Basing your opinions on socialism on how Russia implemented it makes about as much sense as basing an opinion on Democracy on how Putin has implemented it.
Legit question, what country is a better real world example?
1936 Catalonia.
But it is actually really hard to name examples. This video explains it quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D4l_l1MedQ
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Saved for later. Thank you!
Communism, like capitalism, is an extreme that has certain, very difficult to achieve, requirements. Capitalism needs everyone to be morally decent in order for companies to focus on winning customers through innovation instead of propganda and lobbying, and to accept losses instead of whining. Even the transition into communism is incredibly complicated and technically what where the USSR was stuck, and once there you have to hope that the rest of the world went along with it because it’ll work either on increbily small scales(individual companies, for example) or on a global scale but not really on a mid-sized scale. Plus in both you have basic greed and people who are literally just born narcissitic or legitimately psychotic.
Extreme ideologies are great thought experiments but rarely have any kind of well-developed protections built and are pretty fragile.
If you want a better answer, look at the quality of life in countries with stronger regulations and more communism-according-to-North America systems. In the heavily privatised U.S. there are a lot of people who live absolutely shit lives due to an abyssmal lack of protections. Even in Canada, which is far too close to the U.S. here, at least a homeless person can recieve some level of medical assistance including major surgeries and Covid stimulus was more than a cheap joke.
Extreme
Canada’s medical assistance for the homeless is becoming just offer them an assisted suicide.
That’s a cute meme, but not true at all. Canada spends a lot of money on health care for the homeless. In fact, the current system of NOT spending enough on basic shelter and mental health & addiction supports means that we spend far more than we should on emergency care and downstream health-related consequences.
There is widespread agreement among those who work in social services that some form of supervised, humane institutional living is needed if we are going to solve the homelessness problem. There is hesitation to implement that because it is extremely expensive and politically fraught.
More importantly, if we are being honest, housing people in decent conditions for free would create a huge amount of competition with private sector landlords, retirement homes, long-term care homes, etc. Unfortunately, the “system” implicitly uses the threat of homelessness or squalid accommodations as a major lever to motivate people to work at jobs that are not very stimulating. Mind you, human nature being what it is, I think the same would ultimately be true under any economic system or form of government.
At least until our robotic AI overlords invent an unlimited energy source and take over the tedious work so we can all sit around doing whatever pleases us, lol.
Canada’s idea of dealing with the homeless is to send cops after them and then subsidize rental housing. Because that’s worked so far…
Fact check: True
Source: Parent’s friend went through MAID a month ago because they couldn’t get a job.
Cuba, Vietnam, Allende’s Chile perhaps, but it’s not like any are perfect. There’s a wide range of socialist approaches used in different countries around the world though.
Moderate socialist governments effectively weren’t allowed to exist, the US sponsored fascist coups and did whatever they could to remove them. So the ones that were able to survive had to be more extreme, autocratic, and isolationist.
If your looking for modern day examples, the zapatistas are a pretty good example.
For historical examples you can look to the Paris commune, civil war Barcelona, the original zapatista movement.
How the USSR implemented socialism was pretty great in practice, the real history of it has just been hidden from you behind the thick fog of cold-war anticommunist propaganda.
Here’s a good intro video: Michael Parenti - Reflections on the overthrow of the USSR
Yellow Parenti is best Parenti
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Anyone mentions soviets suck and the tankies come out of the woodwork.
“USsR was just misunderstood. Swearsies.”
Learn to have a conversation.
A lot of people don’t realize that the Soviet Union was seen as a bastion of democracy before the cold war, because it genuinely got a lot right.
In fact, it was democratic to a fault. Ultimately it was the people who voted to bring capitalism into the country. It was all downhill from there.
This entire thread is based on this. If comments are truthful.
This is more accurate: Online discussion about capitalism
People living in a third world capitalist country
14-year-old white boy living in a Western country: I know more than you
Spot on.
These are the kids (OP included) calling you a tankie online:
14 year old white girl
Bravo they managed to also cram ageism and misogyny in the old “champagne socialism” meme. All in the single sentence.
Don’t forget racism
But yts are bad
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
ANTI
WHITE
RACSIM!!!
Woosh
OMG lol ha ha i’m so sorry. Other people in this thread genuinely saying shit like that.
What people who lived in the Soviet union and other socialist states have to say:
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Adult mortality increased enormously in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union when the Soviet system collapsed 30 years ago. https://archive.ph/9Z12u
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Former Soviet Countries See More Harm From Breakup https://news.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx
This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
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The trajectory Hungary took after transition to capitalism mirrors what happened in most post USSR states. This just further supports the point that the communist system was better.
