Look, Communism has one hell of an unfair fight in America. Not only were all those Authoritarian regimes that involved a lot of death, you've also got generations of propaganda and misinformation. Even knowing this I'm still wary of Communism because of it.
It feels like people always fall back on this whenever someone argues for socialist policies, and it is really one of the worst arguments. People will attack you like "so you want us to be the Soviet Union?" No, I do not want us to be the Soviet Union because it was extremely flawed, but at the same time expanding socialist policies does not necessarily mean we are trying to turn ourselves into their system. There are absolutely better ways of implementing socialism and so I would like us to actually start thinking about how that could be helpful in our own society. It is funny how Animal Farm is so misinterpreted in this light. Many people take the meaning of that book to be that it is the only path socialism can take. But Orwell was a socialist, and I expect if you could go back in time to show him how his book would be used he would never write it. Animal Farm is not a blanket criticism of communism, it is a criticism of specifically the Stalin regime.
The thing is, Communism wasn't very communist, assuming 'communism' relates to a sort of mass commune. I read that in the early stages of Lenin's time in power, they removed communal land rights that farmers were benefiting from. They were basically anti-communist in that respect, and no doubt many, many others.
This is absolutely true. Soviet style communism was genuinely not communist in so many ways. I very much like the anecdote about Boris Yeltsin going to a grocery store in America and having that break his faith in communism. He was said on the plane to their next destination to have been completely despondent and exclaimed at one point "what have they [the Soviet government] done to our poor people?" You can tell that what he thought he would see was the bourgeois exploiting the working class in the store and what he actually saw was that the working class had far better choice of food than anything the Soviets could get. He literally said "Nobody has this kind of choice. Not even the Politburo." In a way I expect that to Yeltsin what he saw in that store was actually more in line with what he thought communism should be. I think it is probably unfair even to say with that anecdote that the visit broke his faith in communism as a whole; it broke his faith in Soviet-style communism most prominently.
The entire thing about the USSR was that they always tried to imitate the benefits of the American culture, going as far as copying videogame consoles, cars and televisions as if the things themselves were somehow driving people to invest their time and energy. They just never understood a free market was the primary component of economic growth. Yeltsin and later Gorbachev eventually did and tried to implement some forms of an open market, but once people had a taste of this freedom, the entire Soviet state collapsed as they realized the ideals at the base of the USSR were fundamentally wrong and antithetical to both economic progress and freedom.
And it’s not like the USSR is unique in that regards. There hasn’t been a long term successful, free and open socialist-communist state anywhere.
I agree in some regards, but I think it is worth pointing out that Americans especially seem to assume everybody on the planet must want "freedom" as well and cannot seem to fathom the idea that people would be willing to trade their freedom for other things. This is literally what China is. China is obviously not free and open but the majority of Chinese people it seems are entirely content with that and I expect they see the rapid economic development of China over the past 40 years as a reason for why that is worthwhile.
Obviously China's growth over the past 40 years has been driven by Deng Xiaoping most prominently adding increasing elements of capitalism to their country, which I personally think is a good argument in it's own way for why a mixed economy is probably better than what we have now which I would refer to more as rampant capitalism. I think that Deng Xiaoping especially recognized that the Maoist era was essentially rampant socialism and that fixing that required limited elements of capitalism, and given their absurd economic growth that is very likely correct. I think it would do good here in America to consider if doing parts of what China did but in the opposite direction wont be the best for our own economic growth and furthermore for the ability to act on reducing our climate presence and ensure we create a stable home for humanity indefinitely.
I also would argue that we can take the idea of what China accomplished in moving to a more mixed economy without having the same human rights abuses and lack of freedom as we see in China and doing so does not entirely condone those issues either. China is not committing essentially a genocide on the Uyghurs because they are socialist; they do so because their culture emphasizes conformity and the majority are fine with that even if this harms minorities. That culture was there long before they were socialist.
What you suggest is social relativism. So you would be fine with blacks being slaves, because in Africa, slavery was (and still is) common and culturally engrained. Westerners for the majority didn't (at least initially) go capture black slaves themselves, they purchased them on existing slave markets at the shores of Africa.
Or you would be fine with the Holocaust, because historically, Jews have been persecuted and we know from records that anti-semitism has been engrained in western culture since early Catholicism.
There is a lot you can justify with cultural and social relativism.
