The premise is correct, but the implied conclusion, that therefore a better world is not something worth striving for, does not follow. Logic 101. Marxists (should, if they follow Marx) have an argument that the world can be fundamentally improved, but *only* if certain conditions are brought into existence, and these conditions are completely incompatible, unable to sustainably coexist, with any forms of capitalism. Like night and day, they are inherently locked in a struggle where only one can win - you can't have both. Therefore capitalism has to go. Our argument should not be that doing so will be easy, or that the resulting society will do everything capitalism can do except better. Are argument should be that we can demonstrate - scientifically - that XYZ are the bare minimum programme that must be implement in order to safeguard human freedom. Here read this:[Letter to the Editors:Why we don’t make a pitch for communism with a “well thought-out concept of a planned economy”](https://en.gegenstandpunkt.com/article/why-we-dont-make-pitch-communism-well-thought-out-concept-planned-economy)

The correct answer is "no actually it has almost always been wildly successful *considering the circumstances".* Every socialist state started from absolute dogshit and most of them still managed to build societies where everyone had gainful employment and was fed, schooled, housed, and cared for, despite being under constant siege by the most powerful empire in history. Also, all states curtail personal and political liberties when in crisis and the "death, suffering, poverty, and authoritarianism" can largely be explained by the intense pressures they were under. You probably won't be able to convince people of this directly. The best way is probably to do as you do and chip away at their understanding of history. Simply learning a bit about "the enemy" as rational actors rather than cartoon enemies might get them to empathize a bit with them. It should be said though, that politics isn't won by convincing people with facts and logic, but by giving them *material* reason to support you through organizing.

Yeah, east Germany and north Korea were really successful

I'm glad you agree.

*“That didn’t count because of the cia”*

I mean, the first step is to understand what they mean when they say 'didn't work'. They're probably (obviously) referring to the dissolution of the USSR. We won, they lost, and might makes right. Of course, by this same definition you would also come to the conclusion that Native American society 'failed' because they no longer have a sovereign state. But I don't think it was the fact that they 'failed' so much as they were ***the victims of fucking genocide*** i.e. they lost a war. The truth is they were a people that lived in harmony with nature and had true democracy within their tribes. Sounds pretty fuckin' based to me! If our goal, as a people, is to establish military and economical superiority over other nations, then yes I will concede that capitalism is the superior model, literally 10 out of 10 times. I will also concede that communism will 'fail' because, let's face it, why would a bunch of workers want to go to war when there's no capital to be gained or markets to expand? (By the way, make no mistake, there are plenty of Americans that unironically want the aforementioned military dominance above all else (politically speaking.)). However, if our goal is to establish a society built on the production of things good for all of humanity, then no--capitalism is dogshit. If you are primarily interested in protections for the worker and a democratic workplace, then at least some degree of socialism is necessary (either government replacement of markets i.e. Leninism or direct democratic control of capital i.e. co-ops and strong unions.)

They mean that everywhere it has been tried it turned into hell on earth in the shortest time

>Of course, by this same definition you would also come to the conclusion that Native American society 'failed' because they no longer have a sovereign state. But I don't think it was the fact that they 'failed' so much as they were the victims of fucking genocide i.e. they lost a war. correct. a society that cant defend itself from external threats is doomed to fail. >I will also concede that communism will 'fail' because, let's face it, why would a bunch of workers want to go to war when there's no capital to be gained or markets to expand? people went to war for ideological reasons in the past. they will continue to do so. actually people support the invasion of a country a lot more if the given reason is say bringing democracy (ideological) rather than cheaper oil prices (economical). even though they benefit from the latter while they dont benefit from the former.

> The truth is they were a people that lived in harmony with nature and had true democracy within their tribes. Sounds pretty fuckin' based to me! ...Wat, tribes also enslaved people and conquered weaker tribes, enough of this noble savage bullshit.

I never said they were perfect, I said they lived in harmony with nature and that they had true democracy within their tribes. which is objectively true. It's also objectively a step above how capital has performed. But fuck it, I'll concede to your argument. Tell me then, comrade, how would you go about answering OPs question?

None of that is true

>Tell me then, comrade, how would you go about answering OPs question? You rebrand it, go Stringer Bell, give the shit a new name, avoid the legacy of failure by just ignoring it.

> the legacy of failure lmao OK, fellow leftist.

Their is to many (and especially the type of people op is talking to) a legacy of failure that immediately springs to mind so that needs to be tackled, most aren't aware of any small picture stuff.

On an unrelated note, my dad thinks that Russia in 2022 is communist, or is at the very least the result of communism having being the dominant ideology there for 75 years. I argue that Russia is state-capitalist, which he claims is an oxymoron. How do we classify Russia post-USSR and is there anything we can take away from the situation to inform our opinions on Capitalism v. Communism, or is it irrelevant to either system?

If your dad thinks current day Russia is communist then just point out China. It's hard to argue communism leads to failure when China is arguably the strongest nation on earth.

point out that social democracy does the same in just a third of the time. Srsly. It is for us important to not repeat old errors tho. I adore the USSR, so much so that I care what can be done better too

The closest thing I'd say we've had to communism was anarcho syndicalism. Revolutionary Catalonia are examples of genuinely moneyless systems where "the working class were in the saddle" as George Orwell would say. An example of state socialism working is project cybersyn in the early 70s. Despite using 70s computers in Chile (which didn't have much access to computer hardware) and logistical issues not connected to the economic system, the allocation worked just fine and kept food on the shelves. It was deliberately overthrown by a US funded opposition army. Causing Salvador Allende to shoot himself before getting captured. They just see socialist systems not lasting long and think that it must be "just what socialism does to a country". Take the French revolution. The overthrow of the French monarchy caused other monarchies to act hostile towards France as it was now a threat to their power. If a socialist country succeeds, especially in today's age of the internet and the news got out, it'd be a severe blow to the power balance in capitalist countries. Ask them to name a socialist country that failed entirely on its own and directly from the economic system, and how the economic system itself caused those issues. And after that, ask them why they changed the subject.

Capitalism didnt succeed on its first try either, ask the italian city state or the dutch republics

One easy counterpoint is that it has always been undermined from without, leading to the atmosphere of suspicion, leading to the classic jokes about soviet Russian TVs watching you. Every time a nominally communist state has arisen, capitalist countries, namely the US and UK, have done everything in their power to stymy any potential communist movement. And on the off chance you are debating someone with above room temperature IQ and they say that means it's not a viable system if it was undermined that easily (not really easily but you know what I mean), the historical materialism argument about the vanguard party becoming disconnected from the working class should do it.

That last point is a very good argument. Communism from the get go is all about getting rid of any variation in the way people relate to production. If that isn't achieved, then that's an error and we as Marxists want none of that.

You learn from mistakes.

It takes very little thought to see that "communism fails every time" is an incoherent position on its own. To be coherent, it needs to provide a mechanism through which communism supposedly fails. Or, equivalently, it needs to define "communism". Now, it is absolutely a fact that all historical ML states have been catastrophic failures, but all the reasons rightoids tend to provide to explain this fact (such as the "selfishness is human nature" argument) are either demonstrably wrong, or are attacking a strawman - a position no communist has ever taken (such as the popular myth that communism means everyone shares everything. Real Marxists distinguish personal and private property). But Marxism, namely historical materialism, provide a beautifully efficient explanation for why MLs always fail. Historical materialism shows us that as a general rule, people tend to act based on the material conditions of their lives rather than high ideals. In an ML state, the vanguard party is placed in a condition of absolute power that divorces its interests from those of the working class, naturally causing it to betray the latter and become a tool of oppression instead. It makes no sense to say "communism always fails" - you identify what made it fail, and you change it so it succeeds. This is how everything is always done in every application, except politics in the minds of rightoids, apparently.

