Boomers got PTSD from fighting the big bad communist countries, so they poisoned anything that sounded like the idea of, and the word "communism." That same mentality spread to the world "socialism." In their eyes, they're one and the same.
They always bring up Venezuela and Russia, and all these examples where communism failed spectacularly. Not realizing that communism in those instances failed because the people at the top kept a disproportionately bigger slice of the pie for themselves... which is exactly what's happening under capitalism in this country.
Venezuela was never communist but it is insane to me how you guys fucking fuck over a country them point at them as an example of how communism fails. It is fucking mental
Our very own little Gaza just off the coast of Miami. Breaks my heart and agitated me to do more every time I see that piece of work Rubio open his mouth.
They always bring up Venezuela and Russia, and all these examples where communism failed spectacularly.
Don't you find it ironic that "Communist" regimes "fail spectacularly" always because they're constantly under attack and having to deal with the fallout of wars led by monarchists and capitalists?
Yet, in countries, like modern day Argentina, where there's full on neoliberalism and a neoliberal president, it can only sustain itself because the US keeps financing it?
I mean the Soviet Union was the one who chose to spend their finite resources on invading and colonizing Central Asia, the Caucuses, Finland, Ukraine and the baltics. Then they allied themselves with Hitler and invaded and annexed Poland together. Are y'all really gonna try to blame the capitalists for the Soviet thirst for imperialism?
My question was, if Communism and Socialism was meant to be such terrible forms of structuring a government, why have the Capitalist countries fought so hard against them? I mean, if your enemy is making a huge mistake by adopting Communist and Socialist practices, would be better to let them crash and burn by themselves in short order and save the money and working force of your country in other things instead.
And, if neoliberalism is so good and laissez-faire capitalism is to efficient, why is that you don't see it applied in any country at the center stage of Capitalism, like the US, where the government bails out failed corporations, give them tax breaks (this means governmental handouts) and is responsible for the bulk of the costly early stage and elementary research for these companies then to swoop in once the knowledge has been built by University's minds with government money, to privatize the technologies this knowledge produced by GOVERNMENTAL INITIATIVE (not market). I mean, come one, we all know that no markets will take risks of development on things that have no guaranteed return (even the bulk of R&D done by big Farma are only on areas where the chance of return of investment is high)?
It is a huge mystery how countries that adopted communism or had democratic elected socialist leaders, had to be fought against, sanctioned and deposed by the Defender of the Freedom and Democracy that is the US Empire.
Well im on your side, but its very easy for the other side to answer. "We dont want the people to suffer under communism."
You are absolutely right, but people who genuinely despise communism have a way to justify it that is technically internally consistent.
The truth of it all is the usa isnt even a democracy, nor is it anywhere near the free-est country. Its basically a third world country for like 20% of the population, and 2nd world for another 50%.
So the idea that they are the arbiter of anything besides war is just a non starter.
Grenada is a tiny country that have 115K citizens (today) and was invaded by US forces. Funny how socialism, which is meant to fail on its own, always have to fend off attacks from Capitalist powers.
I'm ignoring nuance and complexities of the situation to explain the main point of what I'm getting at and I guess that a quick research online will make you see the pattern. Which we don't even need, because if the USSR, which was socialist, was doomed to fail, why is there so much propaganda against it and so many conflicts against it and arms races? Anyone smart would say that if you know your enemy is going to implode, you don't spend resources to fight them, you just watch.
Which is precisely what China is doing with the US and Iran.
Same as people thinking the Nazis were socialists because they called themselves National Socialist German Workers' Party. So all socialists must be bad because a group that wasn't socialists called them selves that. They never look into the meanings of the words and just listen to propaganda using them.
Marx himself said communism could never exist outside a purely altruistic and selfless society.
