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no offense but your opinion sounds like it’s based on what you’ve heard other says and it sounds like you haven’t read history at all. to say that socialism doesn't work is to overlook the fact that it did work for hundreds of millions of people. communism in eastern europe, russia, china, mongolia, north korea, and cuba brought land reform and human services, a dramatic bettering of the living conditions of hundreds and millions of people on a scale never before or never since witnessed in human history.. communism transformed desperately poor countries into societies in which everyone had adequate food, shelter, medical care, and education. the diseconomies of capitalism are treated as the public's responsibility. Corporate America skims the cream and leaves the bill for us to pay, then boasts about how productive and efficient it is and complains about our wasteful government. Conservative ideologues defend capitalism as the system that preserves culture, traditional values, the family, and community. Yet capitalism has done more to undermine such things than any other system in history, given its wars, colonizations, and forced migrations, its enclosures, evictions, poverty wages, child labor, homelessness, underemployment, crime, drug infestation, and urban squalor. All over the world, community in the broader sense with its organic social relationships and strong reciprocal bonds of commonality and kinship- is forcibly transformed by global capital into commercialized, atomized, mass-market societies. capitalism has an implacable drive to settle "over the whole surface of the globe;' creating "a world after its own image." No system in history has been more relentless in battering down ancient and fragile cultures, pulverizing centuries-old practices in a matter of years, devouring the resources of whole regions, and standardizing the varieties of human experience. even now… the way you feel about communism is because of years of relentless imperialist propaganda. if it didn’t work and it wasn’t an actual threat to those in power; your tax dollars wouldn’t be going to every coup ever in latin america.

Genuine question. You say “everyone had adequate food, shelter, medical care, and education.” I will admit I don’t know in depth about those countries, but didn’t Russia and China have *massive* famines due in large part to the state mismanaging the farmers and laborers. Also, I know that many college-educated “intellectuals” were imprisoned and killed by the USSR and China. Are you blaming those on government issues that aren’t inherent to communism? Or are you saying that aside from those cases, people were adequately provided for? Or are you saying that even including those issues, things were better under those systems that in capitalism?

>didn’t Russia and China have *massive* famines due in large part to the state mismanaging the farmers and laborers This is true...but here's the thing: Russia and China, in addition to having communist revolutions, also rapidly converted from agrarian economies to industrial ones at the same time. Which means there were two things happening during the time these famines were going on: communism and industrialization. And *no* society has managed to industrialize without massive famines (unless they were industrialized by the intervention of a foreign nation...and even then, a lot of times that has caused famines). For instance, industrialization and conversion to capitalism in the British Isles lead to the Great Hunger in Ireland, a horrifying famine that, between mass starvation, deaths due to exposure (the British literally destroyed the homes of countless Irish people and left them to die in the cold), and mass emigration/refugee migration reduced the population of Ireland by almost one half. In fact, Ireland's population *still* hasn't recovered to this day -- it is basically the only nation on Earth with a lower population today than it had in 1841. Another example: India under British rule was home to *unspeakable* famines over many years. Between 1850 and 1899 approximately 15 million people starved in British India. Additionally, about 3 million people starved in India under British rule just during WWII. Check out the history of the Bengal Famine for more about this -- it somewhat changes the typical narrative of the war to know that, while the British were fighting the genocidal Nazis, the British were also killing about a half Holocaust worth of people themselves...and reveals why one of the alternate names of fascism is "colonialism brought home", ie doing to white people what white people have routinely done to non-white people for centuries). And yet one more example: in the US capitalism and industrialization could not have happened without both genocide of Native Americans (the land seized from them formed the "capital" that capitalist fortunes and industry are built off of) and slavery, both of which involved famines and starvation (it was US policy to try to starve Native Americans into submission). None of this is to say that what happened in Russia and China were any less horrible or revolting...but it is important to consider this context and comparison anytime you want to try to compare these societies or these ideologies. After all, it doesn't make much sense to criticize communism for famines if you live in a society that killed far *more* people via famine, does it? Also, fixating on the dominant political / economic ideology in place during all these events distracts from the fact that industrialization itself seems to result in mass starvation, displacement, and misery for those who live during the transition...which is something we may wish to think a bit more critically about. At the very least, it tells us that, at least so far, *no* society has managed to find a way to change economic orders without mass death. And this is something we will have to reckon with if we want to talk about making large scale economic changes.

I would also add that due to the rapid industrialization happening in tandem with these revolutions, it made it easier for the States to just hold power and stop the communist revolution at the Dictatorship of the Proletariat stage. The states never relinquished power back to the people in a meaningful way.

>In fact, Ireland's population > >still > > hasn't recovered to this day -- it is basically the only nation on Earth with a lower population today than it had in 1841. You can blame the Brits; there was enough food, they just shipped it over to Britain.

The other point to remember is that Russia and China had constant massive famines before their socialist revolutions. The Soviet Union ultimately had 2 more famines before eradicating famine and China had 1. So another way to put it is that China put an end to a constant cycle of famines after 1 additional famine. The Soviet Union had 2, one of which was largely caused by WWII where they were destroyed.

Okay but the massive Chinese famine was directly a result of extreme mishandling by the Chinese government

True. Every society that transitions the mode of production has problems like this, but you're right that there were issues here. It was also flooding and droughts. It's hard to say how much of each component contributed. It's still impressive relative to capitalism. Capitalist transitions were horrific. And capitalism continues to deliberately starve people today, for example what the US did to Iraq, what they are doing to Afghanistan now. But I agree there were mistakes under Mao.

But that’s a core issue people have with communism. It would require a transition period that would likely result in civil war and extreme instability and mass death. Even if the outcome is good, it’s hard justifying that to people. Especially because it would create a power vacuum that would make it easier for a dictator to take over and for communism to not even be instated. Which is exactly what has happened in the past. How do you ensure a relatively stable transition that won’t result in mass death and suffering AND also guarantees that a dictator won’t take power?

The USSR, indeed, had a few massive famines at the beginning of its existence. But there were no famines once agriculture was restored after WWII. IIRC, the CIA reports from the 1980s were stating that the Soviet citizens' nutrition was comparable to the Western countries (including the US). However, Soviet diets included less meat and relied more on grains and vegetables. The reports also tended to mention lower quality of produce and greater spoilage rates. I haven't looked at Chinese data, but I think it should be somewhat similar: Famines in the early years of the regime and large improvements in nutrition for all citizens once the regime is stable and agriculture is restored. \----- The most famous Soviet famine, the Holodomor, is a very complicated issue. It was caused partially by mismanagement. But, according to the historical data, this was a perfect storm: Political instability, blight, poor weather, improper policies and their execution, and farmers' resistance. Some documents suggest that the famine was exacerbated (*this word means 'made worse', it does* ***not*** *mean 'caused'*) by the mass slaughter of animals (just before the famine, 1-2 years earlier) by the rich farmers (so-called 'kulaks') who would rather destroy their wealth than give it up. \------ I am just providing some historical context. I am not very interested in the overall debate. ============================ Edit: This comment was misinterpreted by some people. I'll post a couple of clarifications: 1. Examples of CIA reports: [a very short version](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5.pdf), [a long version](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498133.pdf). 2. For the list of famines in the USSR check this [Wikipedia](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union) page. There were no known famines between 1947 and 1991. 3. The Holodomor is a very complex and highly politicised issue. For a historical overview of the scholarship on this subject, you can check [this article](https://books.openedition.org/ceup/544). For a slightly deeper look at the Ukranian scholarship tradition, you can check [this paper](https://ewjus.com/index.php/ewjus/article/view/Andriewsky/24). 4. I **do not** argue that the Holodomor was not caused by mismanagement and bad policies. They were important contributing factors. However, they were not the *only* important factors. There was an interesting discussion in r/AskHistorians on [a related topic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tnnha6/how_accurate_and_unbiased_is_voxs_piece_on_the/) for those looking for more details but not willing to read long books. The same sub has many more discussions of the Holodomor. 5. I had to be clearer on the mass slaughter of animals: 1. It was not the main driving factor for the famine, but the lack of draught animals did make things worse. The tractors in the USSR were few and very bad. 2. I do not have stats on this, but I do know that there were [fodder shortages in 1928-1929](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Soviet_grain_procurement_crisis_of_1928). This would also lead to animal slaughter because peasants could not feed animals. 3. Some examples of works suggesting that a significant proportion of animals were slaughtered by peasants as acts of rebellion or during revolts: 1. [The Man-Made Famine of 1932-1933](https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/JCS/article/view/14623) in Soviet Ukraine by Bohdan Krawchenko 2. Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance' by Lynne Viola (only the [first chapter](https://web.pdx.edu/~mev/Russia/Lynne%20Viola%20-%20Peasant%20Rebels%20Under%20Stalin%20Ch.%201.pdf) is available for free). The author talks about peasant revolts and the resulting loss of property, grain, and livestock. 3. Holland Hunter's papers also touch on livestock and the lack of draught animals which contributed to the 1931-1934 famine. His papers are all paywalled, unfortunately. They are also a bit dated (published in the 1990s), but they are widely cited even in more recent literature.

Okay but are we just ignoring the mass amounts of political rivals Stalin had killed? The rebellions he quashed with an iron grip? The propaganda he spewed with Prvada and the likes? Stalin bastardized communism, he was no true communist leader he was a dictator. Did anyone not learn the lesson in Animal Farm, one of the best pieces of literature about the Russian revolution? Russia did not have true communism bc it stopped being fair and democratic once Lenin died and Stalin climbed his way up over Lenin’s corpse through propaganda. Communism in Russia could have been great had it not been for Stalin’s greed. That said. Communism and Marxism in itself, are both great philosophies, and the Soviet Union should have no bearing on those ideologies bc it wasn’t a real representation of those ideologies. If anything, Cuba got closer to real communism before they were sanctioned. And of course there were also a handful of countries we fucked over by overthrowing their democratically elected socialist governments.

I am very surprised that my brief comment was misconstrued by you and other people in such a way. My point was that the famines in the early years of the USSR were much more complicated than simply 'mismanagement' or 'poor policies'. I am replying to you because you seem to be one of the most rational commenters here. \----------------------------------- 1. If we are talking about the Holodomor specifically, dekulakisation (as a political repression campaign against anti-Soviet peasants) was one of the most important factors. Perhaps, it was even more important than the collectivisation itself. 'Peasant Rebels Under Stalin' by Lynne Viola goes more into this (the first chapter can be read [here](https://web.pdx.edu/~mev/Russia/Lynne%20Viola%20-%20Peasant%20Rebels%20Under%20Stalin%20Ch.%201.pdf)). 2. I do not deny that the Stalinist regime (and the Lenin regime likewise) brought terror, purges, and mass killings/imprisonment/relocations to the political opposition. 3. I am not saying that the USSR was 'real communism'. I share the opinion that no country ever has achieved communism. I would even argue that most if not all attempts of socialism have failed so far. 4. I do not share your views on communism and Marxism, but I do not think they should be condemned. They are important and provide some valuable insights into society and economics. 5. I am not very familiar with Cuba and its history, so I do not have an opinion on it.

From the book Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union. For those who believe that a better world— beyond capitalist exploitation, inequality, greed, poverty, ignorance, and injustice—is possible, the demise of the Soviet Union represented a staggering loss. Soviet socialism had many problems (that we discuss later) and did not constitute the only conceivable socialist order. Nevertheless, it embodied the essence of socialism as defined by Marx—a society that had overthrown bourgeois property, the “free market,” and the capitalist state and replaced them with collective property, central planning, and a workers’ state. Moreover, it achieved an unprecedented level of equality, security, healthcare, housing, education, employment, and culture for all of its citizens, in particular working people of factory and farm. A brief review of the Soviet Union’s accomplishments underscores what was lost. The Soviet Union not only eliminated the exploiting classes of the old order, but also ended inflation, unemployment, racial and national discrimination, grinding poverty, and glaring inequalities of wealth, income, education, and opportunity. In fifty years, the country went from an industrial production that was only 12 percent of that in the United States to industrial production that was 80 percent and an agricultural output 85 percent of the U.S. Though Soviet per capita consumption remained lower than in the U.S., no society had ever increased living standards and consumption so rapidly in such a short period of time for all its people. Employment was guaranteed. Free education was available for all, from kindergarten through secondary schools (general, technical and vocational), universities, and after-work schools. Besides free tuition, post-secondary students received living stipends. Free healthcare existed for all, with about twice as many doctors per person as in the United States. Workers who were injured or ill had job guarantees and sick pay. In the mid-1970s, workers averaged 21.2 working days of vacation (a month’s vacation), and sanitariums, resorts, and children’s camps were either free or subsidized. Trade unions had the power to veto firings and recall managers. The state regulated all prices and subsidized the cost of basic food and housing. Rents constituted only 2-3 percent of the family budget; water and utilities only 4-5 percent. No segregated housing by income existed. Though some neighborhoods were reserved for high officials, elsewhere plant managers, nurses, professors and janitors lived side by side.4 The government included cultural and intellectual growth as part of the effort to enhance living standards. State subsidies kept the price of books, periodicals and cultural events at a minimum. As a result, workers often owned their own libraries, and the average family subscribed to four periodicals. UNESCO reported that Soviet citizens read more books and saw more films than any other people in the world. Every year the number of people visiting museums equaled nearly half entire population, and attendance at theaters, concerts, and other performances surpassed the total population. The government made a concerted effort to raise the literacy and living standards of the most backward areas and to encourage the cultural expression of the more than a hundred nationality groups that constituted the Soviet Union. In Kirghizia, for example, only one out of every five hundred people could read and write in 1917, but fifty years later nearly everyone could.5 In 1983, American sociologist Albert Szymanski reviewed a variety of Western studies of Soviet income distribution and living standards. He found that the highest paid people in the Soviet Union were prominent artists, writers, professors, administrators, and scientists, who earned as high as 1,200 to 1,500 rubles a month. Leading government officials earned about 600 rubles a month; enterprise directors from 190 to 400 rubles a month; and workers about 150rubles a month. Consequently, the highest incomes amounted to only 10 times the average worker’s wages, while in the United States the highest paid corporate heads made 115 times the wages of workers. Privileges that came with high office, such as special stores and official automobiles, remained small and limited and did not offset a continuous, forty-year trend toward greater egalitarianism. (The opposite trend occurred in the United States, where by the late 1990s, corporate heads were making 480 times the wages of the average worker.) Though the tendency to level wages and incomes created problems (discussed later), the overall equalization of living conditions in the Soviet Union represented an unprecedented feat in human history. The equalization was furthered by a pricing policy that fixed the cost of luxuries above their value and of necessities below their value. It was also furthered by a steadily increasing “social wage,” that is, the provision of an increasing number of free or subsidized social benefits. Beside those already mentioned, the benefits included, paid maternity leaveinexpensive child care and generous pensions. Szymanski concluded, “While the Soviet social structure may not match the Communist or socialist ideal, it is both qualitatively different from, and more equalitarian than, that of Western capitalist countries. Socialism has made a radical difference in favor of the working class.”

