / socialism spectrum.
China, a communist nation, has private businesses. The US, a capitalist nation, has public infrastructure and social safety nets.
It’s a gradient, and very few nations are 100% on the edge of the spectrum.
This is the most correct political spectrum I’ve seen in the wild in ages, probably because it’s based in materialism instead of pure nonsense.
China is socialist under Primary Stage Socialism with development emphasized. Social safety nets and public infrastructure are not automatically steps towards socialism (in the first place because the U.S. is imperialist and finances these gains with the wealth of other nations with the aim of pacifying conflict rather than ushering in genuine positive change). This spectrum approach ignores political and developmental realities, in the first place with China being a dictatorship of the proletariat and the US being a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and with private businesses subordinated at every step to the popular mass party (and with the final goal of expelling them when socialism is fully developed (1949/1950), since China is a backward nation that did not undergo a capitalist period before developing the DOTP. The “more state or more private” dichotomy is imo an incorrect way of looking at things.
China being a dictatorship of the proletariat
Is it, though? I certainly don’t see the Chinese political leadership needing to put in considerable labour for their income. In practice, they don’t look so different from American business and political elites, to me.
US being a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
Look I understand where you’re coming from with this, and when you’re talking about America in particular I’m relatively on board. But I suspect this was intended to refer to western capitalist democracies more broadly, and while I understand what you mean, I simply don’t agree that it’s fair to call a democracy using a serious democratic system running free and fair elections a “dictatorship” in the same paragraph as you’re calling China a dictatorship, as though the two are comparable.
Yeah, FPTP is fundamentally anti-democratic, and most democracies have some flaws in how free or fair they are, with the result being that they’re less than perfectly democratic. The US is particularly bad, but even worse is a place like Singapore, which barely pretends to be a fair democracy. But if you mean to suggest the same of countries like Australia, France, and Germany, I’m just not on board. To pretend even America is on the same level of being a dictatorship as China is ludicrous.
I say this as someone who is rather anti-capitalist in general. In theory, I think the ideals of socialism are fantastic, and from what I’ve seen socialists say about how the system could work, I don’t disagree.
But then I see socialists do things like pretend America is just as much of a dictatorship as China or (as I saw the creator of the explicitly socialist Second Thought YouTube channel “Second Thought” do on his news channel) side with Russia (or at least, against NATO and Ukraine) in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or blame America for China’s aggressive policy towards Taiwan. And as much as I’m on board with socialist economic ideals, I also fundamentally believe in the rights of individual freedoms afforded by liberal democracies.
I don’t think that these have to be in conflict, but for some reason every time I see someone espousing socialism they seem to end up supportive highly oppressive regimes like China and Russia. It makes it very hard (read: impossible) to actually take that final step into embracing the label of “socialist”.
Dictatorship, to Marxists, refers to the ruling class. After Feudalism, the class character is either proletarian, capitalist/bourgeosie, or Napoleonic. In this case, all liberal democracies are dictatorships. If it’s a state, it requires dictatorship by a class or class relationship. If the dictatorship was deemed unncessary, or the contradiction between classes fell, then no states would be necessary. As far as your point on Taiwan, almost all countries recognized by the UN observe One-China policy as required by formal relationships with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which has territorial claims to Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, even though they have their own distinct governments. To recognize formal relations with Taiwan is to also recognize China, only in that case meaning the Republic of China (ROC) rather than the PRC. As for NATO? There are plenty of videos to watch if you are curious, but NATO itself is tied to its history with the Operation Gladio, and its purpose was to be an alliance against the USSR. Now that the USSR is long gone, any use of NATO is extremely questionable, as if arming and funding fascists wasn’t bad enough.
The US has a blend of public and private infrastructure. Cities like Chicago sold the rights to their parking to private companies. Red light and speeding cameras are also privatized. Some states have sold their turnpike system to non public entities. Busses are unreliable in most metro areas because bus systems don’t turn a profit.
Amtrak, America’s only passenger train system, operates nearly entirely on private tracks. Its nearly always as expensive or more for a train ticket than it would be to just fly. At that the system is unreliable with trains constantly having to wait hours for freight trains to pass because they have the right of way on private tracks.
Nearly all utilities (power, water, gas) are ran by for profit companies. Americas “social safety net” reads like a punishment most of the time. Seniors living on social security eat cat food to get by. Politicians want work requirements on food assistance. Homelessness is at epidemic levels, in a more liberal area there are some depression era hoovervilles built. Conservative areas just buy bus tickets to the liberal areas.Amtrak is supposed to have a window of right-of-way. Freight companies ignore it in a combination of ways.
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
Define communism.
It’s true that this should not be about communism, but about soviet state, which was an authoritharian state dominated by russian nationalism, but under banner of communism. Their kind of messed up the banner of communism for everybody. If used, it should be discussed with care.
no one can, not even those who advocate for it. (aside from “not that thing that was repeatedly tried and failed”)
Nah, people who advocate for communism are actually educated and can define it very easily. Communism is a political economic system where the working class holds power in society and the means of production are under a combination of public and cooperative ownership. Thinking that communism is difficult to define is the height of ignorance.
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
from Principles of Communism by Friedrich Engels.
And what would be those conditions?
common ownership and control of the means of production in a classless moneyless stateless society governed via collective mutual determination or similar horizontal system of power.
oh, i see, makes sense then why it was never tried. how are we going to have a society without a state to govern it? (i mean not to concern troll here, if a solution can be created for this that would be genuinely interesting, but for example that council the soviets created a century ago was clearly a state)
I love how you just keep flaunting your ignorance here. Communists aren’t imbeciles who think that you can simply snap your fingers and abolish the state, they recognize the need for a transitional socialist period from the current system to a communist one.
and how do you wish to avoid that the leaders of said transitional socialist period just cling to power?
as someone who has to live in the aftermath of one of those “transitional socialist periods” that predictably went nowhere and just broke the country’s spirit completely, i’m really damn curious. we are not talking about hypotheticals here.
how? abolish the standing beaurocratic heirarchy which perpetuates and expends its own power and the interest of the ruling class by inflicting violence on the working class. what that looks like depends on how the people who make up a community choose to govern themselves.
realistically I don’t expect a revolution of the proletariat to take place, so I promote the institution of robust mutual aid networks, radical solidarity (organized labor, intersectional liberatory philosophy), and resilient autonomous communities, to compete with the prevailing system of power.
attempts at anarchist-adjacent organizing have existed, and continue to in some communities, though of course execution varies, as does identity.
the USSR was not an attempt towards a stateless society, being a state-capitalist imperialist kleptocracy.
Well capitalism is about making a selfish choice. We have no significant capital, so maybe they cut us in or don’t be surprised when some don’t care for the system.
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though most brainwashed USAians seem to think having basic shit like Sweden/UK/Australian style healthcare system is some kind of evil communism.
Making this meme took longer than opening a book to understand what communism actually is.
What everyone points to as “communism” shares more in common with capitalism than anything else. They had authoritarian rulers and a small wealthy class that lords over the rest of the populace.
There is nothing “worker owned” about these examples and it only serves to spread FUD about moving away from capitalism towards a more human centric economy
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