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What happened in countries like Hungary and Poland is a direct result of the transition to capitalism however. What’s more this transition happened under the best possible conditions. The transition happened largely democratically without any violent revolutions, and these countries got support from the west to soften economic impact of the transition. Yet, despite all that we see that majority of post Soviet countries end up going in a similar direction under capitalism. Again, Hungary isn’t an outlier here.
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Thing is that bad management, corruption, and so on, have happened in every human society that has ever existed. A political system isn’t magically going to change that. What a political system can do however is create different selection pressures for behavior. Capitalist system selects for different kinds of behaviors than a communist one. As we see with the case of transition from communism to capitalism in eastern Europe, the selection pressures of capitalism result in far worse things happening than under communism.
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Hard agree. Our government will wreck the economy just to die on two hills: social conservatism (EU funding says hi) and russian reliance. Russian gas, russian atom (x2) because they want to build Paks II. They also gerrymandered the everliving fuck out of electoral districts so they can win their precious supermajority. I hope they fail on at least one of the aforementioned hills so they can drop the ball like the now-opposition did in 2006. As for communism, well, the 72% seems very wrong. Sure we had dictatorship-lite, but 1956 happened beforehand, to which we lost many of our schools for example. Plenty of (grand+)parents’ tales paint communism like it was the worst thing that could possibly have happened. Also, if 72% of people preferred communism, then surely the dem. socialist party would Poll higher than 3%.
Reminder that fidesz (the govt party) was originally anti-communist. (I am Hungarian if it wasn’t obvious).
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God how hard it will be for people to realise how fucking stupid making more russian reactors and signing more russian gas contracts are. Our electoral system is in shambles1. social issues are overwhelmingly conservative here. The bigger green party is anti-gLObaLisM. The neo-na**s have the same amount of seats as green party number 1.
1: 2022: Popular vote: 54,13% Fidesz-KDNP; 34,44% United Opposition; 5,88% Our Homeland (neo-na**s). cf district votes: Fidesz-KDNP 87, United Opposition 19.
Mixed system so parliament makeup (199 seats) is 135 seats - 67,84% for Fidesz-KDNP; 57 seats - 28,64% for United Opposition; 6 seats - 3,02% for Our Homeland; and 1 seat for German national representation thing.
So yeah, shit’s fucked
Shhh we only believe facts that back up what we were told to think
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This meme doesn’t work, because in the scene the image comes from, we have every reason to believe Ron Swanson actually does know more than the employee at the hardware store.
TBF I wouldn’t be surprised if survivors of a collapsed dictatorship didn’t know much about the definition, theories, or philosophies of Communism. Stalin isn’t “the working people” and therefor his seizure of the means of production was not communism.
Considering that the USSR only claimed to be socialist and used propaganda (in accord with the US) to convince the people that state control is the same as worker’s control over the means of production (it isn’t), the girl is probably correct.
Sir we are not doing reasons here, this is a meme sub.
Memes can still be incoherent.
An Excerpt from Parenti - Blackshirts and reds:
The upheavals in Eastern Europe did not constitute a defeat for socialism because socialism never existed in those countries, according to some U.S. leftists. They say that the communist states offered nothing more than bureaucratic, one-party “state capitalism” or some such thing. Whether we call the former communist countries “socialist” is a matter of definition. Suffice it to say, they constituted something different from what existed in the profit-driven capitalist world–as the capitalists themselves were not slow to recognize.
First, in communist countries there was less economic inequality than under capitalism. The perks enjoyed by party and government elites were modest by corporate CEO standards in the West [even more so when compared with today’s grotesque compensation packages to the executive and financial elites.—Eds], as were their personal incomes and lifestyles. Soviet leaders like Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev lived not in lavishly appointed mansions like the White House, but in relatively large apartments in a housing project near the Kremlin set aside for government leaders. They had limousines at their disposal (like most other heads of state) and access to large dachas where they entertained visiting dignitaries. But they had none of the immense personal wealth that most U.S. leaders possess. {Nor could they transfer such “wealth” by inheritance or gift to friends and kin, as is often the case with Western magnates and enriched political leaders. Just vide Tony Blair.—Eds]
The “lavish life” enjoyed by East Germany’s party leaders, as widely publicized in the U.S. press, included a $725 yearly allowance in hard currency, and housing in an exclusive settlement on the outskirts of Berlin that sported a sauna, an indoor pool, and a fitness center shared by all the residents. They also could shop in stores that carried Western goods such as bananas, jeans, and Japanese electronics. The U.S. press never pointed out that ordinary East Germans had access to public pools and gyms and could buy jeans and electronics (though usually not of the imported variety). Nor was the “lavish” consumption enjoyed by East German leaders contrasted to the truly opulent life style enjoyed by the Western plutocracy.
Second, in communist countries, productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. Individuals could not hire other people and accumulate great personal wealth from their labor. Again, compared to Western standards, differences in earnings and savings among the populace were generally modest. The income spread between highest and lowest earners in the Soviet Union was about five to one. In the United States, the spread in yearly income between the top multibillionaires and the working poor is more like 10,000 to 1.
