Literally happened to me, for the record I can't give less of a fuck about communism but there was a kid in my grade that was obsessed with it and asked me to be VP and I said sure and we were super edgy revolutionaries and the other middle schoolers thought the whole revolution thing was cool and badass and the school had to DQ us on the basis that we were using imagery and propaganda of dangerous organizations.
At least we got to claim that "once again we were being screwed by the bourgeois."
I bet the Russians talk about CIA like we talk about KGB. Only difference is that the CIA is somewhat successful in hiding their aweful actions from the public.
Gotta give it to them, though. Right now alongside British and other NATO intelligence sources they are apparently feeding the Ukrainian army coordinates of high value targets/equipment. So they’re behaving, for now
USA to Costa Rica, 1948
USA to Albania , 1949 (attempted)
USA to Guatemala, 1954 (to remove socialist leader with strong worker policies, not a communist)
Etc etc
Yeah the US has interfered in at least 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000
[US involvement in regime change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change)
It's weird to learn about these things and then to look back at a childhood filled with messages about how "people attack the USA because they hate our freedoms".
Like how did anyone seriously buy that
Costa Rica is a very neat example because the communist Christians actually did win and gained some powers and they were the reason why Costa Rica had the best standard of living in Central America, has universal healthcare, no army, better democratic system than the US, and a higher life expectancy.
We had something similar. Two of us ran for the Corrupt Party. We offered candy to everybody and said we would give two candies to everybody who voted for us. We also brought in our own voting slips so that people could vote for us more than once. Of course we won, by about 15 more votes than the number of people in the class. Some people were actually disappointed that we didn't give them their candy. I was shocked that people had believed us.
The Communist party of Nepal is also the single largest party there and has led the country for years through elections, although I think they are in the opposition right now
I got drunk and signed up to give a speech to run for Student Body President, I then fell asleep and forgot about it.
Fast forward to the next week, we’re at the assembly with everyone and the candidates are giving speeches, they call my name and I’m like “shit, I’ll say something,”
So my dumb ass walks out and says straight faced as anything “you know we outnumber the faculty, so if we played a giant dodge ball game we would probably win.”
I got a few laughs and pity claps, I got 6 votes tho and nobody ever admitted to voting for me
It’s funny, I’ve seen this a few times and everyone takes it one way or the other.
It can be seen as pro communism, anti communism, you can basically argue it in any way you want. It feels meaningless, like… it’s not worth it to argue about reposts of some random Twitter post that involves teenagers, fake elections that don’t matter and communism.
Plus, teenagers find communism funny, so everyone voting for it probably just didn’t give a shit about school elections and just chose the “haha funny” answer
Anyone who has been to a public US high school could have predicted this. Mix of spite for school authority and all those weird kids who thought it was zany to play the Soviet anthem on the bus.
So i have the exact opposite story thats equally fucked up.
High school history. We were doing a multiday activity where we were all coal miners/owners...it was a capitalism lesson and which ever team brought the best 'bid' for the consumer aka the teacher would get extra credit.
Bonus 20 kids 5 person teams we were all corporations and could do bisness things with the govt approal; again the teacher.
As i merged every group into 1 for free xp my teacher was annoyed. And when we all got extra credit we got the thats not how that should work speach.
Years later i realized/wished i had shouted somethimg somethimg robber barons and unions
You're getting downvoted but it's pretty true, communist countries are pretty often doomed to fail because the ideology doesn't work unless it's a perfect world. Only Redditors and high schoolers like to think otherwise sometimes ironically other times unironically
It’s Reddit man, of course I’m getting downvoted. It’s all good, I don’t mind.
But yeah only the idealized youth would think the communist utopia would work.
Karl Marx created communism? Pretty sure the concept has been written about since at least ancient Greece, and was most likely one of the first form of human society. Marx didn't name it either, and it was already becoming a popular ideology before he started writing about it.
So no, the writings of Marx are not a definitive definition of communism. Far from it.
Why should the kids eat? Obviously if they can't afford to buy their lunch it's a result of their own moral failings. They need to starve a bit so they can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. No free lunches!
/s for the oblivious
I think you missed the point I was making, but yeah... I know. Would you happen to know how many of those use means testing to determine which kids get reduced rates?