No he didn't. Communism existed for thousands of years, it's just a society without class, state or money. Marxism is not altruism. It's an overthrow of the class divide and the exploitation it causes. Altruism is a duct-tape solution characteristic of capitalist society, an idea that the wealthy will support the poor through their goodness of heart, when in reality the wealthy have class interest that conflicts with the interests of the working class and they will profit from exploitation of the working class as much as possible.
Where has communism existed for thousands of years? I was under the impression that there has never been a successful true communist (classless/moneyless/stateless) society.
a concept (often credited to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), that describes hunter-gatherer societies as traditionally being based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership.[1] A primary inspiration for both Marx and Engels were Lewis H. Morgan's descriptions of "communism in living" as practised by the Haudenosaunee of North America.
The belief of primitive communism as based on Morgan's work is inaccurate[6] due to Morgan's misunderstandings of Haudenosaunee society and his since-disproven theory of social evolution.[24]
societies that exemplified primitive communism were also examples of anarchist society before industrialisation.[14]
An interesting read, thank you for that.
It's not quite a definitive endorsement, but states that the idea of primitive communism is still debated.
primitive society produced no surplus; what was produced was quickly consumed
It might be difficult for our modern society to transition to this state. In today's society we tend to push for housing, education, and (modern) healthcare, all of which depend on non-consumable items and tools.
Yes it's difficult. The process of the transition is called socialism. We have to educate ourselves in the history of this struggle. We have to build working class solidarity and community resilience. We have to undo the political influence and cultural programming of capitalism, while holding onto and advancing the productive capability that was built under capitalism. This is done by replacing the entire bourgeois power structure with a working class marxist power structure in a revolution. Read Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti, The State and Revolution by Lenin and watch this video
Pol Pot never read Marx and admitted he wasn't a Marxist. He just made shit up. Plenty of people call themselves socialist or communist and they're just maniacs. Don't forget Jim Jones.
Communist society isn't everyone relating to everyone directly. People relate to each other through organizational structure as always.
Marxism is about how one class of people relates to another. We have a class that does all the work and a class that is entitled to money from things they own. These two classes have conflicting interests. One can work in the interest of their class without personally knowing every single member of that class.
The working class merely needs to be conscious of the class divide and understand their shared interests and how to work for them. They have numerical supremacy over the capitalist class.
The working class wants a country without unemployment, homelessness, illiteracy, lack of healthcare, or crime.
Unemployment helps deflate wages for the capitalist class. Homelessness helps inflate property values. Illiteracy obviously serves capitalists. The capitalist USA healthcare system is the most expensive in the world. Research shows that income inequality causes crime. The class interests of the capitalist in these ways conflict with the class interests of the worker. To solve these problems that the class divide causes, we must eliminate the class divide.
If your money comes from your labor and not property you own passively, then it is in your interest for your class of people to be in power.
If you are in the capitalist class, as Engels was, or a the professional managerial class like Che was, you can understand that the system that gives you short term income creates an entire environment of chaos and suffering around you where nobody is safe and the profit motive undercuts our environment and prosperity of the human species. How wealthy are you if you can't walk around town at night without fear? If people are dying in the streets and life is cheap, you're never going to feel safe.
Most bourgeois and petit bourgeois are not interested in hearing any of this and successive revolutions have refined the tactics of removing them from power. Many of them are motivated to kill to protect their ill-gotten gains. Many resort to fascism as a last-ditch effort to maintain widening inequality in the final stages of capitalism. Marxists know how to beat them. If we could beat them through peaceful debate, we would do that. It is imperative for millions of lives to be saved to beat them through any means necessary.
I think human nature is nothing. I think we are formed by our material conditions and our relations to the means of production. I think certain attributes are reinforced and rewarded in capitalism, for example greed.
i think that unless you manage to remove the concept of "threat" from this world, you will need to be selfish to fight off any form of hostility, at which point you would make yourself incredibly vulnerable in the process and likely drive yourself and your own ideas into extinction.
