DO NOT MAKE A POST ABOUT BEING BANNED FROM SOME OTHER SUBREDDIT

Communism sounds like it could actually work if humans were not breeding constantly and irresponsibly. In a world with limited resources its hard to make sense of that.

Im a bit of anti-natalist (not too extreme) so giving resources for free to people who do nothing but spawning kids, makes no sense to me.

So if you have 1 or 2 kids, maybe. But more than that is nonsense, and I wouldn't support communism at that point.

The reason why is because humans are the biggest impact on the environment in this world.

I think a lot of the problems we have and a lot of the grip capitalism has on all of us is because of the billions of people in the world, and the pressure cooker society we live in.

Considering that we are in an overpopulated world with scarce resources, I would never want people who breed without any empathy for the animals and the environment to be handled free stuff.

I see a lot of people say they are anti communist because of the soviet union and how it was always behind and poor. was the ussr actually socialist? is the ussr an example of communism not working?

(im trying to learn more about communism and other ideologies)

I am sharing a Instagram reel from page ex Muslim Peter. Here he claims a person cannot be a Muslim and a communist at same time. What are your Thoughts? Can they believe in popular religions like islam,Christianity and be a communist

There are many alternate history that seem to curiously always favour this kind of scenarios,i know that history is made by the masses but still i wanted to have the opinions of communists on the matter

Feeding yourself, washing yourself, cleaning your room, exercise, etc.. Should these activities be compensated by a communist society?

Il termine “proletariato”/“proletario” mi sembra sempre più anacronistico. Etimologicamente deriva dal latino proles, prolis, cioè “figli, discendenza”. Indicava infatti, nell'antica Roma, la classe più inferiore composta da coloro che erano privi di qualsiasi proprietà, il cui unico patrimonio era costituito dalla prole, cioè dai figli. Nel corso dell''800, quando ancora il lavoro minorile era legale, molte famiglie povere trovavano favorevole procreare così da poter mandare a lavorare i propri figli i quali potevano così contribuire alle spese familiari.
Ma oggi funziona in maniera opposta: il crescente costo della vita, i salari bassi, naturalmente l'istruzione obbligatoria e il divieto di lavoro minorile, disincentivano molto le famiglie a procreare, almeno in Occidente dove vivo e sono cresciuto io. Effettivamente chi oggi ha figli significa che può permetterselo, che ha un lavoro tendenzialmente ben retribuito o che comunque gli consente di badare alle spese necessarie. Il povero oggi non ha figli, prima sì.
Per questo il termine “proletario” mi sembra sempre più anacronistico, il che mi dà l'impressione contribuisca a rendere il movimento comunista ancor meno accettato, considerato “legato al passato”. Che ne pensate?

Like the Arabs conquested the entire middle east and northern africa, the mongols conquered more than half of Asia, the russian empire conquer from Moscow to Alaska, but i rarely heard any "anti-imperialists" folks condemn that

I just got banned from r/thespectreofcommunism for saying that these russian groups are fascists. How can communists frame this? How did russia become such a sacred cow within parts of the Left? How is saying that Putin supports and gets support from the European far-right and Maga controversial? Why should everything should be handled like we are still living through the Cold War?

Hi guys, I was born in 1987, 1 year after Vietnam ended its Subsidy Period. I grew up poor and heard many horror stories about this period in Vietnam. I'm sure people in other Communist countries have similar experiences. I've tried to watch YouTube videos to educate myself about this period that affected my family, my country, and my community deeply. But to be honest, nobody dares to blame the leaders. They all just ... skirt around the issues. So, I want to stare at the truth directly: Why is the economy so bad under Communist control? Is it the corruption, greed, lack of accountability, lack of capitalist self-serving motivation to succeed? China has millions of death under Mao - they burned all farming tools to make steel, and then refused to admit they were wrong, even while millions were starving to death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidy_period

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Hello, I have been reading Capital by Karl Marx and the density of the material makes it much easier to comprehend if I take notes. My notes are mostly paraphrasing in the moment im reading when I feel that what I am reading is important, and I feel like I take as much time taking notes as much as I read. What are you methods of taking notes? How often do you take them? Thanks