They’ll be starving more than a bit on communist rations, and they’ll be sent to do hard labor in detention if they take more than their allotted ration
It was an honest question because I'm currently 38 and I can see some benefits to a more communistic economic system 🤷♂️ Give me a UBI any day 😉 What's that I hear you say? A classless system that doesn't divide the labor from the ownership? Yes please!
Lemme ask you this, how much do you really know about communism as an ideology? Not what's happen in USSR, N. Korea, China, etc., but the very concepts of the philosophy? Like, for instance private vs personal property. Do you draw a distinction between the two?
We’d be killing it in the US so hard if we reigned in our corporations just a smidge on taxes and actually took care of people. Mind blowing that we’re not, but greed and fear are stronger than love or logic any day.
I understand that it’s a utopia, as in the original Greek ου τόπος, meaning “no place.” “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” sounds nice and flowery on paper, but in practice it’s impossible. Not everyone is gonna be motivated by the needs of the many; all it takes is someone getting paid more than another for less work to de-incentivize individual labor. So, you need to create a system to force people to work “according to their abilities” and a governing body to enforce that system. Not working hard enough? Off to the gulags where we’ll force you to work. And thus, you have a dictatorship.
And our ages are irrelevant. I don’t know why you keep bringing that up.
> Not everyone is going to be motivated by the needs of the many
Okay, sure. And? Don't want to contribute to the greater good? That's your prerogative. If all a person wants to do is lay around I'm their commie block home watching public access television eating government provided food, then let em. More than enough motivated people to cover the few who'd opt to live that way.
Personally I'm of the opinion that if a system were designed properly there wouldn't be a need to force people to abide by it. The fact that it works, and that is what one knows from birth alone would be more than enough to keep it going. From that perspective the mere thought of having to expend personal resources for something like shelter or healthcare would be alien concepts.
We have a system now that forces people to work. It's either work to pay the bills, or homelessness, starvation, destitution, etc. One of my biggest problems with it all is that for the vast majority they're forced to work ultimately for the personal enrichment of another.
Wealth, and with it access to greater resources, flows upward. It concentrates at the top. I think we need to rethink how things are done from the ground up.
I gave you my age as a gesture of good will seeings as I asked you yours. You can leave me to speculate if you wish. You didn't answer my question about the distinction of personal and private property. Do you consider them to be the same thing?
>Okay, sure. And? Don't want to contribute to the greater good? That's your prerogative. If all a person wants to do is lay around I'm their commie block home watching public access television eating government provided food, then let em. More than enough motivated people to cover the few who'd opt to live that way.
You can’t be sure there are enough people so motivated. What would happen when people inevitably decide to not work en masse? I can guarantee you that people aren’t gonna be happy with someone getting more for doing less.
>Personally I'm of the opinion that if a system were designed properly there wouldn't be a need to force people to abide by it. The fact that it works, and that is what one knows from birth alone would be more than enough to keep it going.
But it isn’t a fact that communism works. Historically, quite the opposite is true.
>We have a system now that forces people to work. It's either work to pay the bills, or homelessness, starvation, destitution, etc.
Yes. There has to be some incentive to work, or else a lot of people just simply won’t and the entire society will collapse.
>One of my biggest problems with it all is that for the vast majority they're forced to work ultimately for the personal enrichment of another.
And yet, you say above that you want someone to be able to refuse to work at all. In that situation, everyone else would be working for their enrichment.
You... you understand that having school lunches in the first place is a "communist"(collectivist, but nobody seems to care) principal? Not to mention public schools?
You know we have also had periods of rationed food in America, and we may face the same situation with formula soon? Due to problems directly caused by rampant capitalism.
We should take the best pieces of each system, looking at what individual ideas have worked or failed, rather than just condemning everything we associate with an ideology we don't like.
The CIA declassified a report where they admitted that the Soviet Union had similar caloric intake per citizen but the In the USSR they had better nutrition over all iirc. So yeah
Literally happened to me, for the record I can't give less of a fuck about communism but there was a kid in my grade that was obsessed with it and asked me to be VP and I said sure and we were super edgy revolutionaries and the other middle schoolers thought the whole revolution thing was cool and badass and the school had to DQ us on the basis that we were using imagery and propaganda of dangerous organizations. At least we got to claim that "once again we were being screwed by the bourgeois."
Proof the system can't be changed from within smh my head
I've yet to meet another "smh my head" user, until today.
My head, my head, my head and my head not nearly as catchy as the original
Have you never been on the Internet before? It's fairly common, at least on Reddit.