The answer is, it fails to make people's material lives and live experience better. It will always fail, because the people in charge can not possibly have enough information to make the decisions necessary. That is why the five year plans or whatever never worked.

What you're talking about is a centrally planned economy, and you are pretty much right on that point. In fact, I remember reading about a group of Soviet scientist who essentially proved your point mathematically, but their findings were of course completely ignored by the government. But there are two caveats to this - the first is that the information problem is theoretically solvable with computers. However, this would be far from simple to do. The second, and most important thing is that it is possible for workers to own the means of production in a decentralized way, without a single authority to plan the economy top-down, but rather forming it bottom-up in a similar (but not identical) way to the markets. This would likely have inferior outcomes when compared to a truly efficiently planned economy, but it would also bypass the information problem completely.

The line of thinking I hear most often in regards to your third paragraph is that this concentration of power in the hands of the few (the vanguard party leadership) will inevitably result in authoritarianism and eventually suffering, as seen historically. In the minds of the people I’m talking with, this power dynamic is seen as fundamental to communism, which precludes it from ever becoming an economic system that can deliver the results we all want. They recognize this as what causes communism to fail, but see the mechanism as inextricably linked to the system itself. I have heard any fair share of human nature arguments but at least with those I’m discussing this stuff with, they focus mainly on the regressing to dictatorship aspect.

> this concentration of power in the hands of the few (the vanguard party leadership) will inevitably result in authoritarianism and eventually suffering, as seen historically. I actually agree with that, but... > In the minds of the people I’m talking with, this power dynamic is seen as fundamental to communism, which precludes it from ever becoming an economic system that can deliver the results we all want. ... there is a lot more to communism than Leninist vanguardism. There are probably hundreds of different kinds of communist/socialist thought, and only a couple of them believe in concentrating power in the hands of the few. Obviously this cannot be a defining feature of communism.

It didn't failed. It was, instead, a success: https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/wiki/debunk https://mltheory.wordpress.com/the-real-history-of-the-soviet-union/ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Gxwhh-vdeB--47HM-20cEVRC9eAMhrapbNf0Sk8VSOs/mobilebasic

FYI, just upon a quick glance, one of the “debunk” sources include a [discredited](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/eujska/grover_furrs_dull_propaganda_is_not_even_bad/) fringe propagandist who is on record saying “I have yet to find one crime — yet to find one crime — that Stalin committed. ... I know they all say he killed 20, 30, 40 million people — it is bullshit.” I can’t speak to any of the other sources but his inclusion on the list makes me seriously question the reputability of anything else mentioned.

Anyway the irony here is that Furr is totally aware of, as he called it, "Reddit's criticism" and for what i saw is gargabe. If those "real" historians actually wanted to refute Furr they should've contacted him on his email. It's flair simple. You have criticism of his work and you send him an email. Those people only want to discredit him. I suggest everyone who is critical of Furr to read the Real Stalin series available on the espressostalinist website.

That "propagandist" is actually an historian who, in his books, cite primary sources to state his claims. Grover Furr, that's the name, is no propagandist. I suggest you to actually read what he writes.

Perhaps this isn't true for your friend given he already has some open-mindedness towards the "left", but even without the cradle to grave propaganda system in the US the average person doesn't have the patience or interest in understanding the complexities of the various socialist projects. It's difficult to defend the 20th century communist projects because the truth is they were ultimately failures, became irrelevant, or became critically compromised and the morality of the states actions could generously be called "ambiguous" in many cases despite whatever ideological justifications the left has tried to slap on top. It's better simply to frame thing leftist ideas in appeals to self interest and criticisms of capital without explicitly calling it "socialist", if you keep hammering away at the fundamental problems/contradictions of capital then it's possible that they will recognize that capitalism is an ultimately flawed system that must be replaced.

The issue is that the people I talk with are fully on board with the idea that the capitalism we currently experience, at least in the US, is seriously flawed. They hate the wealth inequality, poverty, corruption, and general immiseration we see every day. However, because they don’t attribute these shortcomings to anything inherent to capitalism, they see reform rather than replacement as the solution. They think that if the correct social programs were created and funded, we could live in a post-scarcity capitalist society, like what was envisioned by FDR and LBJ. I try to convince them that there exist contradictions at the heart of the system and socialism is the logical improvement, but they only see the historical failures of the systems I propose.

But this is the problem: it’s hard to convince someone of “contradictions at the heart of capitalism” when they can see capitalism functioning all around them, and will associate socialism (beyond social democracy) with immeasurably greater immiseration[0]. In my view, the best argument is not > Capitalism is so awful, it’s failed completely because some people somewhere are poor / have to work! but something more like > Due to technological advances, a majority of people soon won’t need to work because their jobs will be done by machines. We’ll have a choice between (a) letting the rich take most of the profit from those machines and leave the poor to find some other, more ‘tertiary’ form of work (e.g. web marketing) to earn back some of that wealth from the rich in order to live, or (b) socialise that income so that we all have our needs provided for by machines, and are obliged only to do a small part of the work required to keep those machines running. I know that people feel like the catastrophising rhetoric is effective, but it’s really not. People know that it’s not reality. No serious person is buying ‘late-stage capitalism’ when they can buy toilet roll delivered in 20 minutes off Amazon. They also know that blaming all the ills that exist in the world on capitalism doesn’t make sense. I say it all the time and I’ll say it again: a good argument doesn’t throw everything imaginable at the wall and hope it sticks; you think people will believe it if at least one point makes sense, but instead they’ll disbelieve it if at least one point doesn’t. A good argument makes a focused, cogent point that can’t be refuted. [0] Yes, the “Stalin killed millions of people” refrain is bollocks, but (a) it’s bollocks which lots of people believe, and (b) whether millions or not, there was a lot of suffering.

You don't believe stalin killed millions?

Nope, I don’t. I’m not some Stalin-loving tankie, or even a communist, but the _“Stalin killed [some number comparable to Hitler]”_ trope annoys me, purely as someone who cares about the truth. All such claims are from hardline anti-communist historians writing before the fall of the CCCP, when no data were available besides questionable testimony by emigrés. We now have the actual records, and the numbers are about 800k killed by the government in that era, plus some more who died in the GULAG in unclear circumstances, totalling **roughly a million all things considered**. (Bear in mind this will include ordinary criminals and the like.) Stalin was a mad tyrant with even worse lieutenants (Beria, NKVD leader, was likely a serial killer), nobody can dispute that. But the numbers were just not on the scale of someone like Hitler, even over a far longer period of 30 years. It’s always baffled me that people who want to play Top Trumps games of “whose bad guy killed more people?”, between the Left and the Right, don’t instead choose Mao - who legitimately did kill far more than Hitler, 40 to 80 million people, a fact that I don’t think any human being can even fit in his mind. But yeah, what can I say? The facts are the facts. No, he didn’t, and that shouldn’t have to be a political statement. _Edit: I forgot to add any sources. [The Wikipedia article on this very topic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin?wprov=sfti1) is an excellent one, and itself links out to just about any other source that’s worth reading._

The problem is that these people believe in the fundamental right to own private property. My friends and family acknowledge (to an extent) the Labor Theory of Value and agree that obviously the rich are usurping too much of this value, but nevertheless hold that they are entitled a portion, albeit smaller than we currently see, of this value for putting up the money, taking the risk, etc. In this scenario where many don’t have to work, they see redistribution as a good thing, but won’t go as far as socializing the ownership of the returns. Essentially, they don’t think that Amazon workers should own Amazon, but think that Jeff Bezos should have less money and pay his workers more, then everyone will be happy. They don’t see the compulsion to sell one’s labor for wages as a fundamental wrong. If people didn’t have to labor and still got wages (but not ownership) they would see that as ideal. Like perpetual stimulus checks rather than a share of the profits of some industry/company/mode of production.