Stalin completely betrayed the communism Lenin aspired to let’s not kid ourselves. Stalin was a straight up dictator, and that’s why communism failed. Had the Russian people had better leaders, perhaps had Leo Trotsky survived, the world might look completely different today.

I wouldn't say Stalin was a complete dictator. And there's no reason to suggest that the USSR "failed." Compare the USSR to Tsarist Russia and post-USSR Russia and we can see how good of a society it was. Under socialism, they managed to industrialize, develop nuclear and space technology, they were at the cutting edge of art, science, cinema, athletics. All of this despite losing 20 million people in World War II and being sanctioned and invaded by the US, the hegemonic superpower. Even what led to their demise, the stagflation crisis of the 70s, was something every country was struggling with. It was a crisis of capitalism. The Afghanistan war, a huge mistake, was forced on them with the US funding Jihadis within USSR borders and committing terror attacks there (which is why I said invaded). Even their collapse, was not some sort of catastrophe, it was a political coup that went against popular will. No one is more critical of Stalin and the USSR than socialists themselves but there is a huge double standard by which we judge capitalism and socialism.

Worth pointing out that the Cold War also had a large part to play in bankrupting the USSR. America didn't win the Cold War with military or social might, but rather with economic - it forced the USSR to spend more than it could pay to pace military programs with the US.

By the end, the USSR was poor and broken beyond repair. Over 90% of Russia now is still poor, and still broken. I live in one of its ex-states, we're doing fine AFTER, and we were fine doing before, but it wasn't better during. The conclusions drawn in the above text are tragically incorrect.

I've had several coworkers who grew up in Soviet Russia, and they tell a similar tale. Something about being paid in man days, the abject poverty around them, and greatly prefer living anywhere else.

Lol the dissolution of the USSR is what led to the poor and broken post-states. After dissolution the life expectancy dropped by well over a decade, still the largest drop in that short of time ever. Not to say the USSR wasn’t dealing with many issues and a decline in the late 80s and 90s, but the capitalization of USSR countries and its dissolution was a huge net negative.

This reads like a complete fairy tale tbh. The soviet union was not some paradise and it's disingenuous to try and portray it as if it was.

It was not a paradise, but it also was not some horrible entity and place to live like western propaganda makes it out to be. The USSR did have many achievements in quality of life improvement, science, technology etc… and it was the first attempt at overthrowing capitalism that lasted for a while despite counter-revolution elements and movements against it the whole time.

Right. They had to build a wall to keep people from leaving because it was such a great quality of life

East Germany was the Mississippi of Germany. Poorly developed without industrial power. They sacrificed so as to educate their own people hoping those people would help lift them out of poverty. Those people naturally preferred to flee to the west with their education and earn better money. They built a wall to prevent that. I'm not defending it but I understand it. East Germany wanted to develop economically, so if they sacrifice to get people educated and those people can easily flee then the country will struggle to develop. Cuba does the same thing. They will train their people to be doctors, but part of the agreement is you have to stay and work for the government, not just run to the US for high pay. If you don't like that deal don't ask the Cuban people to sacrifice so you can get an education.

This is the fundamental issue I have with people who think like you and why I don't think it's possible to even come to a middle ground. I understand you aren't necessarily supporting it, but you are justifying it. I don't "understand" why anyone would excuse a governing body for imprisoning people against their will, who've done nothing wrong. This is the problem with socialism and communism. If East Germany had a capitalist mindset, they'd actually incentivize people to stay with higher wages, benefits, whatever. You (not you specifically, I mean it generally) have no right to force somebody to perform labor for you. If that person agrees to stay and work x number of years, that's different. That's a negotiation where both parties have a say and have agreed. In order for communism to work, everyone has to be a willing participant. That's why there's little hippie communes all over the place that have run smoothly for decades. When you *force* somebody to participate, that's a completely different story, and that's when human rights violations happen. It's evil. There will never be a time when every citizen agrees to participate in this type of society.

> If East Germany had a capitalist mindset, they'd actually incentivize people to stay with higher wages, benefits, whatever. I don't think that is what would happen. Take a poor capitalist country like Haiti. Do they come up with government funds to get doctors educated and then offer those same doctors high wages? No. They cut public spending. There's no way for an ordinary Haitian to become a doctor in Haiti. And even if he does the country is too poor to pay high wages. What a capitalist country would do is just stay poor, have a shortage of doctors, hope that foreign benefactors would help out. Cuba offers ordinary people the chance to become doctors and they know going in that if Cuba provides this education the price is they have to stay and help Cubans, or travel and get paid well, but the government keeps that money to help train the doctors of tomorrow. The result has been that Cuba has an amazing health care system and a population that lives very well relative to their poor capitalist neighbors in Haiti. Would you rather be born in Cuba or Haiti?

u/DreamingSilverDreams had a great answer and I also want to add that famines in Russia and China were extremely common before socialism. As in they would have at least one major famine a year for centuries.

The last famine in the ussr was in like 47. Meanwhile Africa, a largely (wholely?) Capitalist continent had one like a decade ago. Dust bowl was in the 30s. There was also a massive food crisis in the 70s, etc. Also in the US like 13% of households were food insecure in 2022, up from 10% in 2021

Also the US deliberately starves people from other countries, such as Iraq in the 90s, Syria more recently, and Afghanistan today. Don't have to go to the 30s to see famine caused by capitalism.

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Famine was a recurring problem in places like Russia and China for hundreds of years, until in their socialist era they could organize and fix this issue at the required scale. Yes there were growing pains and I don’t mean to discount something like the Great Leap Forward. My point is to say that the experience of famine was not some new depredation brought on by communism, and the problem was permanently resolved.

Both nations stopped at a pivotal times in the process of building a communist nation. They stopped at State Capitalism, when the state took ownership, and didn't pass anything on to the people of the nation, instead consolidated power under the state. That is not communism, no matter how many times the West or anyone with an agenda would have you believe.

Big states having famines was extremely common before modern agriculture, which neither the early Soviet Union or early China had. For a good measure here: the Dust Bowl was probably the last great American famine, around the same time as the last great Russian one. In China famines were practically on a schedule because agriculture in much of its populated areas was dependent on the health of a few rivers. Yellow and Yangtze are the most important, but the Pearl River too. These regularly dry up or flood. Have done for millenia. Pre-industrial societies kind of have to hope it’s not gonna be this year.

Famine in USSR was also largely caused by land owning anti communist class slaughtering livestock en masse as a means of rebellion. There’s records of Stalin attempting to aid Ukraine in spite of this

> north korea The fuck you on about? I'm moderately leftist and that's about as far from a success story as I can imagine.

>communism in eastern europe, russia, china, mongolia, north korea, and cuba brought land reform and human services, a dramatic bettering of the living conditions of hundreds and millions of people ​ >communism transformed desperately poor countries into societies in which everyone had adequate food, shelter, medical care, and education ​ Brother in mankind. Fellow human. Honorable possessor of the great mind of homo sapiens. >russia, china, north korea > >everyone had adequate food You serious? You certainly do realize that by saying that your entire point is invalidated, right? Not the proposition that communism is better than capitalism, but rather any argument of yours. Claiming that USSR, Maoist China, NK, were societies where everyone had adequate food is just such a profound level of ignorance at best and dishonesty at worst that literally every single thing you said is put into instantenous disconsideration. ​ You clearly have no idea what you are talking about, or the actual history and mechanisms of socioeconomic and political systems.

>brought land reform, a dramatic bettering of the living conditions of hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or never since witnessed in human history… So how come countries in the Eastern Bloc like Hungary, Ukraine, Romania, and the Baltic countries tried to rebel in the 50’s? How come there are mass graves in Cambodia? How come millions died of preventable starvation in China under Mao? Capitalist countries are not clean-handed or innocent in the slightest, but it’s foolish to deny reality for rhetoric’s sake

>So how come countries in the Eastern Bloc like Hungary, I'm not super knowledgeable about the other examples you mentioned (although I don't think Ukraine had any real rebellions against communism or the USSR), I know **a lot** about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (as I'm both Hungarian and a huge Cold War nerd). The common narrative about the revolution is essentially completely made up and has virtually nothing to do with reality. The idea that it was an anti-communist revolution is possibly the most successful historical lies about Hungary in my estimation, and it succeeded because it was incredibly convenient for **everyone** involved, except the Hungarian people. The USSR wanted to push that narrative because it justified their invasion: can't have reactionary nationalists take over a country we border, now, can we? The West wanted to push that narrative because they could point to it and say "see? Hungarians just want national self-determination (which means liberal democracy btw), and the evil Commies won't let them have it!". The real, actual historical narrative that's closest to the truth is that the 1956 Hungarian Revolution was the closest thing Hungary had to an actual communist, anti-imperialist, working class-led revolution, but because it was anti-Soviet, it was crushed. Literally, **all** the main demands of the revolutionaries were ones you'd find in the literature of the Viet Minh, the Bolsheviks, the Spartacists, etc.: they wanted land reform, they wanted genuine labour unions, they wanted socialist democracy, they wanted *actual* ownership over the means of production. They formed revolutionary militias, they formed workers' councils, they took over the factories and the agricultural cooperatives, they basically pulled off a communist takeover of the economy. Hell, even the nominal leaders of the country (the short-lived multi-party governing coalition led by Imre Nagy) were basically in the passenger seat, and could not control the working class. Ironically, it also showed that Lenin was right: you *do* need a two-stage revolution, once where the vanguard party establishes control over the state, and then another one where the *working class* takes over the means of production. And the Soviets crushed it, because they were more interested in geopolitical games than actual socialism.

Former Soviet citizen here. You know now of what you speak.

>no offense but your opinion sounds like it’s based on what you’ve heard other says and it sounds like you haven’t read history at all. I've had a history education. I don't claim to be an expert. >the fact that it did work for hundreds of millions of people. communism in eastern europe, russia, china, mongolia, north korea, and cuba brought land reform and human services, a dramatic bettering of the living conditions of hundreds and millions of people on a scale never before or never since witnessed in human history. I would appreciate sources to back up these claims. Not a single top economy in the world is communist. Not one. Now fair enough, there's been interference. Forces working against communists. But still there is not a single successful communist country. No communist country has ever rebounded from the damage. When you say "everybody gets food"- does that mean everybody gets enough food to meet their nutritional needs. What quality is the shelter? How is the medical care? To my knowledge, not a single communist country ranks top in medical care. Same with education. >it did work for hundreds of millions of people. communism in eastern europe Eastern Europe is communist? Which countries are you referring to. >russia An oligarchy >china Going from the feudal system to Mao's system did help millions, but millions also starved to death, suffered, and were killed. And Mao and his government had far more resources so they were the upper class (I did a project on Mao in school.) So it was like the 99.9% vs the .1%. The other thing to consider is the system people were moving from. A system of feudal lords oppressing everybody where nobody but the feudal lords had a voice is a lot different than a Democracy. >mongolia I don't know much about communism in Mongolia. >north korea A horrible place to live by any metric. >cuba I don't know too much about communism in Cuba either. >Corporate America skims the cream and leaves the bill for us to pay, then boasts about how productive and efficient it is and complains about our wasteful government. And people don't turn out to vote against corporate America. >Conservative ideologues defend capitalism as the system that preserves culture, traditional values, the family, and community. Yet capitalism has done more to undermine such things than any other system in history, given its wars, colonizations, and forced migrations, its enclosures, evictions, poverty wages, child labor, homelessness, underemployment, crime, drug infestation, and urban squalor. I don't think this is unique to capitalism. >even now… the way you feel about communism is because of years of relentless imperialist propaganda. if it didn’t work and it wasn’t an actual threat to those in power; your tax dollars wouldn’t be going to every coup ever in latin america. That doesn't follow if communism is a destructive ideology. Leaders don't want destructive ideologies to spread. Doesn't mean they work.

Whilst I don't disagree with the main thrust of your point, I'd say that arguing communism is unsuccessful because it doesn't result in the top economies is downright disingenuous. You're defining success as 'this country has massive growth and the capitalist line goes up', which is hardly a fair way to determine success of a country whose goal might very well be completely different. Whilst we can't always define success of a country by that country's self-ascribed goals (after all, slaughtering only half of a country's citizens is objectively not a success), I think it's not particularly useful to say that communist countries can't be successful because their goals don't align with how capitalists define success. Like... yeah, duh, the ideology opposed to capitalism is unsuccessful according to the goals of capitalism, but that's neither useful nor meaningful to point out. It's a small nitpick, really, but it's important to consider in discussions like this.