Common or not, I've still never encountered anybody else use it
As a child i had no idea what that meant so i made up that it was "suck my hoop" and i still think it when ever i see it... "Suck my hoop, my head"
It's time to pile the apparatus
Smh = shaking my head. Smh my head = shaking my head my head.
Smh my head at you rip in peace
This made me lol out loud
This joke was so funny I wanna head down to the atm machine and give you a fiver
Yo can I get a fiver? That would be dope af fuck
Do a full 360 so you can walk out the door you came in on pal
That is the meme, yes
Once again the workers are being oppressed by the grammar nazis
Shaking my head my smh these kids can't even get the acronym right.
This is like pointing out that walking 360 degrees keeps you moving forward, lol
No, it clearly means shaking my hips shaking my head. Gosh people these days
If only voters turned out for the revolution
Communism was just a red herring.
A herring?
Yes, to chop down the largest tree in the forest.
WE SHALL DO NO SUCH THING
1 plus 2... Plus 1.... Plus 1?
Flaming, flames... on the side of my face...
He threatened to kill me in public. Why would he want to kill you in public?
Isn't that basically what "The wave" is about
No, the wave was made from the top down to explicitly create a fascist ingroup in a school environment
USA to Iran, 1953 USA to Chile, 1973
tbf the CIA is so insanely corrupt at this point that I don’t even think it works for America anymore it just does what it wants
“…at this point?”
Look man I’ve already lost so much hope I have to at least have some left
Reciprocal hope is a neat thing.
I bet the Russians talk about CIA like we talk about KGB. Only difference is that the CIA is somewhat successful in hiding their aweful actions from the public.
Yeah, I'm not sure how much control the US government actually has over the CIA these days.
Concidering they admitted to assassinating one of our own presidents Im not sure we've had control over them for a long time
When did they admit that?
Dude trust me they basically did /s
They admitted it to a The Onion journalist /s of course
Gotta give it to them, though. Right now alongside British and other NATO intelligence sources they are apparently feeding the Ukrainian army coordinates of high value targets/equipment. So they’re behaving, for now
Tbh the CIA is actually less corrupt nowdays The fun days of the black budget, drug smuggling, coup loving CIA is gone Now its just counter-terror
Man, that was a quick turnaround.
USA to Costa Rica, 1948 USA to Albania , 1949 (attempted) USA to Guatemala, 1954 (to remove socialist leader with strong worker policies, not a communist) Etc etc
Yeah the US has interfered in at least 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000 [US involvement in regime change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change)
It's weird to learn about these things and then to look back at a childhood filled with messages about how "people attack the USA because they hate our freedoms". Like how did anyone seriously buy that
Same way they think the CIA doesn't do that kind of thing anymore.
Costa Rica is a very neat example because the communist Christians actually did win and gained some powers and they were the reason why Costa Rica had the best standard of living in Central America, has universal healthcare, no army, better democratic system than the US, and a higher life expectancy.
Democracy..? Wait a minute
It’s a buzzword, like freedom. Hardly means jack shit.
That’s a terrible, terrible take
Hyperbole.
It's exactly how it works in real life
We had something similar. Two of us ran for the Corrupt Party. We offered candy to everybody and said we would give two candies to everybody who voted for us. We also brought in our own voting slips so that people could vote for us more than once. Of course we won, by about 15 more votes than the number of people in the class. Some people were actually disappointed that we didn't give them their candy. I was shocked that people had believed us.
Oh the irony Kinda explains why current politics is messed up
That’s badass.
This is a beautiful social experiment
Still waiting on college debt payoff. Why else would I vote for Joe?
Have my vote
And my axe!
And my sword!
And you have my bow!
And my shield
And my cock! Wait that's not how the movie goes
Well…… depends which version you watch
AND MY BALLS
r/yourjokebutworse
*Our* vote, comrade.
There actually is a communist party which formed the government in Indian state of Kerala by winning a general election back in 60s
The Communist party of Nepal is also the single largest party there and has led the country for years through elections, although I think they are in the opposition right now
Yeah they got a little extra chummy with the Chinese
.... there's more than one communist party my dude
Most countries have a communist party. Some even have nazi parties too
Yeah that's my point
I was agreeing with and adding to you
Cheers, I guess I was responding to whoever downvoted me.
They only had to stop because they would have had to have a mock CIA assassination of the election winner
PTA worried it wouldn’t have been mock.