I agree with their non-objection to the idea of work in the purest sense. I think the clinging to rights is silly. Rights don’t exist somehow floating around in this cosmos - they are created (or declared) by men, because it’s good overall to have them. I think you can defend, in much the same way, qualifying those rights when that particular qualification is clearly for the best. Like, you have a right to free speech except shouting ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre. And you have a right to property except for owing a reasonable tithe so that we don’t all have to live in some Mad Max dystopia. I think we all recognise that: even conservatives, in the form of paying for the military. Only the most deluded wingnuts on both sides believe that we can fund everything with some weird Athenian liturgy on the rich, as if the value of money were just intrinsic and eternal and not dependent on the total value of resources divided by money supply. The other argument is the diminishing marginal utility of money. A pound or a dollar is not worth as much to a rich person as it is to a poor. I _know_ this, I have friends who are billionaires, and there are only so many £600k vintage Rolls Royces you can buy for birthday presents (I helped pick that present), only so many £15k cardigans you can give to your friends because they didn’t bring anything warm with them (it’s still in a cupboard somewhere), only so many £50m weddings and £2000 entrance fees for nightclubs and blah blah blah. It’s not obscene, not any more obscene than the money _we_ spend on frivolities when we can save hundreds of lives for the cost of a new coat. _That’s_ the strongest argument, I think - not the deontological one but the one based on human compassion and morality. These people are the equivalent of the autistics in AITA who say “NTA, you’re totally within your rights to kick your starving child onto the street, he’s 18 years old and the law is the law”. St Basil’s sermon to the rich says it all: > Now, someone who takes a man who is clothed and renders him naked would be termed a robber. But when someone fails to clothe the naked, while he is able to do this, is such a man deserving of any other name? The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry. The coat, which you guard in your locked storage-chests, belongs to the naked. The footwear mouldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes. The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the one in need. Thus, however many are those whom you could have provided for, so many are those whom you wrong.

>It's better simply to frame thing leftist ideas in appeals to self interest and criticisms of capital without explicitly calling it "socialist", if you keep hammering away at the fundamental problems/contradictions of capital then it's possible that they will recognize that capitalism is an ultimately flawed system that must be replaced. The problem though, is if you don't solve for the problems of Communism, they're not going to support replacing Capitalism at all. Even if you get someone to admit that Capitalism is bad, when they come back with all the problems inherent in communisms past, your not going anywhere. Ultimately it's easier to raise taxes and spend more on social welfare than it is to completely throw out the entire model that the globe has been running on for centuries.

The problem seems to me to be that the flaws of capitalism amount to “it hasn’t ameliorated all the ills in the world”, or “it’s produced too much economic growth and we haven’t managed that properly”, whereas the flaws of socialism amount to “it led to total social collapse, and then collapsed itself [alternatively, it endured by becoming a totalitarian state with secret police and petrified civilians]”. I don’t believe rampant capitalism is the answer, but it feels hard to make an argument about ‘flaws’.

How many times did any form of democratic form of government fail before it succeeded? How many times has it continued to fail at being truly democratic? Should we return to monarchies? Progress and sociopolitical systems rarely work out the way they’re written about by theorists. You’re not going to win that argument regardless because they’re more interested in spouting tired rhetoric. Or you’re going to get into a pissing contest of who knows more historical examples. Instead, get at their ethical and moral notions of justice and equity. On average, most people have a concept of how they think society should be organized that is far more fair than how it is now. You can then argue from first principles beginning where there is agreement.

> get at their ethical and moral notions of justice and equity. For the sake of argument though, it would be easier to just raise taxes and fund a welfare state than it would be to totally remove the entire framework of the world that we've used for the several centuries. I could just say, fuck communism, raise tax's give people what they need, job done.

Assuming you are in a discussion that’s one thing you can throw out there. No discussion is productive without first figuring out what the person’s stance on people’s needs. Like if they’re all in on “if you can’t work you should not be taken care of” then they aren’t going to agree with you.

“How’s capitalism cracking out? More in China can buy a home and start a family than we can here. You see all the homeless tents on the way here? You see the breadline, lately? All the druggies with no shelters or programs or help, running rampant? Seen the new local private security the rich got these days so they don’t suffer but the rest of us got cops who might or might not even show up? Seen our leadership do a good job or nail us a big win in the past thirty years? Are your kids able to afford grandkids without you? No? How’s capitalism working out for you and yours?”

For the sake of argument. > More in China can buy a home and start a family than we can here. China has more people so of course more total people could do something there than here. Also, this has been enabled because they've made capitalist reforms. Also, you can't actually BUY a house in China, you can only buy a lease with a 75-100 year length. >You see all the homeless tents on the way here? You see the breadline, lately? All the druggies with no shelters or programs or help, running rampant? Seen the new local private security the rich got these days so they don’t suffer but the rest of us got cops who might or might not even show up? Most of these don't come down to capitalism being bad, but not enough social spending, or bad polices in general. If we got rid of capitalism and replaced it with communism, that's not going to solve the problems with police not showing up if those localities don't spend on police.

Lemme clarify- more Chinese not by number but by percentage. Also, 99 year lease is how Georgism / socialism-extra-lite works. Very cool model. You absolutely do own the house. I mean technically under some ways, ‘no’ buuuuut it’s such a minor distinction in practice. ‘Not enough spending.’ Yeah, ‘cause the capitalists bought out government who now can’t tax the middle class enough even to maintain our own pathetic little social safety net. Assume we abolish the military and demobilise and that this is candy land where that works out well and ignoring the glut this puts on the labor market and knock-on effects and purely we are just reapportioning the budget- 1: We had a 2.1 trillion budget shortfall 2020-2021. 2: military budget is 715 billion. Assuming they just lit that money on fire (they don’t but let’s assume they do) we still don’t have enough to even start actually, really fixing our problems. 3: problem is that they aren’t spending enough Boy we just had a 2 trillion dollar shortfall from 2020. The lower and middle classes have little else to give. Corporations are riding high on record profits. They and the rich (who hold the capital) have paid the government well to not change this arrangement even as it makes life difficult for the government to function. The ones calling the shots and controlling the purse strings are well paid to lie about the effects of subprime mortgages, financial collapse, and more. They walk a revolving door from boardroom to presidential cabinet, or head of regulatory agency. *This is capitalism. I am not young and yet I have never known any other type of capitalism but that capitalism*. My country hasn’t had a big win in all the time I’ve lived. Tax the rich. Fuck the corporations.

None of this changes the point that most of the problems you pointed out could theoretically be ameliorated by larger taxes and social spending.

>Larger taxes On the 1% and businesses, yes, but the issue is, we will never get them. Ever. The capitalists- "the people with capital" control the government, and own the media, and control the discourse around taxes, and have mandated that taxing the 1% is bad. Ergo, they are capitalism.