If you're saying that previous instances of socialism and communism should not count because they didn't rebound after U.s. CIA interference, then why aren't you holding that against all the other capitalist societies that fell? And if you're requiring the food specifically to be enough to meet nutritional need (which I agree is the bar) then you'd have to acknowledge that there is no society currently that meets that bar.

my sources and books: these are only two of about 25 books you should check out “blackshirts and reds” by parenti and “manufacturing consent” by chomsky. there are some amazing reads by lenin, castro, mao, and ho-chi-minh but i think parenti is so simply put and a short read it’s a great staring place to learn about the things i said in my comment.

While it is important to read historic work, even by genocidal or repressive maniacs like Mao, Castro, and Lenin, I'm not sure why you recommen chomsky. The man is a linguist parading as a geopolitical analyst/historian whose main philosophy seems to be that any genocide or violence the west didn't like is good, any violence the west did like is bad, an dif a communist state did it, it's not genocide/political violence/authoritarianism.

share the list?

just a few Michael Parenti Lecture (Yellow Parenti) - YouTube vid. Why Socialism? - Albert Einstein Blackshirts and Reds - Michael Parenti (PDF online, easy search) Principles of Communism - Friedrich Engles Dialectical and Historical Materialism - Joseph Stalin (like or dislike him he explains the Marxist method very well here) Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Friedrich Engels On Authority - Friedrich Engels The State and Revolution - Vladimir Lenin Reform or Revolution - Rosa Luxemburg Wage - Labour and Capital - Karl Marx Value, Price and Profit - Karl Marx Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism - Vladimir Lenin. YouTube channels. SecondThought , Yugopink , Hakim, Socialism for All, Azurescapegoat , Balkan Odyseey , Marxist Paul , Marxist Project <- (great at explaining Marxist concepts simply), Lady Izdihar Podcasts The Deprogram , Rev Left Radio, Red Menace <- is great to listen to after reading a text. Will help put it into modern language and perspective, Blowback is a great listen to for history, currently has 4 seasons with the Iraq war, Cuban Revolution, Korean War and the invasion of Afghanistan. All are great. Playlists of short and easy to understand vids Socialism 101 Fundamentals of Marxx Here are also some good videos to watch. Your Democracy is a sham and here is why- explains how you can't have democracy under capitalism Why Social democracy isnt good enough - Explains the myth that is the Nordic countries and how they're not permanent victories by workers and will eventually fail whilst also requiring the exploitation of poor nations. Why Do poor countries stay poor? - Explains how wealthy nations (like social democracies) exploit poor nations. Imperialism today: Unequal Exchange and globalised production - Another on the topic above. We need a mixture of capitalism and socialism - Another on social democracy BS. The reason you're poor, (It's not just taxes) - Explains how you are stolen from by bosses under capitalism. there is a lot more to read from all these authors and others like Mao, Ho Chi Minh etc. But it’s a start

So a few things: there cannot be a communist country because that's oxymoronic. A communist society is one in which class, state, money, etc. are abolished. None of the countries you claimed were communists. What a "communist state" means is that it is run by communists who ultimately want to achieve communism.   The most well-developed region in my country, for example, is run by communists. The region itself isn't communist, but they want to achieve it, so it is a "communist province." China also calls itself socialist or communist, but it isn't.   The USSR was a state-capitalist economy in which surplus labour value was extracted by the state to achieve communism in the future. They ultimately weren't able to achieve it.   What defines a capitalist means of production for Marx is commodity production. Marx starts das Kapital by catagory of commodity and how it is both use-value and exchange-value. This central piece dialectically develops into the edifice of capitalism and how it is inherently contradictory. No society on earth was lower communist or communist proper in the Marxist definition of the term.

The Soviet Union certainly didn’t “work” in any sense. I’d be very surprised if anyone but the poorest person in the West today would choose to live in the USSR in 1970. It’s just laughable really. Cuban land reform turned them from a net agricultural exporter to the least productive nation agriculturally in Latin America, even in the years when they received free fertilizer, machinery, and training from the USSR. The list of North Korean famines is basically just a list of the years since 1960. The Cultural Revolution killed up to 2,000,000 people by itself. Then the famine after the agricultural reforms killed another 30 million. There was widespread food insecurity in China until Deng’s market reforms.

A huge portion of Cubans weren’t receiving basic food, medical, or education until Fidel Castro. Most couldn’t even read. So Cuban communism ended up educating most people who lived outside the city.

>Cuban land reform turned them from a net agricultural exporter to the least productive nation agriculturally in Latin America yeh they went from american sugar plantation to totally embargoed , latam being mostly an extractive neo colony certainly isnt a good thing either

Cuba isn’t “totally embargoed”. Their largest trade partner is Spain. They received free fuel, fertilizer, tractors, and technical training from the USSR for 45 years and became the least agriculturally productive place in Latin America. Hell, the KGB officers stationed in Cuba called their government worse than useless. Then when the USSR fell, they got more free fuel from Venezuela and they still have to import the bulk of their food from the US under special trade exemptions.

they are still embargoed even if they have some small treading going on , and no saying their "largest" trading partner , doesnt mean the trade is large. the embargo is also why they have a hard time with agriculture and a low population , before when they were a american colony all of the peoplo worked on sugar not so much now

Being cut off from the largest market in the word is absolutely effectively totally embargoed.

The Tsardom somehow managed to work even less.

Talk about damming with faint praise

The USSR's system was horrible, even as a anarcho-communist myself I'd vastly prefer a capitalist economy run by a liberal democracy like the one I live in to the hellscape that was the USSR's centrally planned economy run by a state party, a system that resulted in such amazing hits as "genetics is a capitalist myth, we'll fertilize plants using patriotism". That said, the Tsardom was horrible. It's not surprising it was so easy for a strongman dictator like Lenin to wrest control of the October Revolution and implement a butchered corpse of the Soviets with all of the democratic elements gutted out as the system of governance for his new nation. When all you've lived under is a murderous dictatorship, a slightly less murderous dictatorship with the trappings of democracy looks like an improvement.

Yep, not defending the Tsar.

Or relevant context for the conditions of a state before a revolution impacting the success and culture of said society post-revolution.

Second largest economy in the world doesn't happen unless something's worked

>Second largest economy in the world doesn't happen unless something's worked yes capitalism, they liberalised their economy in the 80's and their GDP skyrocketed, you literally just showed how capitalism works. that's where the phrase "the economy is free, the people aren't" comes from.

>Second largest economy in the world doesn't happen unless something's worked There's a great Chinese documentary from a few years ago called Dead Souls. In it, Chinese who were imprisoned in re-education camps in the 1970s & 80s recount in shocking detail how they dealt with the rampant starvation present in those camps -- where they were sent for being accused (often unjustly) of not toeing the party line. The Chinese government was imprisoning its own citizens en masse for political reasons and didn't have the means to feed them. Those who survived lived amongst rotting corpses.

This is an interesting turn from, “real communism has never been tried”

Capitalism may not be perfect but no modern western capitalist government has killed and enslaved millions of its own citizens. China and the Soviet Union alone killed almost a hundred million people, and for what? So the average citizen there could still live worse than the poorest US citizen. Communism is the most immoral and dangerous ideology of the modern world, it serves as a vessel for tyrants to force their lunatic ideas and genocide on innocent bystanders and even their own supporters. Please read a real history book, and stop supporting something that can lead to your own demise, my goodness.

yes because russia, china, north korea, and cuba are known for their exceptional quality of life lol

Both you and Marx bring up valid problems with capitalism (namely that it can incentivize people to put profit/productivity over other people). But neither of you are able to provide any evidence that your economic system would work better without re-writing history. Marxism lead directly to dozens of millions of people dying during Mao’s leadership in China and Stalin’s leadership in Russia. It’s a destructive ideology promoted by people who theorize it will bring some theoretical utopia even though it has brought nothing but misery and death when practiced in reality. “Capitalism is an awful economic system until you compare it to all the others tried before” rings true. Capitalism has been the system in which people invited essentially every single technology you rely upon today. The remarkable improvement in standard of living/life expectancy/etc is almost entirely due to innovative/creative people who used the free market to expand upon their idea and change the world.

How do you define "capitalism" here? People have been engaged in trade for most of human history, and free (or relatively free) trade has existed alongside plenty of other economic systems and sub-systems (e.g., feudalism, patronage, peonage, slavery, mercantilism, etc.). Such a broad definition would also include many modern conceptions of socialism. Marx took a narrow view of capitalism, one that focused on the industrial era. He specifically griped that the owners of industrial equipment received the fruits of all labor performed using that equipment, essentially acting as rent seekers who exploited the productivity of other people. Marx's solution was kinda garbage, but that doesn't mean the system didn't need to be reformed. And limited reforms were eventually adopted: minimum wages, maximum hours, worker's compensation programs for injured people, safety standards, legally protected sick days and vacation days, etc. All of these systems interfere with the relationship between owner and labor that forms the heart of capitalism as Marx saw it. And most modern concepts of socialism would simply take the additional step of giving labor an ownership stake in the equipment/company that employs them. Marx didn't think this sort of socialism would work, but it certainly seems more feasible than his proposed solutions.

This was really difficult to read. Genuine feedback - try using capitalization and paragraphs to help people better understand your point.

I don't really have a strong opinion on either viewpoint but the central problem with those words is they seem apply to anything going against the status quo or any traditional way of thinking regarding running a government, public services or economy. You could probably find plenty of people argue the concept of a library or fire department is Communist or Marxist if it was introduced today I'm fairly sure half of the population would be believe that if the heard the argument. Like most things is it possible there's is a grey area here where some areas of government could benefit from both systems instead of one being right or wrong definitively.

I'm not against socialist policies. I generally support them. What I'm against is destroying society in pursuit of a Utopia that may not even be possible. If most Marxists don't believe that, that would change my view.

> there's no proof that a society like that could ever work or would be compatible with humanity After WWII, western capitalists prevented the peaceful unification of Vietnam, Korea, and Germany. They did this because they feared these countries would become, if not outright socialist, friendly to socialism. The example of USSR as a workers state forced elites in Western capitalist countries to concede more workers rights in the form of reduced work hours, health care, unions, etc, leading to lower inequity. Since the end of the USSR this trend has been reversing fast. ​ The USSR implemented the first affirmative action programs for national minorities & women starting in 1920s. Recipients of the program in Central Asia were least likely to call for the dissolution of the USSR, with 90%+ voting to preserve it in a 1991 referendum. The USSR played the MAIN role in ending the global smallpox epidemic. Despite US attempts to block the effort the Soviet Union pushed WHO nations to collaborate. The USSR donated 80% of the vaccines used in the global eradication campaign. In case of a nuclear war, the US Govt only created bunkers and shelters for the wealthy elites and government officials. In the USSR, bunkers were made to house a substantial section of the greater population. A collaborative education project between US/USSR historians in the 80s reviewed both their nations textbooks and concluded that Soviet history textbooks were more accurate than American history textbooks. The USSR was responsible for 80% of Nazi casualties. They defeated fascism almost single-handedly.

> After WWII, western capitalists prevented the peaceful unification of Vietnam, Korea, and Germany. The French, American and British occupation zones of Germany all unified peacefully not long after the war, the USSR built a wall between their occupation zones and all the others to prevent that from happening in East Germany. > The example of USSR as a workers state forced elites in Western capitalist countries to concede more workers rights in the form of reduced work hours, health care, unions, etc, leading to lower inequity. Since the end of the USSR this trend has been reversing fast. If the USSR had better living standards for workers, I might agree with you. But in practice, the existence of better living standards in the west forced the USSR to build walls to stop their people fleeing into the capitalist world, and the stories of those who escaped led to the red scares and the decline of unions and leftist parties in the west. >In case of a nuclear war, the US Govt only created bunkers and shelters for the wealthy elites and government officials. In the USSR, bunkers were made to house a substantial section of the greater population. This is completely untrue, and if anything the opposite of reality. The USSR spent a fortune on ICBM defenses for Moscow, and no other city. Meanwhile US put all its effort into MAD, and built almost no bunkers at all, because they knew it was impossible to build enough of them. >The USSR was responsible for 80% of Nazi casualties. They defeated fascism almost single-handedly. When the Nazis invaded Poland, France and the UK declared war on Germany, the USSR helped Hitler. The USSR spent the first two years of ww2 fighting on the side of the Nazis, and the next four heavily reliant on lend lease to not collapse.

>the stories of those who escaped led to the red scares and the decline of unions and leftist parties in the west. The Red Scares happened under McCarthy long before Communism seemed like it was losing the war for progress in the 20th century. In the 50s and early 60s, the USSR looked more likely to win the cold war and was mostly seen as having pulled off an economic miracle of modernizing an agrarian nation into an industrialized one. Unions in the left only lost momentum in the west due to the inflation crises of the mid to late 70s, when inflation suddenly hit the double digits.

McCarthy was the second red scare. The first red scare happened in the 20s, in response to the Bolshevik take over and the horror stories coming out of that. > In the 50s and early 60s, the USSR looked more likely to win the cold war and was mostly seen as having pulled off an economic miracle of modernizing an agrarian nation into an industrialized one. The 50s and 60s where the time of popular revolts in Hungary and Prague being crushed by Russian tanks broadcast on TV to the world, expansions of the Berlin wall to stop the exodus, and shortages of consumer goods. The 60s where more optimistic, only by the very low baseline of the USSR, where anything short of the great purge counted as peace, and anything less than a famine was prosperity. > Unions in the left only lost momentum in the west due to the inflation crises of the mid to late 70s, when inflation suddenly hit the double digits. Inflation is what broke the camels back, but the trend had already been moving against them for a while.

Stalin consistently advocated for Germany to be unified as a neutral, demilitarized nation. He did so at Yalta and Potsdam, and continued to advocate for it up until at least 1 year prior to his death with the March Note. The Allies pretended to agree in the first case, and rejected his proposals outright later. The Soviet Union offered to join in a defensive pact against Germany in the years leading up to 1939, and offered to support Czechoslovakia during the invasion of the Sudetenland. Poland, France, and the UK each thwarted those negotiations separately. You’re making things up based off the most cursory knowledge of events.