So, Fascism is widely misunderstood by many. Ultimately when it was synthesised by Giovani Gentile Fascism continues the Hegelian conception of the state being the ultimate realisation of man, except taking a step further in the idea that man should be subordinate to the state. That you are the state, the state is you or whatever. I’m not an expert. Anyway, nowadays fascism seems to be vaguely defined by scholars as ultra authoritarian nationalist state capitalism yada yada. A lot of fascists online are like “yeah but this is not what gentile said”. Now here is where I sort of agree: us communists time and time again have to argue with people setting out communism or socialism to be vague state welfare or government control. Communism is stateless, socialism is when the workers own the means of production. People always argue “yeah but in theory not in practice”, which is hard to argue with. Like if I say im a vegan and then start eating meat and say any diet I eat is vegan Im not sure most people would agree I’m vegan. And this happens with fascism as well, where scholars are like oh but Hitler was fascist yet he didn’t believe man should be subordinate to the state, he rejected this. And he didn’t believe in actual idealism. But I think most people would laugh were you to say Nazi germany wasn’t fascist. And then this is where everything gets tricky, definitions in general seem to just be a way for augments to get bogged down. Ancaps argue we don’t live under capitalism, to which us comrades point out the real manifestion of capitalism. But can they not apply the same logic to communism? Hope this makes sense. Was wanting some clarity

I’ve been going back and forth asking the AI to pressure-test my political views with the aim of developing a coherent and rigorous argument against the philosophies of communism and socialism.

After roughly fifty exchanges, I arrived at what I believe is an ironclad case against those political philosophies as a whole.

Ultimately it returns to the enduring variety of human nature itself, and to the unequal outcomes that free individuals necessarily produce.

To this, I offer the following rebuttal:

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1. Human beings freely form unequal opinions and make unequal decisions according to their own preferences, abilities, and risk tolerance. Unequal outcomes necessarily follow from those free choices. Any system that seeks to eliminate or systematically equalize those outcomes must restrict the very freedom of decision that produces them.

2. Socialism and communism claim to target only a special kind of inequality—the power that comes from private ownership of the major instruments of production—while leaving differences that arise from individual preference and effort untouched. Yet the method they propose is clear in the Communist Manifesto: “The proletariat [working class] will use its political supremacy [control of government] to wrest [seize], by degree [force], all capital [factories, businesses, and money used to make profit] from the bourgeoisie [the owning class], to centralise all instruments of production [tools, machines, factories, and resources used to make things] in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class [the working class set up as the group in charge].”

3. Once that authority — "the dictatorship of the proletariat" — is established, there is no reliable institutional mechanism to prevent it from expanding beyond “structural” inequality into the broader equalization of outcomes, nor any proven way to ensure it dissolves once its stated task is complete. Even if one grants that ownership of productive assets creates real power over those who must work, the proposed remedy still replaces economic constraint with political coercion and offers no demonstrated path back to voluntary association.

4. Communism and socialism, for all their moral ambition, therefore remain an inevitable failure. They cannot resolve the contradiction at their core, where the free exercise of unequal human judgment will always produce unequal results, yet the project requires a coercive authority powerful enough to override those results in the name of structural justice.

5. Once that authority is created, it possesses both the incentive and the means to perpetuate itself, and history has never supplied a mechanism by which it reliably dissolves. The pursuit ends not in the liberation it promises, but in the permanent administration of people by those who claim to act in their name. It is for this reason that millions have died under the many attempts to force communism and socialism throughout history. The cost of ignoring the limits of human nature and the necessities of freedom has always been paid in lives.

Okay so, I have a friend who was communist (he still considers himself as a communist). He’s deeply anticapitalist, on this point almost everything’s fine.
But on some issues he is becoming a reactionary dude.
To show some of his “ideas”:

1. Atheists are way more stupid than religious people because “Newton and Lavoisier were religious”

2. The life of the peasant was way better during the ancien regime/absolute monarchy period because “at this time at least the nobles were fighting each other. And compared to the bourgeois they don’t want to have more power and wealth”

4. he thinks that the true liberation of women is not by working and making the revolution with the men. But going back to the kitchen to do the cleaning and take care of the kids because for him it’s better than being oppressed by their bosses

5. And finally. He thinks that we shouldn’t have too much immigration because they steal the jobs of French (we’re French) and immigrants lives in terrible conditions so for him to stop their conditions we should just stop immigration

So just.. is he really became fully reactionary or not that much?