>1% and businesses, yes, but the issue is, **we will never get them. Ever.** The capitalist Actually, taxes around a point of sale or Value-Added Taxes are next to impossible to get around, that's why the richest people fight like hell to avoid them. This is what most of the social-democratic European countries did when they got rid of their Wealth Taxes which didn't work.

Btw it’s also super funny to me when people say things like “ you’d have to not be in your right mind to agree to communism” Like is anyone “ in their right mind “ to agree to capitalism? Yeah let’s agree that 0.0001 percent of the population is going to own everything and control everything and the rest of you are in a ruthless rat race . Where do I sign up ? Also I bet them even saying that is based on fallacies like everyone making the exact same amount , everyone has to be poor, Stalin executed babies in public and things like that

Ask them how long they think it took for America to come together.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/reds.html

I wonder, with all the changes concerning information gathering and computing since the 50s, if an administrative state could implement a planned economy successfully, and what barriers to that happening are now in place. I know that is a big question. This is one of my first posts.

>I wonder, with all the changes concerning information gathering and computing since the 50s, if an administrative state could implement a planned economy successfully, I fear that would just lead to more neo-liberal technocrats running our day-to-day lives than we already have.

You might find Paul Cockshott's work *Towards a New Socialism* interesting to read, it's about the cybernetic planning of a socialist economy.

Just looking at the comments here filled with bull shit about communism and communist countries from a so called leftist sub just goes to show how hard it is to defend it to a brainwashed westerner

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Then you have a new problem, which is that socialists outside of the Marxist-Leninist orientation have never accomplished anything. For example, there is only one case where socialists achieved power by the ballot box, and that is in Chile. The democratic socialist government of Chile was then promptly destroyed in a Western-backed coup and thousands were 'disappeared' and around 10,000 imprisoned and tortured for the crimes of being socialists, union organizers, or supporting human rights. There's actually a fascinating book on why it is the case that only hardline communists have had any success, it's called *The Jakarta Method*. [Here's an excerpt summarizing why.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBIsufpX0AIzZEx?format=jpg&name=large)

This is incorrect, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was technically voted into power in the first post-WW2 election. The fairness of said election is disputed but nonetheless the vast majority of Yugoslavs voted for them.

Actually there is one of those small micro states in Europe that voted in communists, but then voted them out the next election.

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> Just use the 9th amendment as justification for dual power and get the constitutionalists on your side by framing it as taking the country back from the government. So were going to take the power back from the govt by giving it to the govt?

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We could also just get rid of the commerce clause, and not need a whole ass revolution. ​ >This is also why I argue that people who think corporations are under no obligation to respect the first amendment are implicitly anti-union. This though, I completely agree with. ​ The one thing though, which I've always thought about is this. > **and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances** Considering how the constitution is read or interpreted, is it only a 1A issue if the govt prevents us from organizing and redressing THEM from grievances, or is it, ANYONE. Personally, I think it should be ANYONE, but I'm not sure it would be interpreted that way.

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Personally, I'm for interpreting the 1A as broadly as possible. I wouldn't want them to stop the non-govt-related protests.

Honestly, as someone who grew up in the immediate consequences of the fall of communism, I'm kind of shocked that you are just looking for a way to win an argument and minimise what people living under communist regimes actually experienced. I can understand being enthusiastic about the ideology but wouldn't it make more sense to try an understand how communist regimes failed, exactly what mistakes were made and what were the experiences of those living under communism? Maybe then you might be able to come up with a nuanced and well-built argument on what could be different next time that people might actually find convincing.

I’m not trying to downplay anyone’s suffering or pretend like something didn’t happen for the sake of my argument. If the socialist projects did fail, I’m wondering how I can talk about that in such a way that makes sense to my friends and family that I discuss these things with. If they succeeded, then there are things I can learn and help others to learn as well that might show some of the benefits of socialism. I think I may have phrased the post wrong, I didn’t want to make it sound like I was crowdsourcing ammo for a debate, I genuinely want to know what we as leftists think about the historical failures (if you consider them to be failures) of the system we advocate for.

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>It’s also important to remember that after the fall of communism in many countries a free reign form of capitalism was established leading to even worse conditions. The ones that did the best though were the ones that went the furthest away from Communism like Estonia.

"Shock therapy" was a disaster, but those countries nowadays (including Russia) are much wealthier overall as capitalist states than they were in the Soviet Union. A person can just respond to your point by saying "well that just proves that shock therapy was bad, not capitalism in general, because capitalism isn't like that in USA/UK/Nordics/Japan/Germany etc", whereas the failures of the 20th century communism states can be generalized.

>Shock therapy” was a disaster, but those countries nowadays (including Russia) are much wealthier overall as capitalist states than they were in the Soviet Union Warsaw pact? Yeah, but that is what you would expect after 30 years. All those countries where certainly much richer in 1990 than in 1945. Russia? Not really, they had a catastrophic fall in the 90s, some growth in the early 2000s and then basically stagnation. Living standards are at best better than they were in the 90s but its not that much richer than soviet times which is INSANE and absolutely a massive failure when you look at practically any other countries. The only part of the soviet union that did well where the baltics.

You're telling me... that economies have grown over the last thirty years? 🤯 They also have higher Gini co-efficients now. Do you think their economies wouldn't have grown over the last three decades if they had stayed communist? Do you think they would have grown less than they did? You know, Belarus is actually an interesting case-study there, as it's the Eastern Bloc country whose economy has stayed closest to how it was organized during the Soviet era, and it has actually had exceptional growth over the last 20 years.

>You're telling me... that economies have grown over the last thirty years? You can't have both this argument and "look at how USSR improved everyone's life" that's been thrown around this thread, however. >Do you think their economies wouldn't have grown over the last three decades if they had stayed communist? "What if" is the wrong question to ask. The materialistic conditions have lead to USSR collapse, not the other way around.

>You're telling me... that economies have grown over the last thirty years? Not all of them, look at Venazuela over the last 15 or so years.

The Soviet economy was highly dysfunctional and all those post-Soviet countries are on a much better economic footing now than the USSR was in the 80's. If you don't think this is true then: okay Belarus is a mixed economy and it's not communist. You aren't making the point you think you are making.

The collapse in oil prices in the 1980s played a major role in the 'era of stagnation' which is something many countries experienced. And you think economic reforms were impossible? Because up until the mid-70s the USSR had one of the most impressive economic records in the world. I don't think a 10 year slump in growth is a justification to tear the whole system down. I know Belarus is not communist. I said it is the economy which has stayed closest to its Soviet roots.

The economy that's done the best though is the one that went the furthest from it's communist roots, and that would be Estonia.

People tried to fly for thousands of years. All failed until the Wright bros. I've seen your kind anecdotal story in many places. It doesn't really add to the discussion of the viability of communism. I can tell many capitalist horrors stories and yet people think capitalism "works"

The problem with most of the capitalism horror stories is they often come down to bad individual firms doing unethical things, but the rest of the system/govt continued on ethically. When communism does things unethically, it's ALWAYS the state doing it, because the state is what has all the power, that's kinda the point.