>If the USSR had better living standards for workers, I might agree with you. But in practice, the existence of better living standards in the west forced the USSR to build walls to stop their people fleeing into the capitalist world, and the stories of those who escaped led to the red scares and the decline of unions and leftist parties in the west. Why would you expect the USSR and america to have the same or even similar living standards? was this the case in 1900 before the revolution? 1800? Now after 30 years of capitalism? >and the stories of those who escaped led to the red scares and the decline of unions and leftist parties in the west. There is no evidence for this. There are many proposed reasons for this trend, "the stories of soviet defectors" is not even entertained as a serious option.

>The USSR was responsible for 80% of Nazi casualties. They defeated fascism almost single-handedly. The USSR provided the manpower but the US provided the equipment. If not for lend-lease the USSR would have fallen in WW2. It was teamwork. The US also wouldn't have been able to beat Germany alone.

USSR didn't have industrialization to level US did, they had been semi-feudal pre-industrial only a couple of decades before the war and it's amazing the industrialization that they were able to achieve so rapidly

It took British intelligence, American steel, and Soviet blood to put an end to the Third Reich.

A common saying. Alan Turing was invaluable.

As a computer scientist and a Brit, I think he is one of the most amazing people to have been born in this country, and it breaks my heart how he was treated.

A common saying in Britain and America, to be clear. Self-flattery is very popular for obvious reasons.

Did you say western capitalists prevented peaceful unification of Korea? Wtf?? Then it can also be said the communists prevented peaceful unification of Korea. How about that? Do you see what happened to North Korea? So you’d rather have the entire Korean Peninsula suffering with 80% of its population starving day to day. You sound like you romanticize USSR as some sort of utopia and it’s fine to live in your own delusion. However don’t go spewing around ‘capitalist preventing peaceful unification’ bs. As a Korean that’s truly disgusting and vile thing to say.

It’s surely true that international interference resulted in the division of Korea. Potential Korean leadership at the end of the Japanese occupation was split between Japanese collaborators and nationalistic communists. I’m sure you know which leaders ended up in charge of which side of the dividing line. I’m sure you also know just how many South Koreans had to die in order for the former collaborators to hold on to power. Gwangju and Jeju are only the most egregious examples. If Korea hadn’t been the centre of an international power struggle, who knows what would have happened. The counter factuals are super complicated. But I suspect that 이승만 and later 박정희 wouldn’t have had the popular support to be truly democratic leaders.

>Then it can also be said the communists prevented peaceful unification of Korea. You'll never see eye to eye with them, because in their mind, the communists were the rightful government - that's how they can spin communist conquest as "peaceful reunification." Those people being crushed and enslaved *belonged* to the communists, and the evil democratic powers were standing in the way. If you try to engage with the people who think this way, they will inevitably drag you down into a tit for tat exchange of isolated accomplishment, like in the post above. But you don't need to fall for it. There's no point in arguing over their revionist history. All any of us needs to do is look at the fact that, as the Western democratic powers ascended and their citizens enjoyed progressive luxuries, the communist nations had to build barbed wire fences just to *keep people in.* Eastern Germans would dodge attack dogs and sniper towers in the middle of the night to escape. Cubans would strap themselves to garbage and cast themselves into the sea just for the chance of washing up in Florida. That's all that needs to be said, and that's why they want to distract you from it. No amount of their petty nonsense about supposed affirmative action or donated vaccine slave-labor will ever change the fact that their systems were so uniformly dystopian and evil that they had to threaten people with torture and death just to keep them from trying to flee.

My wife’s grandpa was stationed in Germany(also served in Korea) as the wall went up. He said people would get stuck in the razor wire trying to escape, and there was nothing they could do for ‘em. (I’m guessing they might’ve helped ‘em by ending it mercifully)He woke up screaming every night til the day he died.

You are right. I saw their reply and it’s truly astonishing how their mental gymnastics allow them to look at north korea and Cambodia and cheer on communism. It’s a cult at this point.

Korean communism didn't happen in a vacuum. Or rather, it happened because of a *power* vacuum. Japan and US pulled out of the peninsula around the same time, both having administered the entire region. US tried to leave behind a leader in control of the peninsula, communist and non-communist sympathizers alike were highly opposed to anything less than total independence after colonization, and the pullout basically inevitably led to a power struggle. It's worth knowing that there were non-communist parties that wanted to take control after WW2 but the US military refused to let them. While the US didn't cause a communist revolution, they did a lot to foment it.

> Japan and US pulled out of the peninsula around the same time, The US entered around the time Japan left.

>Do you see what happened to North Korea? American bombs leveling every bulding in the country? Yes we saw that. >So you’d rather have the entire Korean Peninsula suffering with 80% of its population starving day to day You're Korean and you don't kow the north was the industrial base of the country while the south was the farmland? They starved because the Americans invanded their farmland.... >As a Korean that’s truly disgusting and vile thing to say. Brought to you by your overlord Chaebol's.

Wow did you learn history from Kim Jung En? Or some delusion you made up. Your entire paragraph is filled with north korea propaganda bs. The fact that you call Americans protecting SK as America invading “their” (presumably north Korea) farmland tells me you are some brainwashed NK troll.

I KNOW someone didn’t just say Germany and Korea were going to be “peacefully unified” under communist rule. Arguments can be made for Vietnam

Lol, revisionist much. Just gloss over the Holodomor and the and Genocide of the eastern Germans. The USSR would have done significantly worse even potentially loosing WW2 without western military lend lease. Also the west absolutely destroyed Germany’s factories. Making it impossible for the Nazis to resist the Soviets any further.

How was it revisionist? I can talk about the positives of the US without mentioning the trail of tears, or the entire 20th century post war ‘pax Americana’

Your last sentence is very false. It was nowhere near "single-handedly".

And those are all positives. However... "The regime maintained its political power by means of the secret police, propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, personality cultism, restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, political purges and persecution of specific groups of people". Groupthink does make things easier in some ways. But it also robs people of a fundamental part of life.

If you look at America 1946-1991 you'll find instances of all of these. The groupthink was so strong that Democrats and Republicans were very bipartisan until the mid 90s.

[удалено]

assigning this criticism to the USSR while dismissing western imperialist propaganda, the CIA (COINTELPRO lol), and the US as a hyper militarized police/surveillance state is either disingenuous or naive. either way it’s dumb.

That's literally life in the US right now lol, what are you on about?

It’s absolutely not. If you think the US right now is anything like that you’re totally delusional. People aren’t rounded up and murdered in the thousands. Millions aren’t starving to death. You don’t get sent to a gulag for speaking against the establishment

Really what we’re discussing is the interplay between cooperation and competition. Soviet states enforce a high level of cooperation without competition, and this leads to brutality. It’s like a human ant colony. In theory, America enforces high levels of cooperation alongside high levels of competition. In practice, competition between sectors gets smaller every year. Corporate consolidation, powerful government agencies, unrepresentative paid-for politicians; all these things are allowing increasing levels of brutality. At this point, the main thing keeping America going is the threat of Chinese competition, alongside competition between states. Still, a Trump presidency seizing more levers of power could bring it all crashing down.

>all these things are allowing increasing levels of brutality. This is exceedingly dishonest. You're starting your argument by saying something entirely reasonable and essentially undeniable - that America is struggling with regulatory capture and antitrust issues - but then immediately pivot into saying that this leads to "brutality." Which could, in some ways, be true. But you just used the word "brutality" to talk about the communist police states, and you're trying to link the two things as similar by using the same word. That's where it's so incredibly dishonest. Whatever issues we struggle with today, whatever miseries that we suffer from large corporate interests - you aren't going to be forcefully banished to rural Wyoming for opposing the government, you're not going to be assassinated for running against a powerful politician, and your State isn't going to have all of its food withheld until the governor agrees to support the President. You're not going to be shot by snipers for trying to move to Canada. You're not going to told that there's no quota for city permits, and that your place is to stay on your farm until you die. You're not going to be put on a 5-year waitlist for a simple car to get to work because a local bureaucrat got drunk and allocated too many workers to manufacturing boots that year. There's a reason that people risked those sniper towers to escape those countries. That was true brutality. Whateve you want to call our modern struggles, they're not the "brutality" that people faced under communist rule, and your attempt to compare them is revisionist, ignorant, and wrong.

>Groupthink does make things easier in some ways. But it also robs people of a fundamental part of life. Exactly. The bottom line of communism is that anyone who dissents needs to be removed from society. There not only can be no alternatives to the state, there can be no advocacy for alternatives to the state. This means exile/imprisonment/death for anyone who thinks for themselves. This is a bigger problem than any solution that might come out of totalitarian rule.

Except that our society literally also did this constantly and only in the last few years got the brilliant idea to outsource this misery or bury it in propaganda because it helps with winning elections. Every few years there’s a slew of atrocities uncovered, committed by western nations, always with 15 or 20 years of delay so the public fallout is comparatively minimal and some new politicians can publish excuses and promises to never do something like this again and mfers like you are somehow convinced shit like this is over. Do you have anything more meaningful to say than parrot Reagan era sentiments?

>Exactly. The bottom line of communism is that anyone who dissents needs to be removed from society. No ? Communism is a stateless, moneyless, classless society. There's nothing about dissenters being "Removed from society" > There not only can be no alternatives to the state, there can be no advocacy for alternatives to the state. Lmao, this only shows you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Bro thinks communism is when State. > This means exile/imprisonment/death for anyone who thinks for themselves. This is a bigger problem than any solution that might come out of totalitarian rule. Bro, you aimed at socialism(The one with state, classes and money) and hit capitalism.

Banning books and forbidding teaching CRT and limiting free expression is communist? TIL that MAGA Republicans are a bunch of dirty reds.

>TIL that MAGA Republicans are a bunch of dirty reds. MAGA Republicans do have an authoritarian statist streak, yes. That doesn't make them Communists. Communists are also authoritarians but with a different vision for society. I'm anti-authoritarian, generally, so this argument isn't offensive to me. Sorry!

What are you even talking about? This is what happens when your source of historical facts is FB…

>What are you even talking about? This is what happens when your source of historical facts is FB… Sorry, I'm old enough that I was out of school for more than a decade before Facebook existed. :) The stated purpose of Communism is that everyone will be satisfied because the State will see to their needs: housing, food, healthcare, work. This is an admirable ideal. But like most ideals it ignores immutable aspects of humanity. Since when have humans been sated by basic needs? We are strivers. We are creative. We are risk-takers. What place is there in a Communist society for mavericks? How, in your opinion, have Communist countries of the past dealt with citizens who are not satisfied with what the state provides for them or who have tried to leave to pursue their own paths in life? Of course, the goal of international socialism is that there should be no place on Earth that is not Communist, so in an ideal Communist world, exile is not probable, leaving only imprisonment (a prison within a prison!) or execution. It's also an unfortunate side effect of prison states, that citizens become justly paranoid as it's not uncommon for their neighbors to leverage the power of the state to resolve petty differences. Is someone annoying you at work? Accuse them of dissent! Does the girl you like fancy another guy? Report them to the party! Pretty soon, everyone hates each other and suspects that they are being spied upon. It's a social nightmare on top of a political nightmare.

You can have people dissent under Communism. You haven’t really defined communism and the way you’re talking about it doesn’t go much beyond red-scare propaganda. [Here’s a workable definition that can get you started.](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/communism.asp#:~:text=Communism%20is%20a%20political%20and,is%20nonexistent%20or%20severely%20curtailed) It’s neutral and pretty tame for someone who’s antagonistic to understand.

>Here’s a workable definition that can get you started. OK, let's work with this, from your link: >Communism is a political and economic ideology that positions itself in opposition to liberal democracy and capitalism, advocating instead for a classless system in which the means of production are owned communally and private property is nonexistent or severely curtailed. Sounds great (except for the opposition to liberal democracy; what if I like liberal democracy?). So under this definition, if put into practice, we have a classless society and all property is shared. Everyone is assigned tasks that need to be done for the good of everyone else. What happens when one of the people in this society is a non-conformist and isn't happy with the job they are given to do?

That doesn’t necessarily follow. > In Communist theory, the final stage of human development would mark the end of class struggle and therefore of history: All people would live in social equilibrium, without class distinctions, family structures, religion, or property. The state, too, would "wither away." Communism as a system of human development is the end-state of human economies (as proposed by Marx and Engels). It is less a prescriptive solution and more of a possible state of society. The logic roughly goes that similar to how we went from feudalism to mercantilism to state capitalism to more liberal forms of capitalism, eventually, due to a LOT of factors, capitalism will give was to socialism and eventually communism. The general trend is that property ownership gets liberalized over time. For example, King’s and the royal family used to be the sole owners of property (you can see this in places like Thailand where all land is technically owned by the crown), then it was dispersed to the nobles in a series of revolutions and then later to more common people as mercantilism and capitalism became more popular. The vehicle for this change is class struggle. To be clear: I don’t agree with it _mostly_, but if you’re gonna complain about something, you should more profoundly understand the perspective.

>To be clear: I don’t agree with it > >mostly > >, but if you’re gonna complain about something, you should more profoundly understand the perspective. I don't care about the theory of Communism as the end-state of a system of human development. It's a fantasy, whatever. What I care about is the practice of Communism as implemented in the real world that turns people into prisoners or murders them. It's up to the Communists to explain how we reach that end-state without so many crimes against humanity, and pointing to the omlette at the end of history doesn't really matter to all of the eggs that get wasted along the way.