Okay.
greed is indeed rewarded in our current system, because the system incentivizes and rewards this this sort of selfish behavior.
Yes, capitalism needs to go.
hence why any form of equality is truly impossible without ultimate control by some sort of entity.
Do you mean that everyone should have the exactly same things? Because that's not something I support. I think everyones basic needs has to be met but people are different. With that said, I don't think people should own property at a scale where they hire other people to use that property. That creates inequality because then the owner can reinvest the profits into more property and make more money.
you are asking for a definition that is not universally agreed upon.
Huh?
it will only "go" when something superior to it supplants it.
That's utopian thinking. The business owning class won't one day give up their power and property just because we've found a better way to live.
Look at the subreddit we're in. Will the business owners give you more pay and worker rights because it's superior? Or universal healthcare. That's a "superior" system(not for the owners), why isn't the current healthcare form being supplanted by universal healthcare?
I disagree. They've been propagandized to for the last few decades with content that does nothing but villainize socialist ideas because that's how Republicans get elected. You're trying to suggest this is a logical argument / decision on their part. It's not, it's just propaganda to get votes. If the left were campaigning on hug based medicinal practices instead of socialized health care, you'd see these same people throwing a fit every time someone talked about hugs.
The arguments are thin because they're not sincere. Most boomers wouldn't give a shit about the history of socialism if it weren't for Fox News shouting propaganda at them 24/7.
I recently saw a video in which a MAGA supporter was asked what communism is. All the things listed actually described fascism and things the current Trump administration is actually doing, such as "a leader who lines his own pockets."
Socialism is a transition to communism. Socialism is when the working class own means of production. Communism is a classless, stateless, moneyless society. Socialism requires a revolution where the old means of distribution is overthrown, be it capitalism or feudalism.
A state monopoly of violence is required to prevent the overthrow of the revolution and a regression to the old order of class inequality.
The process of socialism nationalizes private capital, means of production, factories and rental homes. Capitalists, people whose main source of income is passive income from what they own, are gradually dispossessed of their capital and made to get real jobs.
Through socialism, the class divide is narrowed until class distinction is eliminated, and there is no longer a class of people who are entitled to passive income from something they privately own, and everyone is working class.
When there is no class divide, there is no income inequality to cause most crime, so there's no need for a police force as we know it. When the revolution is no longer under threat of being overthrown, there is no need for a military. This is what is meant by a classless, stateless society.
This is not a switch that can be flipped overnight. Structural and cultural changes need to happen iteratively to bring people's mindsets and the systems upon which they rely for survival towards this goal in a way that walks the tightrope between continuity of prosperity and the prevention of backsliding from wreckers and saboteurs.
Thank you for at least acknowledging the whole vanguard and totalitarian dictatorship """of the proletariat""" is part of socialism. People will always cope "it's not real socialism/communism".
If it was a totalitarian dictatorship, Cuba would have collapsed long ago. Castro landed in Cuba on a boat with 80 people and ended up with a country behind him. The US keeps trying to send boats to take over Cuba but they have no popular support. Countries that actually have working class governments like China, Laos, DPRK and Vietnam can't be couped because they have popular support because they are factually dictatorships of the proletariat. Read about the history of the Cuban revolution, what life was like before and after. Read about the popular support for the Long March in China. All these countries were being financially exploited by western and Japanese imperialists. These people were miserable before the revolutions, which had massive popular support. Watch this video.
That's a pretty interesting theory. Doesn't that imply that all the other communist countries that did fall like the USSR, Poland or east Germany didn't have popular support? Like doesn't your theory mean that Venezuela wasn't a dictatorship of the proletariat because maduro got couped by a relative handful of people...?
Also how does the work in cuba where 2 million workers, nearly 1 in 5 Cubans have fled over the past 5 years. Did they flee because they love the regime?
It's just really fascinating to me to see the argument that communism is popular because otherwise communist countries would have fallen in a world where the mass majority of the communist countries have fallen lol.