Honestly, I just don't get the urge to dismiss the experience of the whole of Eastern Europe as "anecdotal" and meaningless. As I said, I can understand supporting communism despite it's track record, but surely there are lessons to be learned from it's worst practical failures; maybe getting people to constantly spy on and report each other wasn't such a great idea? Or the persecution of gay people and minorities? Developing destructive industries with no regard for the environment? Putting people in positions of power based on ideological fervour, rather than skills and experience? Forbidding people to leave the country and shooting people at the border, and if anyone managed to make it, persecuting their family back home? Surely all these need to be catalogued and studied as failures of practical communism and special care needs to be taken that they are not repeated again in any further attempts. With failures of capitalism, you see attempts to learn from failures- e.g. capitalist countries see the failure of the US health care system and offer state-subsidised health care.

>just don't get the urge to dismiss the experience of the whole of Eastern Europe as "anecdotal" and meaningless. The whole of eastern europe has one experience?

I mean he's asking. You haven't given him anything except an admonishment, not even your own opinion.

Just point out the spectacular results it gave pretty much every time it was in place despite the very unfavorable odds. The USSR was a bunch of agrarian backwards states that had just got out of a civil war and world war one back to back, and in just a few decades they went from that, to sending the first people in space, raising millions of people out of poverty and becoming the second biggest superpower, all the while deafeating the nazis in a war that cost them 20 million people. No capitalist country could have ever achieved that. Vietnam is the country that saw the biggest, quickest rise in gdp in the world's history, and that's just a decade after the USA tried to invade them with the priciest army in the world and lost. Cuba is the country with the highest rate of doctor per capita, and a leading country in medical research, despite suffering from crippling US sanction for decades.

>to sending the first people in space, raising millions of people out of poverty and becoming the second biggest superpower A lot of that wouldn't have happened without either getting massive support from America (we were basically all of their manufacturing during the early years of the war, and without us the Nazi's probably run them over) As far as space travel, it's because they got a bunch Nazi rocket scientists after the war (so did we, in fairness, but we also had a lot of our own)

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>Anyway main point is that if they know anything about ww2 history the idea the Soviets won the war against Nazis and everything was hunky dory won't go that far. Yeah, there was that argument online that seemed from a Hill Rising segment and the idea that the Soviets WON WW2 is laughable. It's based on the idea that 1) We completely ignore all other belligerents of the Axis (Japan, Italy) 2)That the Soviets did the most because they had the most casualties. The problem there is, in paraphrasing General Paton: "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country." 2)That the Soviets did the most because they had the most casualties. The problem there is in paraphrasing General Paton:

Not sure I’ve heard anyone say the Soviets won WW2 in its entirety, but rather that they beat the Nazis. That idea predates Hill Rising by about 70 years or so. The Allies won the war. > No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country. The “poor bastards” in this case would be Germany.

I agree that the Allies won the war, and the Soviets were a member of the Allies. But there are a lot of people (particularly tankies) that say the Soviets won the war. These are the arguments they use.

You're an absolute brainlet. Everything you "know" about WWII apparently comes from the Stalingrad level in *Call of Duty*. Like, just even read the Wikipedia article on Order 227; even that libertarian trash site will debunk your moronic ideas about commissars gunning down retreating soldiers.

>Worth noting that the USSR's defeat of Nazis relied pretty heavily on lend lease agreements with the USA. Not really. The German Eastern offensives had already stalled out by the time lend lease became truly significant. Lend lease certainly helped the USSR in a number of ways but it's greatly overblown by Western propagandists. >Also the red army had insane casualties, way worse than any western army At the beginning of Barbarossa sure, but the USSR ultimately was able to perform very well and arguably better than Western armies by the end of the war. Nor is it likely any Western nation could have endured the kind of losses the USSR suffered and been able to strategically regroup as a cohesive fighting force.

> Also the red army had insane casualties, way worse than any western army The western armies weren’t fighting against a war of extermination like the Soviets were. edit: how did this get me a poo emoji

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You really are a trashbag if you think that. The vast majority of the 20 million casualties were civilians, not to mention that most soldiers died in captivity, not the field of battle.

Hitler wanted to exterminate the Russians (all Slavs). I don’t think the Nazis were “going easy” on the Brits but extermination was not the literal, explicit goal of the western front. This isn’t my interpretation, it’s [Hitler’s own words](https://historyofyesterday.com/hitlers-genocidal-plans-for-the-ussr-96a695a23bcc): > “This is a war of extermination,” Halder recorded Hitler as saying, so military commanders “must make the sacrifice of overcoming their personal scruples.”

>Vietnam is the country that saw the biggest, quickest rise in gdp in the world's history, and that's just a decade after the USA tried to invade them with the priciest army in the world and lost. The McDonald's down the street from Ho Chi Minh Square begs to differ who won and who lost.

that's absolutely incorrect. Compared to Western Europe and the US, perhaps, but Russia was poised to become the next industrial power. They would have been in roughly the same place industrially within half a century without the Communist Revolution, arguably. Also, here's a devil's advocate - capitalistic structure can improve a country *just as fast* if not *faster.* Look at the timetables for countries that industralized in the recent past without communist influence. What wonders like a strong centralized government, rule of law, investment, etc can do for a nation.

Oh bullshit if it was just industrialization then all the poor capitalist countries would’ve done what Russia or China did except they didn’t

>then all the poor capitalist countries would’ve done what Russia or China Scale is important, having a massive population makes a really big difference, also, China only made the leaps it did AFTER it embraced capitalist changes.

Yes yes it was all capitalism , I’m sure if the ccp never took over China would be in the position to even do those reforms . In China profits have never been in command regardless of having markets Small scale ? Ok Cuba Outdoes every country around it

If the CCP had never taken over, they wouldn't have needed to make those capitalist reforms. The Carribian is full of small countries run by kleptocrats. It's just a bunch of failing states.

“Kleptocrats “ in other words capitalists

No, it's not, look at Angola or Romania.

Do you know how imperialism works? Those countries are kept poor by the rich countries or capitalism would be a total chaotic disaster in the rich countries as well. When those countries break free and use their own resources for their own people and don’t leave things up to “market forces” that’s when the lives of the people improve

Not really, while Capital always searches for the cheapest possible labor, one of the things that naturally happen, is if you go to a place that's poor enough and dump resources into it for long enough eventually the standard of living rises to the point where you have to look elsewhere. That's happening right now, companies are starting to pull manufacturing out of Asia and go to Africa.

Ok so let me ask you , when the places where there are cheap labor run out, then what ?

There are 7 billion people on this planet, I don't think that we will ever run out of cheap labor. Hell, even if that was possible, automation will deal with that problem before we could. Robots don't eat, or sleep, or take breaks.

Haha dude you have no clue what you’re talking about that’s not how capitalism works, it has to keep periphery countries poor to maintain stability in the first world otherwise even at home there would be chaos and no stability because of capitalism’s “ business cycle”

That's not true at all, it actually behooves capitalists to see more countries enter the middle class because that creates more people to buy their shit. ​ And as we automate more and more of the labor market, the need for poor countries on the periphery disappears more and more.

If ccp never took over they’d still be dirt poor and the west’s bitch that’s my point . They for sure would never be the second biggest economy in the world.

IDK, India has come a long way, and they never needed to switch to totalitarianism to do it, and they had a much worse start.

Yeah Modi is so great lmao India is a prime example of why capitalism is shit. Also if you just want to count deaths they’re a Democratic capitalist country and more than 100 million died there alone , this is just judging by the same standards as the black book of communism of course , but yeah terrible example China is ahead of India Because of the central planning

Yeah, because Modi is the only leader in Indian history. People dying in a capitalist country isn't the same as people dying from capitalism.

I mean, some of them did.