Third, priority was placed on human services. Though life under communism left a lot to be desired and the services themselves were rarely the best, communist countries did guarantee their citizens some minimal standard of economic survival and security, including guaranteed education, employment, housing, and medical assistance.
Fourth, communist countries did not pursue the capital penetration of other countries. Lacking a profit motive as their motor force and therefore having no need to constantly find new investment opportunities, they did not expropriate the lands, labor, markets, and natural resources of weaker nations, that is, they did not practice economic imperialism. The Soviet Union conducted trade and aid relations on terms that generally were favorable to the Eastern European nations and Mongolia, Cuba, and India.
All of the above were organizing principles for every communist system to one degree or another. None of the above apply to free market countries like Honduras, Guatemala, Thailand, South Korea, Chile, Indonesia, Zaire, Germany, or the United States.
But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.
The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
This you? https://hexbear.net/comment/3889149
Typical Russian bullshit. I hope the dwindling, future generations of Russian scum know why they’re pariahs, unable to travel outside of their smoldering wreck of a never-great, failed state
Cause honestly this comes off as incredibly racist and nationalist.
Holy shit lmao
Who would have thunk the anticommunist was racist.
And a Matt Walsh fan
Transphobic too? How surprising.
Wow. I comment on discussions of Communism and suddenly I’m afraid of transsexuals? Where is this coming from?
What on Earth are you talking about?
Once again, are you suggesting there’s such a thing as the Russian race? For real?
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What did the comment say?
I quoted it in case it was removed
What? The guy subscribing to anti-white racism rhetoric would also be a raging fascist? Say it isn’t so.
Yeah that’s me! Wow, you really took the time. Nice.
LOL how is it racist? You do realise “Russian” is not a race, right?
And how is it “nationalist”? Because it mentions a nationality?
Yeah this is fairly common opinion of russian occupants in post-soviet countries outside russia. Wonder why.
Because they’re racist bloodthirsty tyrants that get their funding and debts from NATO countries.
Pretty much Lemmy. I grew up in a communist civil war, hosing blood off my sidewalk was a weekly chore, the neighbors vanishing cause they pissed someone off and were labeled red. But yeah, Lemmy teens, you guys know all about it! /S
Did you still use money to buy goods and services? Was your father able to do speak up at work? Change jobs? Go on vacations?
Just because something called itself communism didn’t make it communism. The state owning everything is the opposite of communism. In extreme communism, there isn’t even a damn state as we know it.
The people in the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea do not live in a democracy nor a republic.
The ussr may not have been communist, but it was definitely the initial goal. The idea of a revolution that leads to a dictatorship of the proletariat is inherently flawed. You just end up replacing a corrupt government with another corrupt government.
The idea of a revolution that leads to a dictatorship of the proletariat is inherently flawed.
Not all Communists are Marxist-Lenninists or Stalinist… But obviously Lenin and Stalin were. Non-ML Communists would agree with you.
Revolutions in general are only really good for replacing dictatorships and monarchies, it’s kind of like re-rolling your government with a high chance of getting the worst kind, so you only use it when your government is already the worst kind. Usually, Power Vacuum’s just get filled by whoever has the most military might.
So communism = god?
A fictional impossibility
In many ways, yes. It is absolutely an ideal that is not compatible with current reality.
That’s why anyone who’s remotely realistic about it understands it’s an end state of pushing for anarcho-socialistic policies, one that maybe cannot be achieved. Like saying, “Humanity will walk on the moon.” when it’s 1910. Conceivable? Kinda’. Possible? Hell no.
This certainly never happens with liberalism. Africa has never seen war since democracy and liberalism freed it obviously. And putin is the prime example of a communist I guess.
Erm pushes up glasses that wasn’t real communism because real communism works.
Well it’s the same for the free market really. On paper it’s a nice idea, but in practice it makes the world miserable because people are, in general, fucking selfish assholes.
Lol ya right?!
The NSDAP was a real socialist party.
The Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea is actually democratic and governed by the people.
… apart from that it’s also most unlikely it’s 14 year old girls who are the people writing this in online discussions.
Why is it that people living in former Soviet states overwhelmingly wish that the USSR was still around?
I live in former ussr state, 90% of those people are very old, and as to why ? Nostalgia. They always overlook the bad and only bring up the good.
Have you considered there are other reasons besides nostalgia? Like the massive life expectancy and qol collapse under capitalism?
https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/32fb41e8-a5d4-41c0-9001-b3103bb43898.png
I wonder why they might be nostalgic
reasons besides nostalgia
Oh yea, like if you are religious you are a threat to the state and therefore you are unfit for basically any leading role, or your property might be confiscated and you might be sent of to Siberia ?
Lines for food namely bread and if the stars aligned meat.