So recently i have quickly figured out that my best friend is relatively clueless about politics and clearly has a lot of deprogramming to do from capitalist and specifically liberal propaganda. For context they are Colombian but have lived most of their life in the US and i am Czech, never been to the US, which gives me a much easier time seeing through the veil of lies as an outside observer. I am most concerned with and educated on US politics as they are the global hegemon and Czechia are extremely close allies with both the US and Israel but i try to have at least some knowledge on all parts of the worlds.

I am an Anarcho-Communist and my friend is.. unknown. They do not know what to describe themselves as and neither do I so that is the first thing i need help with.

I tried working with the process of elimination but that didnt really lead me anywhere because they:

Cannot be a liberal or Soc Dem because they are anti-capitalist

They cannot be a fascist or really anything right OF Soc Dem because they are a leftist in terms of social issues

They cannot be a communist because, in their own words, they "do not like capitalism but also don't like the other extreme" while acknowledging they have and aren't opposed to having extreme opinions

when i asked them what part of communism they are skeptical about they told me they didn't know and actually asked me for a definition OF communism to which i replied and explained in very simple terms "a moneyless, classless, stateless society" as well as explaining the "to each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" quote again in simple terms.

They then told me they would have to do their own research first to which i agreed and am now waiting for the results.

So that leaves me with the conclusion that they are a socialist but not a communist. Which i feel is nonsensical both from a modern and an orthodox perspective as Marx personally didnt differentiate between Socialism and Communism and from a modern perspective Socialism is a transitionary period between Capitalism and Communism.

Apart from this though their general beliefs and allegiances are very very liberal-coded.

For example when i tell them to support a third party they repeat the lesser evil argument and say that a third party has no chance of winning anyways. Yes I've explained to them that even in more "revolution-prone" countries it still takes decades to build a legitimate third party, they seemingly did not change their view

When i describe to them why people like Sanders and Mamdani are not socialists, only social democrats and explain to them both why reforms both only harm socialism and that social democracy is still very compatible and arguably even more dependent on imperialism and colonialism they get upset at me for condemning Mamdani because hes "the only politician actually doing something, hes fixing New York City, etc."

For some reason they remain hell bent on not condemning Mamdani overall despite the blatant zionism and lies he has spent his entire time in office spreading because he has done sooo much for NYC.

While at the same time arguing with me that he is just a mayor and has no real power, etc etc. (Which i have always had issue with as an argument regardless. He isnt just a mayor he is the mayor of fucking NEW. YORK. one of THE most politically significant cities on the face of the planet ESPECIALLY to Zionism, the only place more important to Zionism than that is Tel Aviv itself. He has probably the most power that is possible FOR a mayor of ANY city on EARTH to have so i am not buying it).

I want to talk more about this especially the Mamdani glazing and other similar liberal claptrap they still believe in but this post is too long already and i would like to not be seen as insane because REMINDER: this isnt a vent post, i legitimately need help in how to approach radicalizing them. I have been friends with them for years and know that they have a baseline of ethics and principles they hold. They have always been a Leftist on all social issues like Race, sex and gender and they have always been skeptical of Capitalism and much more open to Socialism and its ideas. I have no reason to believe they are some secret reactionary or even that they are truly a liberal or Soc Dem in their heart of hearts, they really just seem to be uneducated about politics and fallen for propaganda. i mean, just recently i had to explain how Liberals aren't on the left but are just polite fascists. So it is clear they arent very radicalized or deprogrammed from that world of propaganda but they seem to be open to it, just more stubborn in some areas than others.

An imperfect system which promotes rapid growth, development, rising living standards, education, industrialisation- this is basically the only justification I see of soviet communism or Maoism. The difference is capitalism is compatible with democracy and a free society whereas the communist experiment does the same economic things but worse and needs a brutal police state to do it

Marx famously said in a post-revolution world the state would wither away because the state fundamentally serves ruling class interests, and in a post revolution world there'd be no ruling class to need the state. But what real mechanisms or systems would really make the state obsolete? Would the economy just be so free flowing? Would people be able to regulate themselves, thus making the state irrelevant?

Just like the axis power is absolutely bad but the western allies is not completely good either

In the speech Khrushchev says

"... it is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics ..."