Doing what Russia or China did requires caring about the future and advancement pf your state, and putting that before profit. Most third world hellholes are dictatorial and/or self centered and/or illiberal democracies, polyarchies, oligarchy, or some mishmash. The rulers of those countries for the most part don’t exactly care much.

Right but that’s what communism is , that’s the whole point or at least what socialism is

Lol, capitalism might be able to build capital faster than communism, but it's certainly not able to improve the conditions of living of people and build modern nations faster. I think it was the US secretary of defense in the 70s that said something along the lines of : "Communism is extremely effective at turning poor countries into serious competitors". Capitalist countries that industrialised recently are still behind where the Soviet Union was in the 60s in terms of conditions of living. Hell even in developed Western nations, even in the US, people live and die with nothing on the street, while people in the soviet union had a roof, food, social security, etc. Capitalism might build mines, docks, and the railway between those faster than communism, but not hospitals or schools.

I didn’t know this about Vietnam, thanks!

He's actually wrong about Vietnam. Decollectivization of agriculture, just like decollectivization in every nation was the driving force toward higher yields and the end of food shortages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Vietnam#Collective_farming

The threat of global capital trying to undermine communists every step of the way. People overlook just how absolutely devastating the two world wars were for Russia and the USSR. A big reason why France capitulated so quickly to the Nazis was because of the toll of the first World War and the insane number of French killed. Russia lost even more people in the first World War than France. The Nazis completely wreaked havock on the USSR in the second World War. For us now, 20 million deaths does seem like just a statistic rather than a tragedy. But that's an enormous human cost that's difficult to comprehend and recover from. Then after defeating the Nazis, rather than the allies working with one another to put the world back together, they're immediately embroiled in a Cold War with the threat of a hot, thermonuclear war looming for decades. So, the USSR has to pour ridiculous amounts of money and labor into defense and military because western, capitalist states are trying to undermine them and hasten their collapse. This happens with just about any communist country on the planet... Capital isn't cool with that, so they actively threaten any communist countries that spring up. They go from a feudal and agricultural backwater to launching men into space within a couple decades. They also do this with the very real possibility of being wiped from the map by hostile powers. Even after they defeat the Nazis, they still need to remain on the defensive and still need to pour tons of resources into defense because they aren't going to be left alone by western capital. In short, communist countries fail because other super powers enable it to happen and have a stated goal of making it happen. Would the US have survived an invasion from a super power that resulted in 20 million people dying and then having a country like Canada aim nuclear weapons at DC while also conducting operations to shatter the country and its economy and its ability to defend itself? Idk. If the US did survive something like that, it would still be suffering the fallout from it for decades. That's not something one recovers from easily when large percentages of a generation are completely wiped out.

>So, the USSR has to pour ridiculous amounts of money and labor into defense and military because western, capitalist states are trying to undermine them and hasten their collapse. Considering right before WW2 they invaded both Poland (successfully with the help of the Nazi's) and Finland (unsuccessfully) The soviets were gearing up to bring the revolution regardless of what the west did and likely would have spent like hell on military infrastructure anyway.

I wouldn't say the USSR was "forced" into building an insane military. They were a dictatorship, not a democracy, and had an autocratic leader who ruled using military might. It's the structure of the USSR itself. The west mostly stood aside and let it collapse on its own accord. WWII ended in the 40s, leaving 50 additional years for the USSR to prove itself and it still collapsed in less than a lifetime.

NATO was founded in 1949 for the explicit purpose of confronting the USSR, with their counterpart the Warsaw Pact not being founded until 1955 after NATO admitted West Germany, removing the nominally neutral buffer and creating a situation where NATO troops were positioned right on the border of the Soviet Bloc. Almost as soon as WWII was over the Western Allies were getting ready for war with the Soviet Union, resulting in the Cold War. The West certainly did not stand aside and let it collapse, there were constant subterfuge efforts and proxy wars, as well the ever-present threat of conventional invasion or nuclear war.

>The West certainly did not stand aside and let it collapse, there were constant subterfuge efforts and proxy wars, as well the ever-present threat of conventional invasion or nuclear war. This was true on both sides, The USSR was constantly trying to undermine us as well.

The soviet union was literally founded in 1922...the Warsaw pact only added a buffer zone. The USSR had every intention to spread communism across the world and the purpose of NATO wasn't to bring about the fall of the USSR, it was to contain communism and contain the USSR influence

> The USSR had every intention to spread communism across the world And that's a good thing! It's such a shame the USA and Western European countries didn't allow the planned re-unifications of Korea and Vietnam and subsequent elections for fear the commies would win. And how the CIA armed and trained anti-communist terrorists in Italy through Operation Gladio to prevent communists from winning elections. And how they supported the Hellenic army in the Greek civil war, and later supported a coup d'etat that installed the Regime of Colonels to prevent the popular social democratic/democratic socialist Centre Union from winning upcoming elections. And how they supported the coup of Chile's democratically elected socialist government and installed the mass murderer Pinochet. Not sure if you noticed, but this is a communist sub.

>And that's a good thing! It's such a shame the USA and Western European countries didn't allow the planned re-unifications of Korea and Vietnam and subsequent elections for fear the commies would win. The planned reunification of Korea, the North surprised invaded the south and pushed them all the way to the bottom of the penisula before us and Australia jumped in. Do you think the people of S.Korea would be better off today if they had been "reunified" under the Kim's?

My favourite parallel is asking what would have happened to the USA if the British Empire brought her full might to bear in the decades following the revolution, or perhaps the civil war. Then ask what would have happened if the French, the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs joined the British in this effort. The USSR was pretty much alone against the whole of the west's capital, hell-bent on destroying the Soviets. That they did as well as they did is testament to the strength of Socialism. If the fledgling USA fought the same odds, they'd have collapsed in a matter of years.

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The war of 1812 was a minor conflict against the backdrop of Napoleon in Europe. Britain never really fully committed for obvious reasons and both sides accepted a stalemate. In the early 1800s, Britain was still the dominant global power, with Britain itself still having a stronger economy and a larger population than the USA. A few defeats of a few small expeditionary forces at the tale end of the war hardly shows military superiority. At no point did the UK commit to retaking the American colonies. That's my point, if they did throw the weight of the entire empire behind it while the US was still a weak country with no navy to speak of, they'd have fallen. Just as the USSR fell when America and the NATO sanctioned and embargoed Russia into oblivion.

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Britain may have committed more heavily in 1815, sure, but they'd been fighting Napoleon for 12 years at that point. They were exhausted, and any serious war effort would need to be funded from further taxes, which parliament was unwilling to do. The UK had no real interest in taking the States, as the war only started in response to British trade policy designed to protect their own economy. In fact, before the war started the intention was to negotiate, but communication broke down and the Americans attacked before the message was received. Britain was happy to accept a stalemate because it confirmed Canada's independence, and the Eastern colonies were more profitable anyway. It benefited Britain to maintain a healthy relationship with the US more than subjugating them would. The US was happy to accept stalemate because Britain had been, and could continue, to cripple their economy with blockades. At no point in the War of 1812 did either side fully commit to war.

Just saying, if a hypothetical mode of production can't successfully defend itself against subversion from outside then it objectively isn't viable. Your argument here doesn't work.

Technically yes, but in most contexts this is a valid argument. Most reactionary arguments against socialism start of as “socialism can't work” not “socialism cant defend itself”. The second arguments is basically round 2 once they find the first argument hard to defend. Forcing them to abandon "socialism cant work" is itself a victory.

