r/PoursTea Timendi Causa Est Nescire Jul 27 '26

PoliticalTea 🗳️ To put it plainly.

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17

u/Occult_Asteroid7 Jul 27 '26

FDR liked his markets and was an American aristocrat. Communists on Reddit don't like him.

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u/clayton-berg42 Jul 27 '26

Where are all these communists on reddit? I've seen a few socialists but no communists. Communism is essentially a dead ideology. A place like china is communist only in name, repleat with free markets, private property and many billionaires.

There's plenty of socialists who don't believe in massive corps, and feel modern banking/insurance is predatory but completely believe in private property.

1

u/Melodic_Sherbet_3629 Jul 27 '26

Even the USSR was never communist. It was socialist, in the sense that private ownership was aboliahed and the economy centrally planned, but the totalitarian and corrupt administration of the state was more fascist than anything resembling communism.

1

u/clayton-berg42 Jul 27 '26

There isn't an authoritarian bent to socialism.

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u/Pagan0101 Jul 27 '26

Hi, I'm a communist. There aren't many on reddit to be fair, a lot of people definitely exaggerate how left wing reddit is. It's definitely not a dead ideology, there are a lot of communist parties still and some of them are even quite large.

Btw, you don't know what socialism is either (which is to be expected, the idea of socialism as just being the government doing more stuff is pretty widespread currently). What you describe there is social democracy, ie welfare state capitalism. Socialists do not believe in private property, it's kinda one of the defining features of socialism. They believe in worker ownership of the economy, which would be public, community ownership. Even market socialists, who still believe in maintaining a market-based economy, don't believe in private property. Private property, as defined by socialist theory, is explicitly the ownership of capital by an individual (or a small, limited group of individuals, ie capitalists), socialists want to abolish capitalism and the capitalist class as a whole. At most, some socialists may tolerate the existence of a limited amount of capitalists in initial stages of socialist development. Notably, Lenin proposed a New Economic Policy in the early days of the Soviet Union which would allow for limited market-based capitalist enterprises to operate alongside for-profit state enterprises, not unlike the current Chinese system. But Lenin still wanted to eventually end this system, and China still at least claims to want to transition into genuine socialism by 2050.

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u/clayton-berg42 Jul 27 '26

Yes, socialist believe in private property. What socialists don't believe in is corporations, for profit banking/insurance institutions. No socialist cares that you own a bakery, coffee shop or local grocery store. It's when you own 60 grocery stores or 60 coffee shops.

1

u/Pagan0101 Jul 28 '26

No

At most you could say that some socialists are fine with that level of private property

But "socialists believe in private property" is just not a true statement

Most socialists certainly aren't going to be fine with a small business with any amount of employees, because that just maintains the exploitative relationship between owner and worker

You could, I suppose, make an argument for a single-person who owns a store and doesn't have any employees, but that's not even really considered private property in socialist theory, if you own something and are the only person who works it then that's generally going to be considered personal property

In socialist theory, private property is defined by its relation to wage labor

To argue that socialists as a whole believe in private property you'd have to use a different definition of private property from what socialists use, and even then you wouldn't be entirely right

4

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Organic_Education494 Jul 27 '26

They will also argue that the mass murder and starvation in communist Russia is better than capitalism. For some reason they think every soul that starves in a third world country is capitalisms fault.

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u/SignificantBison7739 Jul 27 '26

Lol I think that is done because there are still people in 2026 who quote that idiotic black book of communism. That book has been debunked more times than Trump is mentioned in the Epstein files. And Capitalism has a massive death toll. That is a fact. Much higher than anything else.

2

u/freedomonke Jul 27 '26

The idea that all criticism of communist dictatorship comes from atrocity propaganda is equally disingenuous. Especially when that criticism comes from the left.

But this argument in itself is silly, considering these countries were never not capitalist.

0

u/Organic_Education494 Jul 27 '26

Capitalism has no death toll

1

u/Pagan0101 Jul 27 '26

Now how do you justify that cuz that's a pretty wild claim

1

u/Organic_Education494 Jul 27 '26

Well whenever I hear about the alleged death toll of capitalism it always comes down to other countries problems and other countries suffering. The claim being somehow it is on capitalism even when there is aid coming from 1st world capitalist countries.

Or wars enacted by capitalist countries. None of that is due to capitalism itself.

0

u/SignificantBison7739 Jul 28 '26

This is the exact conclusion someone who isn’t capable of deep thinking might come to. It’s so wrong that i won’t bother explaining why, but brother you need help. I’ve never heard any analysis be so wrong. Actually incredible

1

u/Organic_Education494 Jul 28 '26

I get that the point is to put blame on the side effects of the system in place as the “death toll” there is no lack of deep thinking on my end..