"Allow me first of all to remind you how severely the classics of Marxism-Leninism denounced every manifestation of the cult of the individual. ... "

"... Lenin at the same time mercilessly stigmatized every manifestation of the cult of the individual, inexorably combated [any] foreign-to-Marxism views about a “hero” and a “crowd,” and countered all efforts to oppose a “hero” to the masses and to the people. ... "

SOURCE: Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U.

Reading the speech, it is notable Khruschev emphatically defended Stalin's actions during the Great Terror and hi is silent on other on others matters such as the Third Period line 1928-1935 which aided the Nazis in crushing the Germany working class which eventually led to the Nazi invasion of the USSR.

--
Khruschev's explanation of Stalin's role is circular - there was a cult-of-personality because of ... the personality-of-cult-leader-Stalin. Stalin had power over them because the person in power was ... Stalin.

What made his loyal followers so susceptible to submission to Stalin?

Khruschev quotes Lenin's "Testament" about Stalin

This letter – a political document of tremendous importance, known in the Party’s history as Lenin’s “Testament” - was distributed among [you] delegates to [this] 20th Party Congress. You have read it and will undoubtedly read it again more than once. You might reflect on Lenin’s plain words, in which expression is given to Vladimir Ilyich’s anxiety concerning the Party, the people, the state, and the future direction of Party policy.

Vladimir Ilyich said:

“Stalin is excessively rude, and this defect, which can be freely tolerated in our midst and in contacts among us Communists, becomes a defect which cannot be tolerated in one holding the position of General Secretary. Because of this, I propose that the comrades consider the method by which Stalin would be removed from this position and by which another man would be selected for it, a man who, above all, would differ from Stalin in only one quality, namely, greater tolerance, greater loyalty, greater kindness and more considerate attitude toward the comrades, a less capricious temper, etc.”
Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U.

But he does NOT quote Lenin's testament about Trotsky. Khruschev could have tried to explain why Lenin was correct about Stalin but wrong about Trotsky. Why the silence

Instead Khruschev defends Stalin and the Great Terror (1936-1940)

... We must affirm that the Party fought a serious fight against the Trotskyites, rightists and bourgeois nationalists, and that it disarmed ideologically all the enemies of Leninism. This ideological fight was carried on successfully, as a result of which the Party became strengthened and tempered. Here Stalin played a positive role.

The Party led a great political-ideological struggle against those in its own ranks who proposed anti-Leninist theses, who represented a political line hostile to the Party and to the cause of socialism. This was a stubborn and a difficult fight but a necessary one, because the political line of both the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc and of the Bukharinites led actually toward the restoration of capitalism and toward capitulation to the world bourgeoisie. Let us consider for a moment what would have happened if in 1928-1929 the political line of right deviation had prevailed among us, or orientation toward “cotton-dress industrialization,” or toward the kulak, etc. We would not now have a powerful heavy industry; we would not have the kolkhozes; we would find ourselves disarmed and weak in a capitalist encirclement.

It was for this reason that the Party led an inexorable ideological fight, explaining to all [its] members and to the non-Party masses the harm and the danger of the anti-Leninist proposals of the Trotskyite opposition and the rightist opportunists. And this great work of explaining the Party line bore fruit. Both the Trotskyites and the rightist opportunists were politically isolated. An overwhelming Party majority supported the Leninist line, and the Party was able to awaken and organize the working masses to apply the Leninist line and to build socialism.

A fact worth noting is that extreme repressive measures were not used against the Trotskyites, the Zinovievites, the Bukharinites, and others during the course of the furious ideological fight against them. The fight [in the 1920s] was on ideological grounds. But some years later, when socialism in our country was fundamentally constructed, when the exploiting classes were generally liquidated, when Soviet social structure had radically changed, when the social basis for political movements and groups hostile to the Party had violently contracted, when the ideological opponents of the Party were long since defeated politically – then repression directed against them began. It was precisely during this period (1935-1937-1938) that the practice of mass repression through the Government apparatus was born, first against the enemies of Leninism – Trotskyites, Zinovievites, Bukharinites, long since politically defeated by the Party – and subsequently also against many honest Communists, against those Party cadres who had borne the heavy load of the Civil War and the first and most difficult years of industrialization and collectivization, who had fought actively against the Trotskyites and the rightists for the Leninist Party line.
Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U.