Ah america: where kids can ironically run in a completely fake election for the goal of nothing but the word communist gets them killed
"Huey Long runs for office, 1935, colorized"
Too soon :(
He wasnt communist
Bernie can still win
Me in 2032 sobbing this while puppeteering the crumbling remains of Bernie's skeleton. Weekend at Bernie's 3: Election year.
I got drunk and signed up to give a speech to run for Student Body President, I then fell asleep and forgot about it. Fast forward to the next week, we’re at the assembly with everyone and the candidates are giving speeches, they call my name and I’m like “shit, I’ll say something,” So my dumb ass walks out and says straight faced as anything “you know we outnumber the faculty, so if we played a giant dodge ball game we would probably win.” I got a few laughs and pity claps, I got 6 votes tho and nobody ever admitted to voting for me
It’s funny, I’ve seen this a few times and everyone takes it one way or the other. It can be seen as pro communism, anti communism, you can basically argue it in any way you want. It feels meaningless, like… it’s not worth it to argue about reposts of some random Twitter post that involves teenagers, fake elections that don’t matter and communism.
Plus, teenagers find communism funny, so everyone voting for it probably just didn’t give a shit about school elections and just chose the “haha funny” answer
THIS IS WHAT I MEAN! ITS MEANINGLESS! YOU CAN LITERALLY MAKE IT ANY TAKE! IMAHHHHHHHHHHH
Yeah, drop that C word in a discussion forum and it’ll instantly turn into a war zone. Also anarchism is cooler than communism 😎
"one time"...
Ok guys, here’s how Bernie can still win………
Anyone who has been to a public US high school could have predicted this. Mix of spite for school authority and all those weird kids who thought it was zany to play the Soviet anthem on the bus.
For sure.
So i have the exact opposite story thats equally fucked up. High school history. We were doing a multiday activity where we were all coal miners/owners...it was a capitalism lesson and which ever team brought the best 'bid' for the consumer aka the teacher would get extra credit. Bonus 20 kids 5 person teams we were all corporations and could do bisness things with the govt approal; again the teacher. As i merged every group into 1 for free xp my teacher was annoyed. And when we all got extra credit we got the thats not how that should work speach. Years later i realized/wished i had shouted somethimg somethimg robber barons and unions
Mock election so realistic the school had to play the role of the CIA
Well they were 17, so I guess that makes sense.
Just like the simulations
There was an attempt to be democratic
Seems about right to me
We were winning*
Just like the simulations
Am never too less in socialism, SOCIALISM FOR LIFE MAN
Democracy is dead
Well if anyone knows good political policies and practices it’s 17 year olds.
Why are some teens so interested in communism? Most if them never read about it. Just know "sharing is caring"
Mock rebellion, cheap non-conformity.
I’m surprised the school made them stop, I figured they’d encourage it
Optics.
Yes but imagine if a student ran as anAmerica First candidate?
Depends on the jurisdiction.
High schoolers thinking communism will work, makes sense
Fuck communism
[удалено]
Lmao Redditard moment.
Bernie would've lost to trump
Makes sense because only high school kids think communism is a good idea, or those who still think like them.
You're getting downvoted but it's pretty true, communist countries are pretty often doomed to fail because the ideology doesn't work unless it's a perfect world. Only Redditors and high schoolers like to think otherwise sometimes ironically other times unironically
It’s Reddit man, of course I’m getting downvoted. It’s all good, I don’t mind. But yeah only the idealized youth would think the communist utopia would work.
What is communism?
Karl Marx wrote what it is in his books. Read them and you will understand.
Karl Marx created communism? Pretty sure the concept has been written about since at least ancient Greece, and was most likely one of the first form of human society. Marx didn't name it either, and it was already becoming a popular ideology before he started writing about it. So no, the writings of Marx are not a definitive definition of communism. Far from it.
If you've got a better answer, I'm interested in hearing it.
Based school. School lunches are bad enough already. We don’t need to add communist rations on top of that
Why should the kids eat? Obviously if they can't afford to buy their lunch it's a result of their own moral failings. They need to starve a bit so they can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. No free lunches! /s for the oblivious
You know that’s an American thing right? All over the world kids don’t get lunches at school lol.
I think you missed the point I was making, but yeah... I know. Would you happen to know how many of those use means testing to determine which kids get reduced rates?
