Ah yes, communism and democracy, directly comparable and not at all describing totally different things in different categories
It’s actually disheartening that all communist countries become authoritarian. Theoretically with flat power structure, they should all become democracies. Maybe they ARE not communists.
Everything we’ve seen thus far is socialism with a siege mentality. Every socialist revolution in the world has been attacked by capitalism through espionage, sabotage, embargoes, sanctions leading to resistance groups, assassinations and coups. Michael Parenti explains it quite well.
I mean, what we call “communist countries” were really founded with communism as an ideal and authoritarianism as the means to supposedly achieve that ideal. turns out the people they put in power to liberate them didn’t want to give up that power willingly. shocker.
Good thing that under the words communism and democracy, there are pictures that give you the context. Which allows you to understand that the actual comparison is between Marxism-Leninism (which are the majority of communist states) and representative democratic constitutional republic (which are the majority of democracies).
Those two things don’t get along very well.
Okay, quick question: In your meme, would you say the picture description on the right is something advocating for democracy? (Although democracy in of itself has basically nothing to do with that wall imo)
I guess I agree that this wall has nothing to do with any form of democracy or communism. Just wanted to be edgy and post something against ML.
I honestly wonder where the hate for communism comes from. Yes, the stereotypical historical examples were disasters. But as others here have mentioned, the problems in these systems were not rooted in a communist economical system (which there also wasn’t really). And assuming educated people should be able to differentiate between these I can only suspect the capitalism-blue-pill.
And to illustrate further I’d like to quote my very wise and definetely NOT communist literature teacher: In heaven there’s communism. I think that dums it up nicely. If you sant to hate something, don’t hate the idea, it in itself is pure and you’re making a fool of yourself if you didn’t wish for it in a perfect world. Hate the realisations? Maybe, but also noone seriously tried yet…
But if one just hates on it for the sake of having an “enemy” in turn validating the system oneself is a part of, that’s just a lack of reflection and critical thinking. Capitalism does not work and we’d see it everywhere we look if we wanted to. We just can’t imagine any other system anymore and that is the trap our society has fallen into. Blind religious belief in a economical system (ridiculous by itself, I might add). Let’s atleast try alternatives or compromises before we finish burning down our planet.
Also: I love democracy, fix democracy first. Priority number one.
Thank you for coming to my tedtalk
Ill respond honestly even though I did make fun of tankies not realising this is a shitposting community.
The problem with capitalism is the same as with communism. Corruption, Cronyism, Nepotism, Greed and Dishonesty. People preaching for communism point at those things in capitalism and act like communism wont have the exact same bad actors trying to game the system.
No there hasnt been a modern attempt at communism because past versions were such SPECTACULAR failures (admittedly mostly for reasons that arent actually related to the system of governance) that the well is poisoned. If you cant convince people that masks prevent the spread of disease when its a scientifically verifiable fact you arent going to convince them that communism is viable when it has historically speaking always collapsed or morphed into totalitarian capitalism.
Modern socialist/communist projects that do not create states to be corrupted:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvwoHdNGq9wUbrwTZ2k8yXE5oABPBQ4NX
The first video is a list and the next few go into detail about individual projects. This is an ongoing series.
The reason you don’t hear about these like you heard about the USSR or the CCP is because they are doing good things and not turning on their own people, so they don’t make good capitalist propaganda, so instead they stay off the radar. That to me means they’re doing the right thing.
There are thousands of projects you don’t hear about because people that aren’t trying to replace the old boss with the new boss aren’t trying to get your attention. They’re doing the work to make an alternative system that doesn’t get crushed by reactionaries.
Projects and communities arent nation spanning governments. The larger the system the more rife for abuse.
I dont dispute that it COULD work, but I do think that its a bit disingenuous to act like people arent gonna people and its going to be a magical utopia. If we could stop greedy assholes capitalism wouldnt be as bad as it is.
Heaven is anarchy: everyone does what they want, which is to be good and helpful to each other.
Heaven is a (benevolent?) dictatorship: everyone does what God wants, which happens to coincide with their desires.
Heaven is communism: everyone helps each other and has access to the same resources, although since a lack of scarcity is implied, this may not require helping each other out in material means.
Heaven probably isn’t capitalism: given a lack of scarcity, communal access to resources, and everyone having their own housing, organized trade of any kind seems kind of pointless.
Heaven probably isn’t a democracy: if everyone agrees on the major issues, why would you vote on them? That said, everyone in heaven chose to be there, so that’s the one vote you get.
Note the 3 underlying issues in each of those. Similarity of goals, which isn’t going to happen anytime soon; people putting the common good before themselves, which likely won’t happen until…; and a lack of scarcity, which won’t happen until certain currently-unlikely events occur.
I lived in socialism/communism (depending om who talks about it). After having experienced it, I’m definitely not wishing it back.
The idea that the USSR and East Germany were anywhere close to communism is a joke. There were so many offshoots of communism that were just autocracies where the state owned all property that its meaning is pointless now. It’s better to describe then as dictatorships.
As much as I agree with your communism comment the same can be said to our democracy. We are a representative democracy and choose people to choose for us.
ITT: Tankies not realising they are in a shitposting community.
Communism is an economic system, democracy is a political system. There are examples of democratic socialism and of capitalist dictatorships. Also, the word here is in fact socialism and not communism.
Those words can mean those things, but communism is also used to describe a political system. After all, part of the definition of communism is statelessness which is entirely about the politics and not the economics (source).
Also, just as democracy might be used to describe a political system, it commonly taken to mean liberal democracy, and thus in most contemporary contexts implies an economic system of capitalism.
So I just think it depends on the context what people mean by these terms. Of course you can try to define communism only in economic terms, but since the term is so abused and “inflated” it’s hard to claim it has any singular or absolute meaning.
Depending on who you are talking to, communism has practically opposite meanings, for example, in public schools in the U.S. they teach that communism is when all economic activity is controlled by a centralized state, which is ironically the exact opposite of how Marx defined communism.
The same can be said of democracy.
I replied to a similar comment in here. From the context of images, you can understand that the comparison is between Marxism-Leninism and representative democratic constitutional republic. These systems represent the majority of real world implementations of communism and democracy.
The majority of people in this comment section understand this words in the way they like and argue against something that in my opinion has very little in common with the actual meme’s point (that sounds funny, “meme’s point” 😅).
I wish we had a world where people could cross borders as easily as money does
I feel like the poster didn’t mean to infer American capitalism is so great we need a wall to slow people down from entering while communism is so shitty they need a wall to prevent people from escaping.
It’s a strangely pro American capitalism meme for lemmy.
All nation states suck!
#nobordersnonationsthe book was great, though.
(Nationstates by Max Barry)
I found a game with that name and books with other names
you mean the online game based on the book?
also, there are indeed lots of books with other names. Millions and millions of books with other names. You should visit a library sometime. Will blow your mind.
🤯 just went to a library and there really are many books. Not millions but I found out about other libraries and combined this might be true.
No, seriously, I meant other books by the author. And I didn’t find anything about the book online so I thought maybe you confused something but I obviously believe you when you say the book exists.
Communism is when Mexico.
Mexico has lower democracy index, so the point still holds. People trying to move from less democratic country to more democratic one.