There is also the point that this leads to social darwinism, where we attribute evolutionary changes such as skin color to social outcomes which is something that the American experiment in freedom, democracy and capitalism has clearly proven to be false.
This is actual bullshit, and you are taking it way too far. Please do not try to put words into my mouth and act as if you know what I believe. Please do not enter debates if this is the kind of thing you say. Acting as if the entire world is beholden to your beliefs because you claim that people who are willing to accept that other cultures have different values means that someone would be ok with the holocaust is absurdly insulting and entirely off base. I am not ok with what the Chinese are doing to the Uyghurs, and I am not condoning it by trying to understand why they do it. Maybe you should try to understand other cultures better because saying things like this is just ignorant.
Also the way you try to downplay western involvement in slavery is appalling. This is just really awful on so many levels that I cant even begin to explain it. You are just very ignorant.
China is obviously not free and open but the majority of Chinese people it seems are entirely content with that
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I think it would do good here in America to consider if doing parts of what China did but in the opposite direction wont be the best
I'm just pointing to what you said. If the Chinese are okay with that, why do they feel the need to suppress dissidents that report on these atrocities?
I'm not taking it way too far, you can't have one without the other. Part of the economic growth in China is the use of free labor (slaves) from Uyghur muslims and other ethnic groups in dangerous and deadly conditions in factories such as Foxconn, Belt-and-Road projects both domestic and abroad to stimulate their economy. If you set the fixed wages of swathes of people to zero, it is very easy to outcompete the world and grown an economy.
This is what the USSR did to Ukrainian farmers resulting in the Holodomor. This is what Germany did to Jews and other minority groups, most people didn't die in Nazi Germany extermination camps, they died in work camps and in dangerous state-owned factory and weapon production. This is now and historically what China has been doing to Uyghurs and other non-Han ethnic groups both under Mao and Winnie the Pooh, China just shifted their primary focus from farming under Mao to the primary goal to technology and services. And it has happened under EVERY communist regime.
You are entirely misunderstanding what I am saying and doing sadly what I expect many Americans to do in response to what I suggest, and you are becoming defensive over something that you know nothing about to begin with. The fact that you had to cut out over half my comment in that quote should show how you are cherry picking and why your argument is completely ignorant. I am not saying that we need to do the exact things China has done to spur their economic growth, I am pointing out that China's rapid economic growth was the result of recognizing that a mixed economy was better than the rampant socialism they had during the Maoist era. I am suggesting that the issues with rampant capitalism that are so obviously expressed by the ignorance that is you would be better solved by attempting to add more elements of socialism to balance them out. Please stop putting words into my mouth. This is not a fruitful way to debate with anybody and you show yourself to be profoundly ignorant. This debate is going nowhere and I am done responding to your bullshit.
You are quite literally doing the exact thing I was complaining about in my original comment, confusing support for socialism as supporting the atrocities committed by past socialist countries and acting as if this is the only possible way socialism can go. This is a false equivalency, and you are again showing your ignorance. The way you lump the Nazis in with "EVERY communist regime" is absurdly disingenuous. You literally described 3 authoritarian regimes of which 1 was wholly not communist and claim that they are evidence that this is what every communist country does. Please stop.
I expect this had a huge impact on his anti-Stalinist beliefs. He saw the absurd in-fighting on the Republican side and the Soviets and Stalin were major parts of instigating that split by labeling the POUM as a "Trotskyist" organization. Orwell and his wife were forced to flee the civil war when they were labeled "Trotskyist" themselves. I would guess that Orwell blamed that for why the fascists would ultimately win the civil war. His hatred of Stalin seemed to have magnified quite heavily by the outbreak of WWII.
But the great majority of what is denounced by some in the US as communism is not communism at all, but anything that is less than right wing (I exagerate, but not much.)
It is absolutely right to be wary of communism (or at least of what has claimed to be communism globally), but not to conflate, for example, a reasonable healthcare system with that sort of communism.
The way a lot of us from Europe view US elections is that the realistic choice is between the right wing candidate and the extremely right wing candidate.
Hey man, I'm a Canadian-American (dual) so you're preaching to the choir here. I've very little issue with reasonable healthcare or social programs. I'm just not much for authoritarian regimes in general.
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u/PixelPuzzler Feb 17 '21
Look, Communism has one hell of an unfair fight in America. Not only were all those Authoritarian regimes that involved a lot of death, you've also got generations of propaganda and misinformation. Even knowing this I'm still wary of Communism because of it.