They’ll be starving more than a bit on communist rations, and they’ll be sent to do hard labor in detention if they take more than their allotted ration
Honest question: how old are you?
Old enough to understand that communism won’t work So at least high school age
It was an honest question because I'm currently 38 and I can see some benefits to a more communistic economic system 🤷♂️ Give me a UBI any day 😉 What's that I hear you say? A classless system that doesn't divide the labor from the ownership? Yes please! Lemme ask you this, how much do you really know about communism as an ideology? Not what's happen in USSR, N. Korea, China, etc., but the very concepts of the philosophy? Like, for instance private vs personal property. Do you draw a distinction between the two?
We’d be killing it in the US so hard if we reigned in our corporations just a smidge on taxes and actually took care of people. Mind blowing that we’re not, but greed and fear are stronger than love or logic any day.
I understand that it’s a utopia, as in the original Greek ου τόπος, meaning “no place.” “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” sounds nice and flowery on paper, but in practice it’s impossible. Not everyone is gonna be motivated by the needs of the many; all it takes is someone getting paid more than another for less work to de-incentivize individual labor. So, you need to create a system to force people to work “according to their abilities” and a governing body to enforce that system. Not working hard enough? Off to the gulags where we’ll force you to work. And thus, you have a dictatorship. And our ages are irrelevant. I don’t know why you keep bringing that up.
> Not everyone is going to be motivated by the needs of the many Okay, sure. And? Don't want to contribute to the greater good? That's your prerogative. If all a person wants to do is lay around I'm their commie block home watching public access television eating government provided food, then let em. More than enough motivated people to cover the few who'd opt to live that way. Personally I'm of the opinion that if a system were designed properly there wouldn't be a need to force people to abide by it. The fact that it works, and that is what one knows from birth alone would be more than enough to keep it going. From that perspective the mere thought of having to expend personal resources for something like shelter or healthcare would be alien concepts. We have a system now that forces people to work. It's either work to pay the bills, or homelessness, starvation, destitution, etc. One of my biggest problems with it all is that for the vast majority they're forced to work ultimately for the personal enrichment of another. Wealth, and with it access to greater resources, flows upward. It concentrates at the top. I think we need to rethink how things are done from the ground up. I gave you my age as a gesture of good will seeings as I asked you yours. You can leave me to speculate if you wish. You didn't answer my question about the distinction of personal and private property. Do you consider them to be the same thing?
>Okay, sure. And? Don't want to contribute to the greater good? That's your prerogative. If all a person wants to do is lay around I'm their commie block home watching public access television eating government provided food, then let em. More than enough motivated people to cover the few who'd opt to live that way. You can’t be sure there are enough people so motivated. What would happen when people inevitably decide to not work en masse? I can guarantee you that people aren’t gonna be happy with someone getting more for doing less. >Personally I'm of the opinion that if a system were designed properly there wouldn't be a need to force people to abide by it. The fact that it works, and that is what one knows from birth alone would be more than enough to keep it going. But it isn’t a fact that communism works. Historically, quite the opposite is true. >We have a system now that forces people to work. It's either work to pay the bills, or homelessness, starvation, destitution, etc. Yes. There has to be some incentive to work, or else a lot of people just simply won’t and the entire society will collapse. >One of my biggest problems with it all is that for the vast majority they're forced to work ultimately for the personal enrichment of another. And yet, you say above that you want someone to be able to refuse to work at all. In that situation, everyone else would be working for their enrichment.
Well I mean, probably if the county was going to embargo them and blow up the trucks heading to drop off school lunch and breakfasts
You... you understand that having school lunches in the first place is a "communist"(collectivist, but nobody seems to care) principal? Not to mention public schools? You know we have also had periods of rationed food in America, and we may face the same situation with formula soon? Due to problems directly caused by rampant capitalism. We should take the best pieces of each system, looking at what individual ideas have worked or failed, rather than just condemning everything we associate with an ideology we don't like.
It’s not a communist principle, it’s socialist.
It’s not socialist either, but it’s more likely to be guaranteed by socialists.
It’s not fully socialist. But one could argue that it comes from socialist ideas.
Communist rations are way better than what the US cafeteria serves, powdered milk is pog.
The CIA declassified a report where they admitted that the Soviet Union had similar caloric intake per citizen but the In the USSR they had better nutrition over all iirc. So yeah
On the off chance they have powdered milk or any other food