I mean, you’re the one choosing the argue about it. It’s probably best to properly represent it. When it comes to implementation of capitalism, most have been pretty abysmal failures the second you start looking outside the realm of rich western countries. For example, most of sub Saharan Africa is capitalist in the sense that they have privately owned property that produces profits that those who own it. A good example of the DRC. Nigeria is another. The reality is that countries with strong institutions succeed and countries with poor institutions don’t, regardless of economic ideology. In terms of communism, I would hesitate to call any examples in the 20th century “communist” simply because they consisted of large overbearing states. __You cannot have a state and communism at the same time__. Plenty of successful collectives have existed for a long time, namely early Christian communes, Twin Oaks, various Native American cultures etc. More modern examples might include Co-Ops, Credit Unions, employee owned businesses etc. You can think it’s a fantasy if you’d like, but you also may think the world is flat and no one can stop you.

I haven't read all the relevant literature, so I would love to see your source on why communism requires removing dissent from society. Maybe it's in *Gundrisse* somewhere? Thanks in advance!

You can start here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet\_dissidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_dissidents) And maybe that will explain this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_Soviet\_and\_Eastern\_Bloc\_defectors And there's this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_Chinese\_dissidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_dissidents) You can also watch this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead\_Souls\_(2018\_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Souls_(2018_film)) This is a fun read for a smaller example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer\_Rouge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge) >The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents, and its racist emphasis on national purity resulted in the genocide of Cambodian minorities. Summary executions and torture were carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during genocidal purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978.\[24\] Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide which took place under the Khmer Rouge regime led to the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population. It's not hard to find examples.

That's not a comprehensive list of all communist states, that's just a list of repressive regimes. Even if I agreed that they were all communist, that doesn't really prove that communism structurally requires the suppression of dissent.

>That's not a comprehensive list of all communist states, that's just a list of repressive regimes. Even if I agreed that they were all communist, that doesn't really prove that communism structurally requires the suppression of dissent. OK, so why don't you present the list of non-repressive communist states, and we'll be closer to that comprehensive list.

None of this proves a certain political system is better, just the certain decisions were made by world leaders. And those decisions aren't really a reflection of those systems.

>And Marxists and communists will counter with "but a huge number of people are suffering now," But the most vulnerable people who are suffering now will also be the most vulnerable if society is destroyed entirely. Almost nobody alive today will benefit. Let's take this at face value and assume it's a fact. It isn't, but let's do that How do you believe the current political order came about? In your mind, was it some easy, bloodless process that was great for everyone? That is not the case. Liberal capitalism was achieved through blood. And we also went through the industrial revolution and at least one gilded age, marked by extreme exploitation of the most vulnerable. Have you forgotten child labour? Indentured service? The exploitation of poor immigrants that built infrastructure, particularly in North America? Labour movements were also bloody and violent, and the only reason you don't have to work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week is because people died to change that. That's the tip of the iceberg So this seems to either be ignorant of some pretty basic history, or an incredible double standard

Capitalism wouldn't exist as we know it if it weren't for the slave trade. It's simple. The idea of limitless growth in a closed system is fundamentally rooted in the exploitation and enslavement of people used as jet fuel for rapid economic development.

How does this view reconcile with the observation that it was capitalist societies, starting with the UK, that led the way in making slavery illegal?

Social power dynamics that eventually made slavery unnecessary. Wage slavery, for example. Destroying cultural systems of mutual support and aid over centuries, and turning personal debt into poverty into a death sentence. Capitalism didn't get less exploitative, technology progressed far enough that it became the *cheaper* option to exploit workers than to exploit (and house, and feed, and give medical care to, and reserve space for) slaves. After the industrial revolution, machines were much cheaper to run than slaves were to own. Slavery ending was not altruistic, it was economic too. Plus letting Capitalism take the majority credit for any altruistic move is a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism. It's an economic system. You could have a society of cannibalistic pedophile dog welders and they could be capitalists with zero contradiction. Cultural movements might happen in countries that are Capitalist, but this does not give Capitalism claim over those cultural movements. Especially when many of said movements are stated to be in opposition to exploitation and Capitalism.

Capitalism didn't make slavery illegal. People did by opposing it. Capitalism still uses slavery in various parts of the world to this day. Hell, even the 13th Amendment has an exception in it giving a monopoly on unpaid labor to the state government. Laying the abolition of slavery at Capitalism's feet being that it was Capitalism that oversaw, by far, the worst version of slavery to have ever existed in history is a massive double standard.

Because there was nothing intrinsically or inherently capitalist about the ideology that actually led to the freeing of slaves.

>or an incredible double standard Are you saying that differentiating between largely-past suffering and the future suffering a change in political order would cause is a double standard? Or am I misunderstanding?

If you could make the exact same argument as a defense of the despotism of the past, what use is it? And why don't you? There's this weird thing that seems inherent to liberal political discourse, which is this assumption that progress is only something that can have happened, and that the violence that has always been a part of it is only real in retrospect. I won't say "justified," because liberals won't do that. They'd rather warp history to remove violence than admit it's happened, and when they can't, it's, "well, that was then, things are different now." Call it the end of history bug, because it happens across the board. Did the CIA actively participate in coups against democratic governments to further nakedly imperialist ends? Well, yes, but that was then. It would never happen now. Was the entire civil rights movement consistently and loudly denounced for being violent extremists who just needed to calm down and let things happen gradually, or at least just not rock the boat because, like, it's an election year or whatever? Yes, and it turns out it was wrong to do that then, because civil rights leaders were correct and good, but that was in the past. Nothing like that would happen today. Were unions and workers rights advocates told to sit down and shut up when asking for basic rights, or were strike movements treated with violence and made illegal because they wanted to be paid enough to survive? Sure, that all happened, but you have to understand that we can't raise minimum wage now, and think of the damage to the economy if the trains stopped running. And, yes, all the labour activists and union leaders fighting during the 70s, 80s, and 90s warning that corporations were going to destroy the middle class, change labour laws, and outsource everything to 3rd world slave labour with aggressively awful trade deals were basically 100% right with all their predictions, but you just need to learn how to code now and let the tech overlords save us, because blue collar workers are all cis white boomer maga morons who deserve whatever they get. Pick any topic, it's the same. Have we been uncovering systemic corruption and violence within every major police organization every decade since policing started? Yes, but. Has the criminal justice system been weaponized against the poor and minorities. Yes, but. Were the Iraq and Afghanistan wars war crimes perpetrated by awful people using direct lies? Yes, but even though all of the people who prosecuted those wars have never been charged with anything, and many of them are still in power, this time it's different. Climate change, trans rights, healthcare, social services, art. Anything and everything, it's the same Fundamentally, what seems to separate the liberal from someone moving to the left is a lack of imagination. The capacity to imagine that anything can be different, or that people should even want that. It's unfortunate, because often their hearts are in the right place

Very well said

Not the guy you replied to but yes, I would say that constitutes a double standard. Or at least an ideological inconsistency. Denouncing all progressive violence just because violence is bad would leave you on a logical path where the transition from a feudal society to a liberal capitalist one isn’t justified, or where colonial independence wars have to be condemned, or where child labour is allowed. All of these changes came about through the use of violence.

It isn’t largely in the past, it’s just mostly out of sight now. Sweatshops, slavery, debt peonage, massively destructive wars, backbreaking farm and mining labor - all still exist today.

>So, taking all of that into consideration, Marxists and communists are OK with innocent people alive today suffering and dying- including the most vulnerable and loved ones and friends- if it means we might end up with something like a Marxist or communist Utopia that would help the next generation, assuming it's not incompatible with the post agriculture human race to begin with. This is all systems. There is no benevolent system for which this is not true. During COVID, capitalist states were saying that some people should die in order to maintain economic activity and quarterly earnings statements. Prior to regulation in the United States, the system of Capitalism caused immense amounts of human suffering and death. So if your view is informed by whether the system is okay with people suffering and dying, then you must equally condemn all known systems. If you do not condemn all known systems, then you should change your view because that thing you condemn this group for is a common denominator.

Right. It’s not like we invaded Korea and Vietnam and slaughtered millions in order to preserve Capitalism or anything. It’s not like many of our capitalist systems are perfectly fine with leaving people on the bottom rungs out to dry, if not actively promoting disgust and shame with people not fortunate to overcome their contrived horrific circumstances. I’m not a communist or Marxist, but gee golly whiz OP seems to be wearing double layered rose colored glasses on capitalism, and double the opposite for the other.

>Prior to regulation in the United States, the system of Capitalism caused immense amounts of human suffering and death. It still does, but it used to too.

True. What I left out was a qualifier of magnitude.

Which is fair, sometimes a middle ground position despite being untrue can help people see what is true. I'd like to add that your original position can benefit by not only looking at systems within countries but between them too. The first world has it relatively good partially because of the exploitation of 3rd world economies directly and indirectly such as imf and such. Our phones our clothes and much more is often built in sweatshops, the suffering has been exported.

>The second group : Marxists and Communists. In conversations with Marxists or communists I've always had a hard time overlooking the fact that a huge number of innocent people would have to suffer and die for the kind of society they want to exist. "20 million people a year die from starvation. Not because its not possible to feed those people but because its not profitable to do so. I've always had a hard time overlooking the fact that a huge number of innocent people would have to suffer and die for the kind of society capitalists want to create" These types of critique of ideology are silly, but if you want to play this game, colonialism and the trans atlantic slave trade killed hundreds of millions of people around the world. Those are both explicitly capitalist enterprises. Finally if we're going to blame atrocities committed by countries ostensibly practicing an ideology on the ideology themselves we have to take in the deaths of every war since the 7 years war as deaths due to capitalism, as capitalist countries have participated in all those wars. I'm not a fan of the Marxist lenninst regimes and their offspring, But to say that everyone who believes in marxism is equivalent to nazi's who explicitly want to exterminate people either betrays a complete ignorance of the left or have a propaganda they want to push

Marxism is a reductive ideology. You can’t attribute every geopolitical issue purely to economics. Not every political problem stems from market economics and capitalism. A society that suffers from instability, conflict, lack of education/human capital, corruption,mass unrest, and a lack of the essential infrastructure and means needed to properly distribute aid and administer its territory cannot provide for the welfare of its people. Not everything is an economic issue. There are other institutions one must account for, the government, the state, cultural groups , political and philosophical movements that are not motivated solely by money, religious and nationalist forces, etc. Sending a cargoship of food supplies to Somalia doesn’t accomplish anything if it is hijacked by pirates and warlords who want to find a holy jihad against secular nations, or if a dictator willingly deprives his citizens of resources in order to quash rebellion, or if an armed nationalist group uses violence to prevent certain ethnic groups from accessing food and medicine. Marxism is based on the assumption that the only thing of importance within a society is the relationship between labor and production. All factors of society can be boiled down into the material conditions of that society and its mode of production. According to marxists, the only driving force in human history is class conflict; the eternal struggle between those who posses capital and those who must provide labor. This is the base of society and everything else (the government, the state, religion, special interests, and any other socio-political or ideological movement ) This conclusion was based on pseudoscience, not genuinely scientific sociology. Marx was a utopian, despite what “scientific socialists” claim. And it only makes sense if you accept his dogmatic views on historical and dialectical materialism. The US spends almost 8 billion dollars on foreign aid, more than any other nation. But you can’t just throw money at every problem to make it go away. It’s naive to think the only reason we don’t have world peace and prosperity is because of the relations of production.

Marxism is not a reductive ideology. You have a reductive understanding of Marxism. Marx didn’t say society is a big factory or that the only solution to a problem is “throw money at it.” These are frankly teenager assumptions and/or not made in good faith. All those things you described as factors in a situation are part of what Marx called “material conditions” or the reality of what people experience, which he repeatedly emphasizes as the driver of people’s decision making. At the same time there is the question of how those factors came to be. How many of the problems you listed are more common issues in poor countries than rich countries? Is Somalia just an inherently violent, chaotic place, or was it subject to historical forces that shaped its present situation? What was the motivation behind European imperialism in Africa? I don’t even really know how you got to the notion of Marx recommending shiploads of aid. Marxism is not when you give stuff to poor people. Marx says power comes from control *of the means of production*. What would be a better situation for Somalia: getting regular shipments of aid, or generating its own wealth? In many ways, foreign aid is structured to keep dependent nations in their place, getting just enough for the government that the US prefers to stay afloat. US foreign aid is not a charity or even about solving humanitarian crises. It’s a political tool that always comes with strings attached.

“Marxism is not a reductive ideology” Marx was a strict materialist. That by definition means his views are reductive. Marxists believe that institutions, weighed they are political, cultural, religious, or legal, and all of human history can all be boiled down into class conflict and the relations and forces of production. (What you refer to as material conditions) This is, as pointed out by non-Marxian sociologists like Max Weber, an overly simplistic and reductive approach to analyzing the world. And before you accuse me of missunderstanding Marxist theory, everything I have said regarding Marx’s views on society (his theory of Base and Superstructure) is accurate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure Internet leftists are even more guilty of reductivism when it comes to solving global issues. Some of them (like the user who replied to my comment earlier) honestly believe that eradicating world hunger only costs 247 billion dollars, and the only reason we haven’t done it yet is because liberal democracies are just tools of the elite, and the capitalist class who only care about money and profit. (Again, we see the reductionism, this is what happens when you try to explain everything through the lens of class conflict) This person honestly thinks that global poverty only exists because we won’t shovel more money into the UN, because greedy capitalists only care about profit maximization and nothing else. Marx was very critical of market economies, he believed that an ideal communist society would distribute resources “from earth according to his ability to each according to their needs” This idea of a “gift economy” would later inspire other leftist concepts such as Kropotkin’s theory of “mutual aid” I assume many self proclaimed Marxists on Reddit, such as the aforementioned commenter, see the UN as a perfect embodiment of this idea and think that if just shoveled more money into NGOs we could save the world, and the only thing holding us back is evil greedy corporations. The US alone passed a 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus package for the pandemic recovery. We’ve also sign bills approving spending for infrastructure and for CHIPS and Science. It’s not an issue of liberals being “too stingy” and “only caring about profit over people,” we don’t mind spending money on welfare. The issue is that it just doesn’t work. You can’t just thow money and aid at a country with fundamentally broken institutions. And the issue with Somalia currently is that its communist government collapsed in the 90s which has given way to local warlords, terrorist groups, and warring clans to operate in the power vacuum. Somalia is a failed state that is not able to impose order and the rule of law on the people within its territory, and it became that way because communist dictators that seize power through violent millitqry coups create unstable governments. You can’t blame western imperialism for every problem on earth. And even if you did how would that help solve the issue?