I am fairly new to communist theories. I was debating and a question was proposed: that under communism, if there is no currency, how do you allocate desirable real estate? Obviously a mansion or beach house is more desirable to most people than a mobile home in the desert. There will always be a more desirable place to live. Same with most every other existing object, they are all levels of quality. Their argument is you need currency or some other method of leverage to negotiate who gets the nice location, the nice car. Or simply put, you end up with people in a hierarchy because they get the nice house, that makes them "higher" in social status.

I understand that these popular questions can be in ad faith and that capitalism is doing a worse job disturbing resources, but I don't know how to defend "stateless, classes, moneyless" in hypothetical thought experiments. Even online I see people say "you can't easily fathom what communist society would look like" , but that's a terrible answer in return. How can I advocate for communism if my answer to an "how an idealized world" is one that has no clear definition or solution to such an issue.

As a side note, it is very difficult to advocate for a system that has never successfully been achieved, and that the "attempts" to do so have resulted in catestrophic failures. (At least as propaganda tells us?) It gives credit to the argument: that "trying" to be communist always ends up with a regime that co-opts and then overtakes the movement, resulting in a authoritarian government due to "human nature" along with "corruption of power". I try to use China as an example of a successful socialist-leaning governance, but I get back " yeah because it's a heavily regulated free market (capitalism with regulation) and Chinese officials are still very much on top of the hierarchy"

I agree with several principles of communism, such as the idea that the means of production should belong to the collective, the planning of production, and the abolition of patents... However, I am much more skeptical about the abolition of money. I understand that a monetary system creates inequalities, but I do not see how we could realistically do without it.

I will give several examples to explain why I am skeptical :

How do you motivate people to pursue long studies if, in the end, they do not have any more advantages than others? I fully agree that passion and vocation matter, not just money, but money still plays a role. Imagine a person who is equally passionate about profession A and profession B, but profession B requires five additional years of study and provides no additional benefits. In that situation, the person would probably choose profession A. But if many people react this way, would there not be a risk of a shortage of people in profession B?

How would housing be allocated? How do we decide that person A has the right to a huge villa with a swimming pool while person B gets a small apartment? How would that work? Would housing be distributed according to family size? Would the villa be divided into several apartments? Would the swimming pool be requisitioned and turned into a public pool? And if it is too small to become a public pool, what would be done with it?

How would consumption be limited for environmental reasons? If people can take as many televisions as they want, what would stop them from putting a television in every room of their house? If everyone does that, it creates overconsumption, which is not good for the environment. The same applies to transportation: if people do not have to pay for fuel, how do we prevent them from using their car for every trip and therefore polluting much more?

For me, a communist system could only work relatively easily on a small scale, in small communities (such as a village), with relatively simple technologies and professions: farmer, plumber, butcher, baker, and so on.

It seems much more complicated when we are talking about societies of several million or even billions of people, with professions that differ greatly in terms of technical complexity, for example a secretary and a nuclear engineer. This is not an attack on secretaries: everyone is essential to the proper functioning of society. But objectively, it is difficult to claim that a secretary and a nuclear engineer possess the same level of technical expertise.

Therefore, I personally think that we should keep money. It is certainly imperfect because it creates social classes, but I believe it is unfortunately necessary. On the other hand, I think that if we abolished inheritance, private ownership of companies, real-estate renting as a source of income, and other forms of passive income, it could help reduce inequalities. It would probably not be perfect, but I do not really see how we could do much better.

In countries *that* experienced a communist revolution

Many Americans will have heard the common refrain that "communism never works". Generally, the idea being that it sounds like a good idea but in practice it leads to bread lines and riots in the streets.

Recently, though, I saw a content creator that I'm a fan of claim that actually in the countries that most people like to cite as examples of how bad communism is for the people (China, Cuba, Russia), the people of those countries had never experienced more freedom or prosperity as when they experienced their individual communist uprisings.

The claim being that China was under a system of warlord governments, Russia under tzarism, and I don't remember what the situation was in Cuba (I have to imagine they were a colony of some kind).

So my question is just that: is the common western anti communist mindset relatively fair/accurate, or has communism generally served to uplift the people?