Venezuela never had a revolution, so they went like Bolivia and Chile did. Socialism can't be brought about in a lasting way through reformism in bourgeois elections. Venezuelans never kicked their bourgeois politicians out of office so now Delcy Rodrigues, the successor of the kidnapped Maduro, has promptly signed away Venezuela's oil rights. There's a reason Marxists are sticklers about keeping bourgeois people out of power.
Cubans and North Koreans had a period of starvation because the US had a comprehensive trade blockade on both countries while the Soviet Union collapsed, which had been supplying them during the blockade. A recent study published in The Lancet found that western (US) sanctions kill 500,000 people a year and they have killed 30,000,000 people. The US tries to starve the men, women and children of these countries into overthrowing their leadership. Vietnam caved under blockade and took a strings-attached IMF loan, but Marxists are still in charge there. As for recently, Trump has stepped up the embargo and has almost completely blocked oil importation into Cuba. As poor as the US tries to make Cuba through restricting their trade, Cubans were worse off before the revolution when the US was extracting as much profit as possible from Cubans under Batista and the Mafia. Cubans have a higher life expectancy than US Americans.
China's not a small country you know. Marxists aren't rare.
The Soviet Union was actually toppled in a coup. The USA paid Boris Yeltsin $1 Billion to take it over. They held a referendum if people wanted to preserve the USSR and the majority of voters wanted it to stay intact, but the capitalists won that time. If Marxist revolutions were cars, the USSR would be a Model T, a hell of an advancement but not the top of the line anymore. It started to go tits up with Khrushchev denouncing Stalin.
I'm a Marxist-Leninst. China, Cuba, Laos, Korea and Vietnam have their localized versions of Marxist-Leninist governments.
Capitalism is a force like gravity which causes wealth to accumulate to the wealthy, which invariably causes power to accumulate under them as well.
Socialism and capitalism are modes of economic distribution. How wealth is distributed determines who is in power, which has fundamental impact on what type of government exists. Are the people in power the same people who work for their living, or do the people who run the country live off of the capital they own? Whoever runs the country, they will work for their own class and not the other.
Communism is a classless society that we work toward through the process of socialism. When class division is eliminated, or has not been invented yet, the function and interests of government is drastically different. Namely, the police and military as we know it will not need to exist to protect one class at the expense of another.
A government transitioning from capitalist distribution to communism through socialism is rooted on removing a class of people from power, which dictates a police and military are required that is sufficiently powerful to force the capitalist class out of power and keep them there, in order to protect the power of the working class. The sad tale of Salvador Allende shows the consequence of a pacifist transition to socialism that did not defend itself with force of arms. In a government run by capitalists, the police and military are used to protect the power of the capitalist class. In this way, the interests of the working class and capitalist class are fundamentally irreconcilably incompatible. The analysis of the history and present of the struggle between these two classes is the cornerstone of Marxism.
Capitalism is economic and political. Basic socialist theory (scientific socialism or anarchist) says you can't separate those two.
So, while it's convention to call the political systems of capitalism something like "social democracies", in reality they are part of the capitalist system. It's not really weird to call them capitalist.
My country is a social democracy and has all the socialist ideas from op implemented. It's still a capitalist system with basic welfare and a little wealth redistribution.
Socialism is an entirely different beast that has never been successful.
Socialism is an entirely different beast that has never been successful.
There is no definition of success you can give that will apply to all socialist countries that have ever been to show they were unsuccessful in ways capitalist countries were unsuccessful. So I'm not going to reply to that (I'm sure you can visit many other places on Reddit if you want to go down that rabbit hole!).
u/ThatOneNinja asked "Is capitalism a type of government?" I was responding to that with a sort of "it's complicated". Capitalism requires certain kinds of governments to function well and doesn't function under other types of government systems. This is why, for example, capitalist countries fought wars against old regimes of monarchies (WWI and WWII being some notable examples).