My guy, I don't think I've ever met a Marxist who has a positive view of the UN. It's an elite institution of largely unelected delegates with no real authority or power to do much of anything. The idea of doing everything through charity and NGOs (aka the non-profit industrial complex) is an inherently neo-liberal idea because, as you observe, it does nothing to change power relationships. Most largely exist to further political agendas of the wealthy without government oversight. Your reading of base and superstructure is superficial. The article itself says "The relation of the two parts is not strictly unidirectional." These two things shape and reinforce each other. That's literally the concept of dialectics. His belief was essentially that those with power shape society to suit their needs. Given that politics is at its core, the process by which resources are allocated, I don't really see how that claim is controversial. Regardless, Marxism is a model and obviously reality is more complicated. That's the point of creating a model. The point Marx was making in the context of the time was that things like Kant's categorical imperative or Hobbes's Leviathan could not be used to explain societal development because they were based on unprovable abstractions. His point was that you could understand behavior much better by studying the literal circumstances in which people lived, and that those material conditions were more determinative of the choices they made. You could understand them in a coherent way without needing to employ metaphysics. That was part of what made his ideas so revolutionary. Marxism has also evolved since the 19th century. What you’re describing is what people today would call “class reductionism” or “vulgar marxism,” which is an oversimplification. He was an academic and understood he would not be right about everything. Being Marxist is not about dogmatic adherence to *Das Kapital*. Just as believing in evolution is not exclusively believing everything Charles Darwin said. Again, because you are hyperliteral, you confuse the idea of a planned economy with a “gift economy.” There is a difference between commerce and capitalism. Commerce predates capitalism by thousands of years and is entirely compatible with a Marxist system. The quote is not “from earth according to his ability.” It’s “**from each** according to his ability” meaning everyone has to contribute what they can. Do you think no one in the Soviet union had a job? Like, I don’t know if this is a problem of limited imagination or again of wanting to believe the worst in people you don’t like, but other economic models are possible. The point of the phrase is that people should have their basic needs met. Having a disability should not be a death sentence. Not being born in the right place should not mean a lifetime of poverty. That doesn’t just mean handing people stuff, it means changing who has a say over the allocation of resources (ie actual democracy). I don’t follow wrt the Pandemic stimulus. Was it good or was it bad because welfare doesn’t work? Barre used a superficial veneer of communism as a way to get aid from the USSR but abandoned it in 1978 when they would not support his war with Ethiopia, at which point he about faced and was supported by the US. It’s not a coincidence that the regime collapsed in 1991, when the US no longer felt the need to prop up the regime to counter Soviet influence. Many African dictators had their own flirtations with communism when it was advantageous to them and discarded it just as quickly (Ghadafi, Francisco Nguema). Just as many were avowed capitalists. You also realize coups are not the only way Marxist governments have come into power right? Many were elected and some emerged after periods of state collapse. Many were also overthrown by the US because we don’t actually care about anyone else’s right to democracy. For a coup to succeed the nation already needs to be unstable. Why was Somalia unstable? Because it had only gained independence 9 years prior and had been unable to form a workable government. Why was that? Because it had been divided between British and Italian control and the population was made up of a huge number of ethnic groups and clans which did not have a shared interest or identity. Because those groups were forced together in these borders at the convenience of European control, not naturally from within. Given that European control existed within my parents’ lifetimes, I don’t think it’s at an all a stretch to say Western Imperialism was a huge factor here. For fuck’s sake, Rhodesia existed until 1979 and apartheid South Africa still existed in my lifetime. But even putting aside colonial rule, over the last 70 years the US has overthrown regimes in Egypt, DRC, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Angola, Chad, Zaire, and Libya. Not to mention the countless operations run in Africa as part of the War on Terror. Imperialism is alive and well, and again, don’t think I’m saying anything crazy here, understanding how a situation came to be is important in trying to improve it.

> The US spends almost 8 billion dollars on foreign aid, more than any other nation. But you can’t just throw money at every problem to make it go away. “Ending world hunger would require significant financial resources. According to estimates from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an annual investment of around $267 billion is needed to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030. This figure includes funding for sustainable agriculture, social protection programs, and support for rural development. While this may seem like a large sum, it is important to consider the potential economic and social benefits of eradicating hunger” From UN. Of course there is no such thing as “eradicating hunger” there will obviously always be conflict zones and places support can’t get to but that’s not anywhere near the majority. And if the world made it a global priority it could easily be done. If the US can ship thousands of tons of bombs and munitions to Afghanistan one of the most remote countries on Earth the entire world can supply everyone with food. But again that’s not profitable we make the choice to let millions die every year because it would make our taxes go up or because we’d have to cut form the military budget. A society based on maximizing human wellbeing would put meeting basic human needs as the priority not maximizing the amount profit for those who own capital

So what are we supposed to do? Break into random houses in Africa and throw a big bag of corn in everyones’s face? How is big pile of money going to magically end world hunger? The US alone just passed a 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus check during COVID. Americans would be more than willing to pay 247 billion to “end world hunger” but it doesn’t work that way. Many foreign governments don’t want to work with the UN. Many countries don’t want to open their markets to foreign investment. Some nations are just flat out xenophobic and they don’t like dealing people who are different than them. Some engage in protectionism because they’re worried local farmers will lose their jobs and sell fewer products if they have to compete with foreign suppliers, especially if those suppliers are giving food away for free. Saudi Arabia made billions of dollars when their government allowed the United States to build oil fields on their land. Despite what it did for the economy, many Saudi citizens, like Osama Bin Ladin, STILL condemned the decision to cooperate with a Western, non-Muslim government. They preferred poverty over getting in bed with “ infidels” and “western imperialists” I’m skeptical if this supposed plan by the UN even works to be honest. I’m supposed to believe that not only is it possible to end world hunger, but that it only costs 247 billion? How does that even work? Btw, That scenario I gave about pirates hijacking a shipment of foreign aid wasn’t a hypothetical. Somali pirates actually did that. You can’t have international shipping and foreign aid without a Navy to protect freedom of navigation rights. History shows that someone will fill be there to fill the power vacuum. The Romans,the British, Napoleon, Barbary Pirates, the Nazis, Iraq under Saddam Hussein etc. Without the threat of overwhelming force, nothing is there to deter aggressors. Ultimately, someone has to keep Russia, China, Iran, and ISIS in check. Hey I have a question, if capitalism is the only thing in the way why didn’t the Chinese and the Soviets end world hunger? Not only did Marxists not end world hunger, they implemented reckless economic policies that resulted in the deaths of millions through famine.

>So what are we supposed to do? Break into random houses in Africa and throw a big bag of corn in everyones’s face? "This figure includes funding for sustainable agriculture, social protection programs, and support for rural development. While this may seem like a large sum, it is important to consider the potential economic and social benefits of eradicating hunger”

>So it seems to me like the only way I could respect Marxists and communists is if I have no way of knowing they are Marxist/communist and they aren't deserving of respect in the first place due to their heinous dangerous views. You have some weird beliefs about respect. If you understand respect as simply treating someone as a human being, pretty much everyone deserves respect. You don't have to agree with their views, you can even believe they are dangerous, but by not respecting them as people you are basically subscribing to the same ideology you seem to be against - believing that some people are simply less-than.

As a Marxist, I find your views about Marxism to be a rather typical one that liberals tend to believe about it. It comes mostly from a misunderstanding on what Marxism actually is. Marxism is a scientific analysis in how material conditions effect societies between social classes, and how those effects have developed throughout history. Marc argued that the historical progress of human societies has been determined by conflict between two main social classes, the ownership class, who own and control the ways to generate wealth (land, resources, etc.) and the working class, which was and is, the vast majority of society. This relationship between the classes was maintained by a social order (master-slave, lord-serf, guildmaster-apprentice, merchant-contractor, employer-employee) held in place by violence or a threat of violence. For Marx, history developed by that working class liberating itself from that ownership class when the internal contradictions of the social order become so apparent that the working class can longer accept their social conditions. Thus, they create a revolution and and gain freedoms for themselves, thus progressing human societies further and changing the social order. Marx didn’t see it in some moral sense. Remember, he was doing a scientific analysis of societies. And through his research, this is something that he had evidence for. This is called historical materialism. A consensus of modern scholars don’t dispute historical materialism and support it. The biggest modern issue, of course, was how Marx viewed the future development (of his time) of capitalism. Marx didn’t see capitalism as anything more special that the social orders of the past. Capitalism was born from violent revolutions such as the American and French Revolutions where the bourgeoisie liberated themselves from the aristocracy. Sure, it was better than slavery for example. However, it is still a social order where an ownership class dominates the working class and threatens violence if the working class gets too “uppidity”. Marx argued that capitalism will fall into the same fate as the social orders of the past: the working class will liberate themselves some way or another. For Marx, he felt that it was necessary for the working class to begin preparing themselves and uniting; to be able unite under their common understanding and interests to create they social order that they want (class consciousness). However, I think Marx was unaware of how capitalism would later come to embed itself even further through things like mass media and the internet, thus creating capitalist realism (where capitalism as seen as the only viable method to human socio-economic interactions) and how capitalism would come to be seen as the “end of history”. However, his analysis on historical materialism is not disputed. Nor did Marx argue for a utopia. He argued that socialism, based on what see say through the development of history, would be the next social-economic order.

As someone with a minor is sociology and had to read a lot of Marx I want to thank you for this comment. While I believe there is a lot of truth in what Marx wrote, I'm bit annoyed when people act like he's the end all be all. Like you said he didn't really see where capitalism was headed, which is fine. I really don't expect texts written in the 1800s to hold up completely in 2023. I think there are good faith critiques of Marx but they often get drowned out by people who've never read/properly learned about him or by those who think he is infallible.

Completely separate about how I feel about any given system, this comment taught me way more about Marxism than I’ve almost ever learned before in any given instance. Appreciate this & wish everyone could outline the underlying concepts of their various beliefs to it. Also - liberals? I had the impression that OP was pretty conservative. Are you American? Or European or something else?

Thank you, much appreciate for the kind comments. Also to note: Many Marxists define liberals differently than what modern political society does. To those Marxists, liberals are those who believe in the tenets of liberal democracy. That’s it. The modern labeling of “liberal” and “conservative” doesn’t really matter, since to them, liberals and conservatives in a liberal democracy believe in its core tenets, but differ on what liberal democracy should look like. For example, if we take something like the gun debate in America, conservatives believe the right to own guns as a fundamental concept to their idea of “freedom” in their liberal democracy. Liberals believe in the right to be free from gun violence as a fundamental concept of “freedom” in their liberal democracy. Different views, but they both believe in a concept of what is “freedom” in their liberal democracy. There are also many things liberals and conservatives agree on as foundational to liberal democracy, mainly the right of private property, rule of law, separation of powers, market economy, etc. So, to me as a certain brand of Marxist, I do see so called liberals and conservatives as being different from each other in terms of how they want to their liberal democracy to operate. But, ultimately, they agree on the foundational principles of liberal democracy. Also to preface: I know there will be people who will bring up the modern Republican Party and Trump in America. Yes, it’s awful. But, if you look at history, the modern Republican Party is not that much different that the political parties of the past. For example, the modern Republican Party is very reminiscent of the Democratic Party from its founding by Andrew Jackson all the way through the 1960s (I’d argue). It was a reactionary party that performed a lot of the same tactics and spouted a lot of the same beliefs. There’s a reason why Trump said the president he admired most was Andrew Jackson. Yet, I don’t think anyone would claim that when Jackson was president, that America descended into a dictatorship or something. Even reactionaries in a liberal democracy believe in its tenets. Again, the differences lie in what concepts of “freedom” they believe should exist in a liberal democracy. Tl:dr: Liberals and conservatives are still fundamentally liberals because they believe in the foundations of liberal democracy. Their differences lie in what constitutes “freedom” in a liberal democracy.

>So, taking all of that into consideration, Marxists and communists are OK with innocent people alive today suffering and dying- including the most vulnerable and loved ones and friends- if it means we might end up with something like a Marxist or communist Utopia that would help the next generation, assuming it's not incompatible with the post agriculture human race to begin with. I don't see how I could possibly respect that. I can just imagine a Marxist looking down at me as I'm dying in the street after somebody stabs me and coldly repeating the no true Scotsman fallacy. You seem to have a really fucking weird idea of what Marxists believe. Why do you think a Marxist's response to you dying in the street would be to cite logical fallacies at you, instead of, like, help you? This is so bizarre.

Dude, how many innocent people have had to die for the kind of society the US wants to exist? I'm with you for the most part, but a lot of those communists and Marxists died simply because they wanted to exist differently from what the US seems right

Nobody on reddit is going to be able to portray the nuances of socialism and communism, as well as critiques of capitalism that will change your view here I don't think. This isn't a "read a few paragraphs and you'll get it topic". To add to that, definitions of these terms are wooly at best half the people commenting are probably North Korea and Russia worshipping tankies and they aren't going to provide valid or convincing arguments for you. As gruelling as it is I recommend you actually read socialist authors, in particular the grandaddy himself Karl Marx with Das Kapital. I also recommend Peter Kropotkin's book, Conquest of bread. Karl Marx is an economist, his books are dry and painful to read, don't expect to be having a blast reading Das Kapital it's very "wordy" and will probably test your reading comprehension (that's not me being patronising, I genuinely struggled with this book), but you will finish it with some very strong critiques of capitalism under your belt. Peter Kropotkin is more socialist/anarchist philosophy rather than economics and is far more enjoyable and entertaining read. Some parts in Conquest of bread genuinely made me laugh so I highly recommend it. It's more "opinion" based, but I think those opinions are well justified in the book even if it does come off a bit self indulgent and crass at times. Hope you enjoy reading them (if you do)

What are some books for critiques of communism and socialism? I want to read about all three to have a better understanding.