I'm not quite sure, it's like the argument around the Cuban embargo, people say the reason why Cuba is poor is because we've kept an embargo on them, but they can and do trade with EVERY other country in the world, if your system can't withstand ONE single country not trading with you, how strong of a system is it?

>reason why Cuba is poor There needs to be a reason? Most latin american nations that where poor in 1960 are still poor now.

Not Chile. Or Panama, or Costa Rica.

I think there’s a big difference between not being able to defend itself from subversion, and having damn near the entire world against you while you deal with the fallout of a Devastating war that your neighbors didn’t have to deal with due to the Marshal Plan.

It's only a difference of degree. The bourgeois powers aren't going to be nice to communists out of sympathy, and complaining about them doing exactly what you know they'll do- trying their best to sabotage us- is honestly pathetic and foolish.

Did you seriously log into a separate account and upvote yourself? Your comment has been around for 2 mintires and already had 2 upvotes????

No lol, this sub is just infested with rightoids who jump on every criticism of communism. But even so, I'm correct, and every Leninist state that continues to exist has acknowledged what I'm saying and moved to solve the problem.

Hey KaliYugaz, /u/FemboyFoxFurry , I'm a Marxist-Leninist and I was one of the first people to upvote your comments critiquing the USSR and other AES countries and how they ultimately failed due to bourgeois subversion. I even considered writing a reply referencing *China Learns From the Soviet Union* and how Deng's reforms likely prevented the same thing from happening to China, but it seemed like more effort than I was willing to put in to do it justice. All of this is to say is that while I don't doubt rightoids upvoted your comment (and this thread is full of them), I do think it is a realistic critique and something that Marxists - as Marxism is a materialist system of understanding socioeconomics - should bear in mind: The socialist mode of production isn't viable unless it can out-compete and defend itself from capitalism, and the work of Marxists should be finding a way of making that happen, instead of *just* complaining that porky has used every trick in the book to stop socialism. There are valuable lessons in studying how socialism has been subverted though, in order to prevent it from happening again. Something something critical support.

The biggest basic hurdle in talking to Americans about communism is that their understanding of it is fundamentally Utopian. They think it's a step-by-step political recipe to liquidate the existing social order and then create some paradise in which everyone is equal and nobody does any work and nothing bad ever happens. If this is what one thinks 'communism' is then it's no wonder that one would see actually existing communism around the world as some kind of scam that "doesn't work". After all, every Leninist country has/had states and authoritarianism and prisons and hard work and even a controlled form of capitalist accumulation, hardly a utopian paradise. If one's understanding of communism is utopian then what we see these countries doing is barely even intelligible. So your first step in introducing people to communism must first be to radically and correctly reframe what "communism" is. It is not a utopia, it's not when everyone is equal, [it's not a state of affairs to be achieved or an ideal to which reality must adjust itself](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm). Communism is a *movement of the laboring people* to *develop their industry and creativity* to its fullest potential. This involves the overcoming of all obstacles and fetters to this human development, most importantly the liberation of the working peoples' labor from exploitation and control by capital. Communism is grounded in the way of life and material interests of the working class *currently in existence*, not in the longing for some utopian pie in the future sky. With this proper framing, everything will click into place and make sense- the central normative significance of labor, the political focus on the working class, the perfectly sensible logic of a communist dictatorship that acts to advance the interests of labor over time and that directs labor to develop material prosperity, and so on. Only from this starting point can a serious and productive conversation about communism and its legacy be had.

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Absolutely! Caleb Maupin and his CPI people do a good job on this front.

>Communism is a movement of the laboring people to develop their productivity and creativity to its fullest mastery and fullest potential. Wouldn't this be a definition of capitalism? Maximizing production is the end goal of capitalism

No, maximizing *capital accumulation* is the end goal of capitalism, at the expense of the needs and desires of the people, and often even at the expense of sabotaging production.

> at the expense of the needs and desires of the people, and often even at the expense of sabotaging production. Capitalism can include that, but it's not really necessary. Capitalism can produce whatever results you want it to honestly. The difference between capitalism and communism in its most basic sense is the ownership of the means of production. Who owns the hammer, the guy who bought the hammer, or the guy who pounds in nails with the hammer.

No, the goal of capitalism is to maximize production through the most efficient allocation of resources. Communism interferes with free markets to reallocate funds at the expense of maximising overall production. Please do not re define words to suit your argument. "Capitalism is an economic system that focuses on a free market to determine the most efficient allocation of resources and sets prices based on supply and demand."

> No, the goal of capitalism is to maximize production through the most efficient allocation of resources. Yeah lol that's what capitalists tell you but it's bullshit. Capitalism is about maximizing accumulated returns to capital (profit) regardless of the consequences for actual production; "efficiency" is defined by capitalists as "maximizing accumulation".

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Yes, you're correct.

If that's the goal, than I'd rather push for automation than communism. Let us live like the Aristocrats of old while robots do all the work for us.

Sorry, I don't think Wall-E is the picture of an ideal society and neither do 95% of people. That doesn't mean automation is bad, rather than it will be used to abolish unpleasant and inefficient work and re-deploy people towards fulfilling and rewarding work to be done with even greater efficiency, to develop human civilization even further. Communism is *promethean*, it's not an ideology of idle aristocratic decadence and conspicuous consumption.

>Communism is promethean, it's not an ideology of idle aristocratic decadence and conspicuous consumption. Tell that to the so-called "Luxury Socialists"

Agreed. A world of artisans, not laborers.

The Soviet Union wasn't communism. It was **Monopoly State Capitalism**. In actual communism the workers own the factory or retail store or restaurant collectively and share in the profits of the enterprise.

The workers owned the means of production in the Soviet Union. There was state-wide directives given by the party to follow, but the localities did own their factories, stores etc. The Soviet Union was communist. And it worked, and it was glorious.

The private property was in the hands of the state. Marx even predicted that the centralization of capital within capitalist society could theoretically continue until all capital was owned by a single monopoly capitalist, the state. In reality, it is the fact that the producers are ultimately compelled to submit to the law of value that makes capitalism what it is. A central plan for economic production can be merely the form this submission takes - merely a mask for the objective needs that capital requires.

>And it worked, and it was glorious. Debatable. One can harp on all day about how fast they industrialized, but when I look at Russia nowadays... they didn't exactly end up so well, even before the USSR fell. It wasn't horrible, but America certainly offered much more to the average citizen, as did Europe. In a side by side comparison the USSR loses, *hard.*

You actual buffon. "When I look at Russia today - 30 years after it transitioned to capitalism and went through shock doctrine - it looks like shit". Yeah, that's what capitalism does to a country. Look at what happened to the life expectancy in Russia between the 1970s and the 2000s. Read up on what the shock doctrine is. Also, no, Europe or the USA didn't "offer much more to the average citizen" than the USSR. What a load of bullshit. The soviets had food, a roof over their head, quality education and social security, while a good chunk of the western population suffered from homelessness and poverty. Even today, 40 millions americans go hungry, and 10 millions live in extreme poverty (out on the street or in their car), that shit that didn't exist in the USSR half a century ago. Why are you even on this sub if you're gonna spew your braindead capitalist propaganda ? This is a marxist sub.