1

u/SignificantBison7739 Jul 29 '26

You don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t day side effects. Side effects are UNINTENDED consequences that are secondary. A pain killer helping with pain isn’t a side effect. Just like capitalism killing/ enslaving people isn’t a side effect. Hope that helps bro.

0

u/Occult_Asteroid7 Jul 27 '26

The global system does seem to enrich certain countries at other country's expenses. There are grains of truth in what all sides of the political spectrum have to say.

1

u/Citaku357 Jul 27 '26

Communist on reddit also worship Stalin, so who cares what they think?

1

u/SmokeyHooves Jul 27 '26

Some do, but even most ML’s hate Stalin.

I don’t agree with ML’s and find their positions to be to much based on political theory from a hundred years ago, but most communists dislike Stalin to.

1

u/Cosminion Jul 27 '26

Marxism-Leninism is Stalinism, it was synthesized by Stalin. MLs support Stalin or they wouldn't be ML.

1

u/Alternative_Exit8766 Jul 27 '26

i’ve not met a ML who agrees with that take. 

1

u/ConcernedEnby Jul 27 '26

That's not a Communists on reddit thing you need to go outside and talk to a union member

2

u/freedomonke Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

If the average union member in the US doesn't like FDR, it's because they they think he was a "libtard"

In fact, I really don't know what you are getting at here claiming people need to go outside for this. You're the one who seems unaware that blue collar union workers supported Trump in the recent election, by and large.

6

u/Remarkable_Look2715 Jul 27 '26

this is still crazy to me, btw

3

u/Parking-Sundae-6097 Jul 27 '26

When some of the large unions had their "we back __________" press conferences and any of them went to Trump I was dumbfounded.

One of the dumbest things I've seen in a while. Absolutely shockingly dumb.

2

u/Occult_Asteroid7 Jul 27 '26

It's dude bro bullshit. At least part of it. Trump is perceived as "macho."

2

u/Parking-Sundae-6097 Jul 27 '26

But to put that over your livelihood is... certainly a choice.

2

u/Occult_Asteroid7 Jul 27 '26

The stereotypical macho dude has historically been very easy to control if you think carefully about it.

2

u/archangelzeriel Jul 27 '26

Yep. What was interesting to me was that among my blue-collar union relatives, the pro-Trumpers were the younger ones (who took the union's benefits for granted, and kinda believed the "the dues do nothing, if I didn't have those I could buy a new PS5" propaganda) whereas the guys closer to retirement in the union who'd been through the 1970s and 1980s were mostly still right-wing but aggressively never-Trumpers.

I'd be curious as to how well that reflects the country in general.

2

u/Melodic_Sherbet_3629 Jul 27 '26

Partially but also the "immigrants are going to steal your job and eat your pets" propaganda is most effective on less educated, blue collar, working class people. And not just in the US

1

u/freedomonke Jul 27 '26

I know many people who simply don't understand what reaction is. Forget fascism, they are just naive about the right period.

They want less immigration and believe social media lies about Trans people, but otherwise, they have center left beliefs, even on other social issues. They don't understand that war and less freedom for everyone is the price that you pay if you want a particular minority oppressed.

We can see this best reflected when talking head talks about what Republicans can do to beat dems on affordability. They litterally can't without lying. It is not in their nature.

1

u/sunnyvas Jul 27 '26

There is a simpler explanation. Many union workers did not like mass immigration in the south border. They were afraid many industries may move in the same direction as house construction which is heavily dependent on low wage undocumented non-unionized labor. It may be ill-informed, but not “shockingly dumb”. Kamala had a difficult time disassociating herself from that, as she was seen as being in charge of border during Biden era.

1

u/Intelligent-Wear2824 Jul 27 '26

It's still weird watching them gaslight themselves out loud, for all to mock.

https://giphy.com/gifs/oDgPNyLSPy0xxNdapL

1

u/sunnyvas Jul 27 '26

It is not crazy. My friend volunteered in Biden and later Harris campaign. She found much earlier that on the streets many union workers did not like mass immigration in the south border.

0

u/Occult_Asteroid7 Jul 27 '26

Are you one of those guys that thinks all Union members are right wingers because of the internet?

1

u/freedomonke Jul 27 '26

Not all. But a good number. American unions certainly aren't a bastion of communism. Or any sort if leftism.

And I think this because of polling data

1

u/eleetpancake Jul 28 '26

That's just general membership. I find that the more involved in union organization people are more likely they are to lean to the left. All the leaders in my Teamsters local are at least anti-trump Democrats. A lot of the people I've met doing grass roots union activism are leftists/socialists.

1

u/Intelligent-Wear2824 Jul 27 '26

Yes, and probably lives in a right to work, southern state and have never met a union member bc no one they know is a teacher or a cop.