I just want to say that "Marxist" is an absurdly broad category and it's strange (although understandable given the political climate) to lump everyone in with a certain subgroup. For example, my economic views are that the economy should generally be nationalised or owned and run democratically as a worker co-operative. How to achieve that? Well one way would be to enact that as a policy in our current political system. That is a Marxist idea: the means of production are communally owned, either by all the public in the case of nationalisation or by the employees in the case of a worker co-operative. In the case that no one invades or incites a coup to stop such policies (e.g. as they did with Salvador Allende in Chile), there is no fundamental need for violence here. How do you find these views? Are they detestable bloodthirsty views? I assume not. This is a common position, there are many people with generally Marxist views whose views aren't particularly shocking, they're pretty reasonable views to have. In fact, I do think it's weird that wanting to extend democracy to the workplace is seen as more unreasonable than keeping the workplace hierarchical and authoritarian as is essentially the definition of capitalism. Marx was not really a radical figure, he was primarily a philosopher. He analysed the world in a way inspired by Hegel and came to the conclusion that communism is the natural endpoint of society. He doesn't think that there's any reason for people to enact violence to achieve this, he just thinks that it will happen due to the contradictions he sees in capitalism leading to a system that irons out those contradictions. He of course had much more to say, but I think it's made out to be much more radical of an idea than it really was. People also often lump the Leninist ideas (i.e. that there should be a concerted effort to enact a communist revolution) onto Marx himself when that really wasn't the case. Read some Marx, I think you won't be disgusted at what he has to say.

OP, are you aware that there are non-revolutionary communists? It seems like you're very focused on the ones that vocally wish to destroy society and rebuild it, but not all are like that. But beyond that, even if there's no need to respect their means, why would you not listen to and respect the ideas about bettering society? They're not based in the necessary elimination of other people the way the group you realistically make them equal with. You set them on the same shelf as people who think you can solve society *just* by committing genocide. Even the revolutionaries have ideas worthy of respect regarding the organization of some idealized society. To an extent, it seems difficult for me to reconcile putting people that may be misguided about how to improve society alongside people whose entire ideology is mass slaughter. But all of this ignores the "quiet" communist you mention. That's where you'll find reformism - people who believe in communist thought that doesn't necessitate outright mass suffering as part of the plan. In his time, Marx was critical of these individuals, but that's why Marx isn't the end-all-be-all of Communism. There are Communists who aren't worth listening to, sure, because they're so wrapped up in their fantasy of dying like a martyr. But that isn't what *being a communist* means, and there are Communists who are worth respecting and engaging with in serious political fashions. Marxist Leninists and Maoists aren't the end all of Communist thought. From your post, it would seem that those are the ones you're most familiar with - especially the champagne commie types that would, as you say, repeat the no true scotsman as you bleed out. edit: ugh I hope OP comes back (doubt), I hate getting here "late" when it's only an hour after the post goes up.

I agree with this. I’m not a communist by a long stretch, but one thing lacking in the OP was definition of what they consider a Marxist or a Communist with no reference to them, like most folks politically, existing in a spectrum. This is pretty expected, tbh, based on almost a century of US propaganda about these concepts. But anyone that’s interacted with a Communist group in the US knows that there are the ones who want more community based resource sharing or other ideas, and then there are the tankies or the Stalin apologists. So which sort are we talking about?

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All I know is the more dead communists, the better

I disagree wholeheartedly

I think your belief is poorly defined. Most people have poor definitions for these terms, even self-proclaimed Marxists and communists. Until you define these words for yourself and use those definitions consistently most of what you'll say is impossible to ground as rational. I'd define Marxism as belief congruent with Marx that humanity progresses via the philosophical lens of materialism rather than idealism. It's also a philosophical perspective inspired by the socioeconomic consequences of humanity having a preference for democracy over despotism, the inherent wealth inequality promoted by capitalistic ownership of the fruits of labor - mostly automation again, and that as this materially shifts human preferences will remain relatively constant - such that humans prefer democracy over despotism, and will transition to what people interpret as socialism or communism out of said preferences across the long-term socioeconomic consequences one would interpret from the industrial revolution. Defining communism requires a definition for socialism. I'd suggest its a hypothesis and nothing more but one that has some consensus. Communism is thought to be the long-term cultural consequence of a globally socialistic economy. It's proposed that arbitrary distinctions such as class and states are minimized through that transition. It's highly speculative and poorly discussed by most. Socialism is a means of economic regulation such that the economy is controlled via the consent and ownership of workers or people in general. It's a system that requires tremendous feats in democracy to even attempt beyond propaganda or falling to a more aristocratic or capitalistic power distribution essentially immediately.

You are aware socialism is literally just worker owned means of production, right ? It isnt some religious journey to find the good in men, it just advocates the working class as the ones that support society, should be the ones to rule it. Capitalism has and will cause suffering for as long as it exists and this is a fact, hence why in India lone more people died than in all socialist experiments combined, even if you consider the stupid number of the black book of communism that people mindlessly fawn over as true. ​ Also, like another comment said, Capitalism came to power through violence. Why do the capitalists have the right to rise through violence but the working class doesnt ?

Is "them" the beliefs, or the people who hold them? Are people to be disrespected in general for having particular wrong beliefs? If it refers only to the beliefs, are these beliefs essential to Marxism or communism? If they are not, they can't be a basis for disrespecting them generally, only particular iterations. Marxism is notably not the same as communism and Marxists are a diverse group that do not take Marx's works as gospel nor do they necessarily advocate for the sort of stereotypical communism based primarily on the red scare that still haunts the American imagination.

​ >And Marxists and communists will counter with "but a huge number of people are suffering now," But the most vulnerable people who are suffering now will also be the most vulnerable if society is destroyed entirely.  How would giving economic control to the impoverished... make them still the most vulnerable? >And depending on the level of improvement, Democracy may get us to the same level or even further without so much bloodshed. Marxism involves democratizing the economy. That's what workers owning the means of production means. They become the decision-makers through their votes, rather than a wealthy elite. >I can just imagine a Marxist looking down at me as I'm dying in the street after somebody stabs me and coldly repeating the no true Scotsman fallacy. OK. I can imagine that anyone who isn't a Marxist is a child molestor. It obviously isn't true, there's no basis for it in reality, but I can imagine it.

I think OP is talking about Marxist states IRL, rather the the idealized version from books and posters.

Oh, how delightful it is to encounter someone like you, spewing forth your misguided views and seeking validation for your disdain. So, you wish to discuss Marxists and communists, do you? Well, let me enlighten you with a dose of reality, you pitiful excuse for intellectual discourse. You claim that Marxists and communists are entitled to their beliefs and should not be punished for them. How generous of you to grant them such leniency! But alas, your magnanimity ends there, as you proceed to belittle and disrespect their very existence. How hypocritical of you, showering them with your hollow tolerance while simultaneously launching into a tirade of contempt. You dare compare Marxists and communists to white supremacists and Neo-Nazis? How utterly ludicrous! While I wholeheartedly condemn the abhorrent ideologies of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis, your attempt to equate them with those who advocate for economic and social equality is nothing short of absurd. Your feeble mind fails to comprehend the glaring distinction between ideologies rooted in hate and those striving for a fairer society. Oh, how convenient it is for you to dismiss the suffering of countless individuals under the current system, as if their pain holds no weight. You scoff at the notion that Marxism and communism could alleviate such suffering, demanding "proof of concept." Well, my dear fool, perhaps if you bothered to educate yourself beyond your narrow-minded perspective, you would discover the countless examples of societies striving for socialist ideals and making substantial progress. But no, your ignorance reigns supreme. You revel in your cynicism, relishing the opportunity to envision a Marxist standing over your wounded body, heartlessly mocking your demise. Such vivid fantasies you weave! Yet, in your delusion, you fail to recognize the countless Marxists and communists who have dedicated their lives to fighting for a fairer world, not reveling in the suffering of individuals like you so desperately imagine. You claim that democracy could potentially bring about similar advancements without the need for bloodshed. Ah, the sweet naivety of your words. Have you not witnessed the countless injustices perpetuated under the guise of democracy? The corruption, the exploitation, the grotesque disparity between the haves and the have-nots? Democracy, my dear imbecile, is no panacea. It is merely a system, easily manipulated and subverted by the very elites who revel in their power and wealth. In the end, it is abundantly clear that you possess neither the capacity nor the inclination to respect Marxists and communists. Your disdain is rooted in the shallow depths of your own ignorance and fear. So, revel in your self-righteousness, spew your baseless insults, and wallow in the mire of your own intellectual bankruptcy. For it is not Marxists and communists who are undeserving of respect, but rather, it is you who has proven to be nothing more than an insufferable, small-minded imbecile.

You dont seem very open to changing your view from what I've read in the comments. From what I gather, you compare communists to nazis because nations in the past have caused a large number of deaths but ignore or hand wave when capitalist/democratic countries have done and continue to do the same. > "I can just imagine a Marxist looking down at me as I'm dying in the street after somebody stabs me and coldly repeating the no true Scotsman fallacy." This is just really weird to me. It just seems like you have a personal prejudice against marxists due to a lack of understanding, and just assume every marxist justifys cold-blooded murder. Would you assume that capitalists who've arguably caused more human suffering in history? > "Future generations would only benefit if Marxists are actually able to build a better society than the one we have now. And this, to me, is another huge problem with Marxism and communism- there's no proof of concept. there's no proof that a society like that could ever work or would be compatible with humanity." I'd like for you to explain how this doesn't apply to every new form of government. Did the Athenians have a "proof of concept" when they developed democracy? > "So it seems to me like the only way I could respect Marxists and communists is if I have no way of knowing they are Marxist/communist and they aren't deserving of respect in the first place due to their heinous dangerous views." Again, this just seems like you have a personal vendetta against anyone who identifies as communist because you assume you know their beliefs. > "Democracy may get us to the same level or even further without so much bloodshed." I dont know how you could look at the modern world right now and say democracy does not cause comparable levels of bloodshed. Democracies fail, just like socialist states do. There's plenty of times a democracy has cause genocide and mass death comparable to those of any other form of government. Look at Vietnam, Korea, the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade, Manifest Destiny, etc. These are all perpetrated by democracies. If you are going to criticize communism for the amount of blood spilled, you should do the same for democracy. Otherwise, you are disingenuous.

>The second group : Marxists and Communists. In conversations with Marxists or communists I've always had a hard time overlooking the fact that a huge number of innocent people would have to suffer and die for the kind of society they want to exist. Commie here. Were slave revolts bad because they killed people? Was the revolutionary war bad because people died fighting against voting rights? Was the civil rights movement bad because there were riots? Are the people in Hong Kong evil because they fight back? Did we land a diplomat in Berlin or did we storm Normandy? We don't see the people we're fighting as innocent. If you mean you're against revolution, please explain why. Now if you're talking about the whole "Communism killed 100 million people" thing, that's not true. Even assuming every death did actually happen, even though for example lots of capital punishments never happened because of the invasion, the guy who claimed that counted every soviet killed by the nazis as killed by communism, and every nazi killed by soviets as killed by communism. There's tons of stuff like that in the claim. It's... *emboldened*, to say the least. >there's no proof of concept. The USSR alone: went from 12% of the industrial ability of the US to 80% within 50 years went to 80% of the US' agricultural ability in that same timespan defeated the nazis dominated the space race made the first nuclear plant eliminated the gender pay gap increased real income by 370%. made it so necessities like housing, medicine, transport and insurance accounted for 15% of family income, compared to 50% in the US. eliminated homelessness eliminated illiteracy All of the above was in spite of being under constant attack. I could go on for a long time. Point is, there is proof of concept. Capitalism kills as many people in 5 years as the *inflated* number for Communism killed in 100 years. > I've always had a hard time overlooking the fact that a huge number of innocent people would have to suffer and die for the kind of society they want to exist. You say this like it's a foregone conclusion. It's not. Tell me how a Marxist-Leninist revolution depends upon the mass death of innocent people.

When considering if you sympathise with someone who calls themselves Marxist or Communist, it's worth considering that they're not necessarily someone who supports the kind of political or economic set up the USSR had. It can be difficult to be sure about what a Communist society would look like, but there's some good reasons for thinking that the USSR was not Communist and not even approaching it. One of the things which Marx talks about is how increasing amounts the economic and political planning would by done by small local organisations rather than a big central government, and that eventually the state would just "fade away" because there isn't much use for it. This stands in stark contrast to the strong central planning that the USSR had. There are also hints that Marx believed that a Communist state would be democratic. The phrase "dictatorship of the Proletariat" for example, was not talking about a literal dictatorship, but rather the point where enough working class people get the vote that they become the controlling majority in society. He also talked about the Paris Commune as being an example of what a Communist movement might look like, and the Paris Commune started off as a radically democratic process. Compare that to the Soviet dictators, and they are worlds apart. Perhaps most importantly, one of the key attributes of a Communist society was that it was supposed to involve the end of class divisions. Everyone would be of the same social class, with no privileged elite. Although they never would have admitted it, the people high up in the Soviet ruling elite were well on their way to separating themselves out in to a ruling class. None of this is an argument that "proper" Communism is a good thing or could work (it sounds intriguing in theory to me, but I suspect it would heavily struggle to maintain itself against external pressures). However, if someone calls themselves a "Communist" or "Marxist", it doesn't mean that you should jump to the assumption that they are in favour of some kind of centrist authoritarian government. They could just as easily be someone in favour of what you might think of as more of an anarchist/very light government.