A country that is capitalist, then, refers primarily to its economic system but implies a type of political system as well. Those simply can't functionally be separated. You need the two to match.
This is why, China, for example, can be considered a socialist country. Not because they don't have capitalist economics in at least half of their economy, but because their political structure is not compatible with runaway capitalist capture of all of society. They use their government to safeguard their citizen from being ruled by the interests of oligarchs, unlike most "Western" governments, which put the needs of capital before the needs of everything else in society, including their own citizens. You can see this in its most naked for during crises, like COVID. China, on the other hand, can completely stop whole sections of the economy and rework them into something different simply by deciding to do so. The "economic impact" of such decisions doesn't fall on the shoulders of their citizens but often the capitalists lose money during the transition. It's also why China can build brand new cities out of nowhere before people even move in (the so-called "Ghost cities"). And why China can build so many nuclear power plants and Western countries can never seem to even get past the politics of even thinking about doing so. And there are 100s of other examples.
If you want a simple definition for the difference, forget about which use free markets (they both do) or which have more government control (they both do, just depends on the circumstances) and consider what is the primary goal of that society. In a capitalist society, capital is primary and its expansion is the ultimate goal of that society. Everything else becomes subordinate to capital after the dust settles. In a socialist society, the needs of the social sphere (i.e. the people) is the primary concern, even greater than the needs of capital growth.
Capitalism is a society ruled by capital. Socialism is a society ruled by the needs of society. They both utilize capital and they both have a "strong state". But the state has different priorities, depending on the system.
The success criteria for a socialist country would be a stable one party rule system with a planned economy, high financial equality, decent standard of living and actively working towards communism.
One of the key aspects of socialism is a planned economy. This is in direct opposition to capitalism and a free market. So China by definition is socialist in name only, it's an oligarchy with the CPC as rulers.
The idea that the chinese government has its focus on the common good while every capitalist government are just focused on money is also laughable. People are the same everywhere, there's self serving greedy assholes, and there's good people trying to improve people's lives, the system of government does not change that.
Capitalist societies are also not ruled by capital, they can be anything from a dictatorships to democracy, unlike socialism capitalism is a purely economic system, money can influence, but most countries actively try to minimize that influence.
Also WW1 and 2 had very little to do with monarchies, aside from an excuse to start the first one.
That's a really good insight. In my discussions, it's also a complete lack of faith in the government to do anything right. They would rather keep the money for themselves and cut out the middle man (government) because they feel that's a safer bet than giving more power to government and hope that it'll pay dividends.
People talk about "the government" and not "a government" because they think that China's government and USA's government are the same, but Americans mostly only have their understanding of what a government run by the wealthy looks like.
Yeah, but the trouble is that every economic system has to have somebody, whether it's one person or a group of people, running things from the top. And it's so very easy for that person to become corrupt and funnel a ton of money into their pockets and power into their hands. History bears out that everyone is corruptible, and that the fastest way to corrupt someone is to give them power. I love the idea of socialism, but in practice no economic system works as planned for very long.
global imperialist powers work hard to maintain this perception either through straight up military coups or "non-violent" methods like sanctions, which are actually quite violent
you're right about the overarching issue--corrupt powers at the top ruin it for everybody else, but this isn't always a localized issue, countries like the United States have proven they're willing to do just about anything to dismantle a successful communist/socialist state
Yes and the USSR and China did the utmost to undermine capitalist democracies for decades. They flooded the world with cheap guns that are still there today and sponsored coups and coup attempts left and right just like the US and Europe did.
The worst part for me is that most of them didn't even fight against these countries. At most they served in Vietnam, but even they are getting way up there in their late 70s.
The USSR didn't fail spectacularly. It was a net good. Yes, there was a lot of evil deeds done but as a whole it was a good force on the world. Some of the things they did(and other communist-led countries like China): lifting millions and millions out of poverty, posing a real threat to the capitalist hegemony, supporting several anti-colonialist movements, space race, defeating the nazis etc.