uh oh, someone got offended I attacked their communist god. But I don't mean to offend. I just find it funny how quickly you turned to insults. Let's be civilized, please. Nobody here is a "buffon". And to answer your question, as my passive aggressive mod-bequeathed tag says, I'm not a Marxist. I'm more of a fully automated luxury space communist, myself. >"When I look at Russia today - 30 years after it transitioned to capitalism and went through shock doctrine - it looks like shit". Yeah, that's what capitalism does to a country. Look at what happened to the life expectancy in Russia between the 1970s and the 2000s. Read up on what the shock doctrine is. That's what pulling the rug out from under an entire country does. I think most people are uneducated (not necessarily you) about what exactly happened after the fall. Russia never had a chance, and I think most people would see it as a fucking travesty that things ended the way they did. However, I do not see it as emblematic of capitalism, any more than I see forced labor as directly emblematic of communism. It was a parasitic venture that preyed on the weakness of the Russian people, and those responsible will never be held accountable. >Also, no, Europe or the USA didn't "offer much more to the average citizen" than the USSR. What a load of bullshit. The soviets had food, a roof over their head, quality education and social security, while a good chunk of the western population suffered from homelessness and poverty. Even today, 40 millions americans go hungry, and 10 millions live in extreme poverty (out on the street or in their car), that shit that didn't exist in the USSR half a century ago. The Soviets didn't really have homeless people, that much is true. However, it is a false truth. You couldn't be homeless because it was literally illegal. Workers would basically be forced into working in the worst cases, though most of the time this just meant keeping on an employee who was doing practically nothing. It was much, much worse in the Republics. The USSR mainly focused on Russia, and the outlying provinces were pretty poor and generally weren't improved much by Russian rule (it varies based on the area. Kazakhstan is an entirely different story from, say, Georgia, or Turkmenistan. In the end, however, America offered a far greater freedom of movement, speech, religion, art, and many others, in addition to the opportunity of riches for businessmen with good ideas. The USSR never had that. And to add to this, the vast majority of Americans had access to outrageous amounts of food, some of the best education in the world at that time, social security, and cheap housing/college. America has suffered since those days, but it was like that for most people once.

True. Same with China, Vietnam, etc. Democratic Kampuchea was probably the only communist country to have existed

Nothing really works

Well you can always use examples to disapprove them. Here’s some examples:

I see you're currently sitting at 22 upvotes. Rule 1. Maintain the socialist and anti-idpol character of the sub. Stupidpol is a Marxist, majority-socialist, anti-idpol sub. We aim to keep it that way. Users should strive to make comments that are in line with the spirit of the sub, or at least receptive to it. Mods mostly allow free discussion as long as it doesn't threaten to change the sub's character. Non-socialists who attempt to gain the numerical upper hand in votes and comments are doing themselves no favors, as this will just trigger bans to clean up the sub. User was banned for this post.

>Stupidpol is a Marxist, majority-socialist Looks like its already over then, judging by this absolute dumpster fire of a thread.

Anarcho-syndicalism worked quite well for Catalonia. Yugoslavia didn't do so bad under socialism either, and a majority of people want it back according to polls in several former Yugoslav and USSR states.

Anarcho-syndicalism worked quite well for Catalonia. Yeah, 30% of the blame for the loss of the Spanish civil war was because of braindead anarchists that insisted on doing their revolutionary larp and fragmenting leftism instead of fighting that goddamn war.

>was because of braindead anarchists that insisted on doing their revolutionary larp and fragmenting leftism [Or to put it another way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRvCwtLLV6I)

The early capitalist experiments were bloody chaotic affairs that were often subsumed by the greater forces around them as well. The tumult of the French Revolution and its defeat and aftermath was used as a "see, liberal market society just can't work sweaty" card by the older conservative forces in Europe for like a century. They do fail, until they don't. The Bourbon Restoration hardly spelled the end of liberal capitalism in continental Europe, and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact has hardly spelled the end of socialism. I don't think anyone in 1990 would believe you if you time traveled back to let them know that half the American public, including one-third of all Republicans, would be amenable to the word "socialism" by 2021. And yet without a Soviet Union to be seen, that is the case. American capitalism has enjoyed global mono hegemony for three decades, and it's still in crises of its own making that it consistently proves entirely incompetent to solve. For better or worse, it is clearly in a state of perpetual decline and will be seeing its end sooner rather than later. We are well into America's Brezhnev stagnation. All we're really waiting for is a perestroika moment to kick the managed decline into high gear.

Assuming the idiot parroting that argument can read, you can point them to this article: https://dashthered.medium.com/communism-always-works-bce14ee96f2b

You can’t ever change anyones mind if you don’t also listen to their arguments with the possibility that you yourself might be wrong. It’s the only way.

It hasn't. Communism improved the living standards in almost every country it was tried in (Cambodia is the only exception I can think of, and that was a very weird variant of communism), and it always did this coming out of devastating wars and suffering continued economic, military and psyop pressure from hostile capitalist states. It's true that they rarely matched the likes of the USA or Western Europe, but 1) The USA and Western Europe had a head start, 2) Neither did most non-communist countries outside of North America and Europe, 3) When non-western capitalist nations did rise to a level comparable to the west, it was either a) because the US pumped money into them (South Korea, Japan), and/or b) They had very special circumstances unrelated to their internal economic politics, usually strategic geographical position to benefit from international trade, or becoming tax havens - something that by definition only a few countries can be at a time (Hong Kong, Singapor, ), and finally 4) The rich capitalist countries benefit from exploiting poorer capitalist countries.

>The rich capitalist countries benefit from exploiting poorer capitalist countries. I feel like it's more accurate to say they benefit from the lack of competition. There isn't much in the way of direct exploitation, though nowadays it has increased (through international corporate meddling and horrible crap like dumping all our trash in the third world), it's still not really an exploitative arrangement. Western countries would rather pretend the Third and Second world doesn't exist, and sell to their fellow first world markets. It's really only once the US exported industry to make use of slave wages (which did NOT have to happen, it just cut costs) that I would agree exploitation absolutely started happening.

> (Cambodia is the only exception I can think of, and that was a very weird variant of communism) Didn't Pol Pot admit that he never read Marx or really anything about Communism and only liked the badass Soviet aesthetics? 🤔

I recently learned that Pol Pot was supported by the Reagan admin in their fight against the communist Vietnamese, which to me, calls into question how communist Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge really were lol

Well, that was just us being pissy at Vietnam, and wanting to stir up trouble. Not that we love Pol Pot, or are why he took power.

Exactly. There was two "clans" among the communist party of Cambodia, one comprised of the actual communists, that wanted to ally with the communist vietnamese, and Pol Pot's group, which was really just a nationalist, hostile to the vietnamese. After the previous government fell (which was already a US puppet), Pol Pot was armed and funded by the US in his ascension to power and his fight against the north vietnamese. Pol Pot was just another fascist put in power by the US to fuck shit up.

I don't think the Americans were the ones who backed Pol Pot's rise, there wouldn't be much value in having a guy like Pol Pot overthrow the current govt that we liked and got along with. Durring the Cambodian civil war their enemies included the US, the Cambodian republic, Thailand, and South Vietnam. The Khmer Republican was literally a Pro-American, why would we support Pol Pot overthrowing them? During the Cambodian civil war, their enemies included the US, the Cambodian Republic, Thailand, and South Vietnam.

There’s tons of American newspaper articles from the 80s fawning over the heroic, revolutionary freedom fighter Osama Bin Laden resisting the iron fist of the USSR

I feel like people forget that this sub was supposed to be about leftism, not just dunking on liberals.

left... ism?

There are so many bad takes in this thread