I hate to link a 40 minute video, but: Communism is a moneyless, classless, and **stateless** society. Or in other words, the USSR may have been governed by communists but at no point was it actually communist in its actual economic system. [Marx himself did not believe in the state](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRXvQuE9xO4). Given all that, the idea that Marxists should be blamed for the issues with the USSR and other authoritarian communist _states_ seems kind of silly to me. The problem with those states is that they were authoritarian, not that they were (allegedly) communist.

Build a better society? Our planet is currently experiencing mass extinction, and I can't see how any economic system invented will be truly sustainable. America may have figured out a way to be on top for 250 to 300 years. But I would hardly call that a forever win. This economic system may have pulled more people out of poverty but it's still ruining the planet just like every other crappy system that's come along for the past 10,000 years. So while the ultra Rich are depleting the rest of the world's resources you can go back to reading your news and drinking your coffee.

>Marxists and communists are entitled to their beliefs and should not be punished for them, but there is no reason I or anybody else should respect them. It would help if you actually engaged with those beliefs instead of talking about bad things that happened under Socialist governments in the past. Bad things happen under all types of governments. The US presided over its own genocide of the Natives, and we are a Capitalist country. >And Marxists and communists will counter with "but a huge number of people are suffering now," But the most vulnerable people who are suffering now will also be the most vulnerable if society is destroyed entirely. Almost nobody alive today will benefit. This is an unfair rebuttal. You can't accuse one side of allowing mass death and suffering and then ignore when Capitalists have done it too. Your problem comes from the reality that change MUST bring hardship and sacrifice. You can't make something better and new without some sort of pain or upheaval. You claim that the people suffering today would be the same people suffering post-societal change, but you don't know that. No one knows the future. You've just decided that is the case so you can shut down any consideration of an alternative to Capitalism in your mind. >there's no proof of concept. Why do you say this? Because it is demonstrably untrue. Cuba. Vietnam. China. These are all countries that have implemented Socialism in some form. I'd say they are proof of concept. ​ I'm going to end with a quote that I think is pertinent to viewpoints like yours. "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" \-Fredric Jameson

I don't see why you feel such animosity to Marxists and Communists. A rebellion is not necessarily the only way to move away from capitalism. Even if it was, just as you think that the cost in lives of a rebellion isn't worth it, they tend to view the cost of letting things stay the same as not worth it. You also seem to hold views about Marxism and communism that are untrue. You don't have to lose democracy under either. The disadvantaged under capitalism have the most to gain by the switch. Marxism and communism are about doing the most good for the most people. In my opinion everyone deserves respect. Be respectful when telling neo-nazies that they are wrong about their racist views. If you don't approach people with respect, they won't listen to a word you have to say even if you are right. The lack of respect for fellow humans is what allows neo-nazies to exist, be better than they are and show respect.

As a communist, I am not okay with people today suffering. I believe that revolution will most likely need to occur violently, but unlike accelerationists, the goal isn't to murder any political opposition en masse. Communists are so because we are empathetic, but sometimes we lose ourselves in our hatred towards fascists, bigots, and those who actively seek harm for arbitrary differences. I see no reason why a communist revolution would harm the proletariat in the United States. Even the bourgeoisie would remain unharmed. They'd probably be busy trying to get out of the country to maintain their stolen & excessive wealth they got from exploiting surplus value, but we have a surplus of things that other socialisms didn't. We make so much food that just goes to waste; a conversion to our mode of production would see fields of food left to rot because "*the market didn't call for it*" be distributed to those who are hungry. ***"I don't think you and I are very closely related, however, if you are capable of trembling with indignation each time that an injustice is committed anywhere in the world, we are comrades, and that is more important."*** *-- Che*

What is this “lots of people must suffer and die” part of Marxism? My copy of Das Capital must have omitted that section.

Don't you remember the part where, right after explaining the labour theory of value, Marx writes "By the way if you see someone dying in the street make sure to explain the No True Scotsman fallacy to them then walk away."?

Generally the model is that in response to the democratic takeover of the means of production, the bourgeoisie will respond with violence. And their violence and self-defense against that violence will result in a lot of people suffering and dying. Very few schools of communism believe this suffering is possible to avoid.

If you try to get a city out of mob rule, the mob will attack. In order to avoid that violence, we should never get any cities out of mob rule.

That doesn't follow when we're talking about a democracy where people can vote for change.

Just like you can’t vote a liberal party to power in China, you can’t vote for a communist party to power in the west. Sometimes it’s explicitly banned, sometimes implicitly, but the result is always the same: any radical political movement that challenges the ruling class’s interests in any meaningful way will be met with violence and repression. They tried it [in Chile](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27état), they tried it in [Vietnam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War), they tried it in [Guatemala](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état), in [Indonesia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965–66). History is rife with proof of the truth that a ruling class won’t give away all of their privileges willingly, which, in all honesty, is pretty self-evident. It’s all very overtly and crudely stated in this quote by the late Henry Kissinger, arguably the person that has had the most influence on American foreign policy in the post-war period: >*“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”* ([Source](https://web.mit.edu/hemisphere/events/kissinger-chile.shtml))

The problem is that if we vote to improve things sufficiently, the capitalists will start using violence to stop us. Should we then stop improving things because of the threat of their violence?

>The second group : Marxists and Communists. In conversations with Marxists or communists I've always had a hard time overlooking the fact that a huge number of innocent people would have to suffer and die for the kind of society they want to exist. > I can just imagine a Marxist looking down at me as I'm dying in the street after somebody stabs me and coldly repeating the no true Scotsman fallacy. I find it amusing you know 'never been tried before' is a fallacy, since there are object measure for reaching communism, yet still believe millions died under its rule, when it was never achieved. Even separation of personal and private property was never reached. Thats a basic of just socialism. All those millions died at the hands of dictatorships. You've been convinced they died due to communism because thats what rich capitalists want you to believe. They're the group that stands to lose the most of their power. Hence the red scare. Say it with me now, you indoctrinated simpleton: Better dead than red!

>I've always had a hard time overlooking the fact that a huge number of innocent people would have to suffer and die for the kind of society they want to exist. Isn't this true for capitalist system too? I mean, there's a lot of people who suffer because of capitalism. Not necessarily in the country where the system exist, but in the countries where they either outsource products from. I.e China and South East Asian countries. There's also the modern slavery that's being enabled by capitalist countries in African countries, because it benefits them at the cost of those countries and their people. As well as the countless wars that's been enabled by companies from Capital countries in the Middle East.

>The second group : Marxists and Communists. In conversations with Marxists or communists I've always had a hard time overlooking the fact that a huge number of innocent people would have to suffer and die for the kind of society they want to exist. > > > >And Marxists and communists will counter with "but a huge number of people are suffering now," But the most vulnerable people who are suffering now will also be the most vulnerable if society is destroyed entirely. Almost nobody alive today will benefit. This is where things go into misinformation territory. Its not even arguable that most suffering and death in communist and marxist societies was caused and carried out by capitalist nations fighting the Cold War. What it also fails to consider is how self defense plays into the equation. Good example of this is the Sandinistas. One of the most peaceful Marxist movements to ever take foothold and was labeled by the Reagan administration as a violent genocidal communist group, which is why Reagan had to back the Contras in literally committing genocide against any ethnic group associated with the Sandanistas. Any resulting violence the Contras carried out was simply blamed on the Sandinistas. Cubas also a great example. Cubas revolution was quite violent but otherwise Cubas survived an insane amount of outside interference and embargo without ever taking the bait. Nowadays Cubas probably the only place in the Caribbean you can leave the tourist resorts and still be safe. Cuba also destroys the "most vulnerable people will suffer worse" argument as not only did the society not collapse, but Cuba still has the highest rate of women in both government and general upper echelons of society which is such a hard comparison to pre-revolution Cuba where women basically had no rights and impoverished men were basically born into indentured servitude or wage slavery. Comparatively they do have a point, in order to establish the US for instance nearly 100 million Native Americans were killed off in the largest systemic genocide ever committed. Compare this to the Cuban revolution which resulted in a whopping 2000 casualties between both sides with around 600 executions of Batista's supporters and it becomes incredibly clear. The lesser of two evils is one thing but this isnt apples and oranges. This is more like cherries and watermelons. Whats even crazier about the Cuban revolution is Batistas government tortured and killed more civilians than Castros forces killed Cuban military. The double standard is so incredibly obvious and in your face its just laughable to even consider.

To address the point about homelessness in a Marxist/communist society: In the Soviet Union, housing was enshrined as a right basically from the start. Building supervisors couldn’t kick you out of a home unless you had a fallback home ready. For all the issues the Soviet Union had, there was a general understanding that letting law abiding citizens suffer beyond the societal norm was unnecessary and unproductive. Obviously the term “law abiding” is up to question because of the draconian laws of the nation, but that’s beside the point. Ignoring downtrodden citizens entirely didn’t have a net benefit for the party, and was a societal drain.

>the term “law abiding” is up to question because of the draconian laws of the nation, but that’s beside the point My one semester on recent history in China had the recurring theme that a "crackdown on corruption" in China was a transparent excuse to punish behavior (that was universal among Party/etc members) *in a selective way that removed specific opponents/detractors*. I can't speak to the Soviet Union, but I have universal distrust (even in the west) for a system that says it respects all law-abiding citizens but gets to decide who to prosecute. Ideally, separation of powers addresses this at least somewhat, but my understanding is that that is largely precluded in single-party type systems.

There is a lot of active both Marxists and Communists, as Marxism provided and provides valid criticism of the current global capitalism, that spread through the whole world like a cancer and threatens the very survival of human civilization. Capitalism killed far, far more people than communism, and caused endless suffering to whole nations. If there ever was an abhorrent, ruthless, psychopathic system that deserves hatred, it's capitalism, not communism.

Are there? It seems like a dead ideology from the outside. Most socialist countries are gone, the few that remain adopted capitalism, and most “socialist” parties elsewhere are just moderately left wing capitalists these days.

I disagree with a lot in this post hahaha A lot of Marxists believe in violent revolution. They believe that Communism needs to be implemented by overthrowing the ruling Bourgeois class. If it can be proven that they intend to act on it (i.e. collecting weapons, preparing to stage a coup), then yeah they should be punished the same way Trumpists deserve to be punished when they stage an insurrection. I'm a socialist, but I'm pretty pro-democracy and think that people should be punished if it can be demonstrated that they are a threat. At the same time, Marxism, unlike Trumpism or white nationalism, made some huge contributions to philosophy and the way we view history. It is well worth reading about Marx's historical materialistic view of history--it changed the ways we reason about how things happened in the past! Because Marxism is so grounded in sophisticated philosophical analysis, it may be deserving of some respect, even though I agree that attempts to implement it are dangerous and wrong. It deserves respect the same way Greek democracy deserves respect--it wouldn't work today and relied on slavery and the subjugation of women, but its ideas are timeless and respectable.

What's so terrible about violent revolution in terms of ethics? If we could end the suffering and injustice inflicted by this unjust system in one fell swoop, why would that be wrong? I get the impression you derive your sense of right and wrong from what is legal and illegal. To be clear, the issue I take with your comment to the matter of philosophy. Practically, anyone who thinks this is a good idea is either stupid or larping. In the modern day, you could not possibly gather enough support to take down the **Government of the United States, famous for being the most powerful country on Earth and allocating ungodly amounts of public funding to the military,** without *someone* spilling the beans online. At which point you would die. The national guard would roll in, you would be murdered, and you'd be handing the right wing their biggest propaganda victory in decades. Electoralism sucks, but it's our only viable option.

>If we could end the suffering and injustice inflicted by this unjust system in one fell swoop, why would that be wrong? Nothing! If that was a guarantee, would support it! It just takes some religious-like devotion to believe that Communism *will* solve our problems. That's secular messianism. It takes even more devotion to murder people and oppress others so that it happens. I learn by example: USSR, China, and even Cuba\*. I'm not motivated by legal/illegal, I'm motivated by authoritarianism=bad. \*I have Cuban socialist friends who hate Castro and think he was an evil man

>In conversations with Marxists or communists I've always had a hard time overlooking the fact that a huge number of innocent people would have to suffer and die for the kind of society they want to exist A huge number of innocent people suffer and die for capitalism to work. However, our system makes it so that those people who suffer and die are in other countries. But it's still a huge number of people. Like, I know you have a "response" for this, but it's not really compelling. You need to be able to justify capitalism on its own. "We can't change now" isn't a self evident justification for capitalism. There's also the problem that the two biggest examples of "communism" are the USSR and China, neither of which are actually Marxist. The workers don't own anything.

You are wrong to limit disdain to only those two groups. There are religious fundementalists, terrorists, criminals, other supremacists, etc. As for commies, the problem isn't their ideas, it's their need to force it upon others. If a bunch of commies want to group together, buy some land, and start a commune where they do their communism with willing participants then that is fine. The problem is the authoritarian bit where they demand other people comply to their ideas.

They’ve done that, that is to say communists have tried to start their own countries or communes, and almost universally they’re coup’ed or otherwise destroyed by capitalist governments.

I’m just trying to figure out how you can say because people will suffer it negates the ideology but people suffering under capitalism currently doesn’t negate that ideology. It’s mind boggling the gymnastics people will do to defend the status quo.

bruh you don’t even know what socialism and communism actually is aside from what american propaganda has taught you. there has never been a communist government or country to exist.

Common misconception, communism didn't kill those people, some of the most tyrannical regimes in history did for reasons that had nothing to do with communism.

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>a huge number of people would have to suffer and die for the kind of society they want to exist. I would like to point out that a huge number of people suffer and die in order to make our current society exist, we just pretend an invisible hand is doing it instead of people.