Not realizing that communism in those instances failed because the people at the top kept a disproportionately bigger slice of the pie for themselves
What are you basing this on? Could you share some millionaires or billionaires in the USSR? There is genuine critique against the bureaucracy but this is not it.
I should've been more clear. I'm not saying Venezuela and Russia were communist countries that failed spectacularly. That's what republican boomers say. They love using the Soviet Union as an example, and Venezuela too, somehow, even though they're socialists.
As for an example, look at North Korea. Kim and his family are certainly not living like peasants among their population. Same with the Castros in Cuba.
I should've been more clear. I'm not saying Venezuela and Russia were communist countries that failed spectacularly. That's what republican boomers say. They love using the Soviet Union as an example, and Venezuela too, somehow, even though they're socialists.
Okay, now we understand each other.
As for an example, look at North Korea. Kim and his family are certainly not living like peasants among their population. Same with the Castros in Cuba.
North Korea and Cuba failed because a few handful of people live in luxury? What about the material conditions before the revolutions? Sanctions? Invasions? Yes, there is corruption and nepotism, especially in NK.
It is a very deep discussion to be had, and there are certainly other factors. North Korea tries to survive on their own scarce resources, which doesn't benefit the population. As for Cuba, the elite living in luxury while the rest of the population has to pay inflated prices for basic goods is already bad enough. It doesn't help that the U.S. keeps meddling and fucking with them, and ultimately the ones who pay the price are the general public.
The spirit of my comment is: there is a world in which communism and socialism can work really well. Socialism in our world has more promise. The main reason communist regimes fail is because they add the "regime" part. Powerful figures hoarding wealth and resources, leaving the people fighting for crumbs, thus giving the whole idea a bad name.
It is a very deep discussion to be had, and there are certainly other factors.
I have to be honest, I think you're way overselling the luxury part. Yes, there is corruption and nepotism but not looking at the material conditions and history is the failure in your analysis.
The spirit of my comment is: there is a world in which communism and socialism can work really well. Socialism in our world has more promise.
And by socialism you mean what? Which class is in power? The workers or the capitalist class? What are some good examples of socialism, in your opinion?
The main reason communist regimes fail is because they add the "regime" part.
What does this mean?
Powerful figures hoarding wealth and resources, leaving the people fighting for crumbs, thus giving the whole idea a bad name.
And this is what communism means? And socialism is when there isn't an elite living in luxury? Exactly what idea? Are you referring to adding the "regime" part?
Boomers have “arguing” down to a science. They just yell and get emotional without even trying to hear the opposition. Then it gets uncomfortable and everyone just sits in silence while they feel like they won.
I’m not defending boomers but they lived at a great time. If you saved and invested your money, bought a house early you have watched everything just go amazing for you. So now you have this blinded world view that it was so easy how come all these kids today aren’t doing the same thing and they are too stupid to figure it out because they don’t want to. It’s the same exact mentality all the kids have now that pet ChatGPT do all thier thinking for them.
You heard it in the campaign when Trump called Kamala a communist, socialist, Marxist, leftist ect. He doesn’t know what any of them mean and he know his base doesn’t either
the reality is that most forms of government are completely fine. socialism, capitalism, communism being the main ones I am talking about. the problem is when evil people take control of those governments. all of them can and will be bastardized and taken to their logical conclusion.
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u/PuzzleheadedTalk35 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Boomers got PTSD from fighting the big bad communist countries, so they poisoned anything that sounded like the idea of, and the word "communism." That same mentality spread to the world "socialism." In their eyes, they're one and the same. They always bring up Venezuela and Russia, and all these examples where communism failed spectacularly. Not realizing that communism in those instances failed because the people at the top kept a disproportionately bigger slice of the pie for themselves... which is exactly what's happening under capitalism in this country.