Big amount of corruption ?
Mandatory conscription to the military (and the corruption there too) ?
Iron curtain ?
Free speech and freedom of expression ?
And much more. That my parents had to live trough/knew that happened to others, information on a graph can only tell you so much. I am my self Atheist, although I do believe there might be higher being, so I do not blame others for believing in them, but as a normal human being I hate when religion is pushed to my face. I also believe there needs to be government regulation to big businesses and love some of the things that are in socialism.
massive life expectancy
I don’t know much about life expectancy in the USSR, can you maybe link some sources, articles I would love to read up on it.
qol collapse under capitalism
Not familiar with “qol” can you explain a bit further ? If you mean quality of life, then I feel, at least for my parents it has improved massively.
Edit: Formatting errors.
Life expectancy https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41294-021-00169-w
Oh yea, like if you are religious you are a threat to the state and therefore you are unfit for basically any leading role, or your property might be confiscated and you might be sent of to Siberia ?
Anti religion is needlessly antagonistic but also wasn’t enforced like you are suggesting: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1920/11/13.htm
Lines for food namely bread and if the stars aligned meat.
According to the anti-communist cia their nutrition was in many ways better
Also breadlines are common under capitalism.
Big amount of corruption ?
Yes, theft from the public has definitely decreased since the the collapse. /s
Mandatory conscription to the military (and the corruption there too) ?
There are plenty of countries that do that after they lose around 20 percent of their population in a brutal war. Like Vietnam, for example.
Iron curtain ?
You mean the one the west put up? https://news.stanford.edu/2019/12/26/stalin-not-want-iron-curtain-descend/
Free speech and freedom of expression ?
Western countries have more sophisticated censorship and media apparatuses I give you that. Speak out in a real way though and look what happens to people like Fred Hampton.
I looked at some of the figures in the article most of them see slight improvement and the conclusion pretty much backs up my point of it not being worse but slightly better.
Life expectancy gains have been large and rapid, and life expectancy for both men and women reached its highest level in Russia’s history in 2019.
To the rest of your responses/points, it is somewhat tiering to respond to all of them with a formulated response, so I will ask do you know someone that lived in a former USSR state ? If your answer is no then as I said, statistics and Graphs can get you only so far, what my parents know and my grandparents know but won’t admit out of pride is that USSR sucked, our current system sucks somewhat too but at least I’m not forced to worship the state, can speak freely like you are doing right now, attend a pride parade or KSČM (Communist party in Czechia) parade, and cast my vote in an election.
And so you know, who is voting for politicians that steal from the people ? The same old people who wish USSR was back, my grandparents vote for a party that promises Socialist democracy (SMER-SD) and only thing they have done is steal from the people. Like with the faults of communism/socialism/USSR they ignore scandals and the stealing from SMER.
Lines for food
yeah i stood in one of these a few days ago, the fucky thing is that i had to pay for the food after i reached the end of the line
concerning life expectancy and quality of life and corruption, funnily enough
But behind the self destructive behaviour, the authors say, are economic factors, including rising poverty rates, unemployment, financial insecurity, and corruption. Whereas only 4%of the population of the region had incomes equivalent to $4 (£2.50) a day or less in 1988, that figure had climbed to 32%by 1994. In addition, the transition to a market economy has been accompanied by lower living standards (including poorer diets), a deterioration in social services, and major cutbacks in health spending.
“What we are arguing,” said Omar Noman, an economist for the development fund and one of the report’s contributors, “is that the transition to market economies [in the region] is the biggest … killer we have seen in the 20th century, if you take out famines and wars. The sudden shock and what it did to the system … has effectively meant that five million [Russian men’s] lives have been lost in the 1990s.” Using Britain and Japan with their ratio of 96 men to every 100 women as the base population, the report’s authors have calculated that there are now some 9.6 million “missing men” in the former communist bloc. “The typical patterns are that a man loses his job and develops a drinking problem,” said Mr Noman. “The women then leave and the men die, first emotionally and then physically.”
Overall, the Russian death rate from accidents most of them involving alcohol has risen 83% since 1991. source
In order to have been a worker for at least 5 years in both systems and therefore have an informed opinion of the difference, you’d need to have been at least 25 by the collapse.
Tack 30 years into that and yeah, at youngest the people with the most informed opinion on which system they preferred are going to be old.
And if you think you had a better system that in the past and it got destroyed, feeling nostalgic isn’t weird it’s the most normal emotion possible.
Well there aren’t any young people from the USSR around today now are there?
LOL, I knew this sub was digging for old memes but bringing back actual red-baiting? chef’s kiss
We need to start at 0 before we can return to a strong radical left community
Ah yes, “communism”. Op show me 1 country with communism. Dictatorship with ‘communism’ in their name don’t count.
Wait are you telling me the Democratic Republic of North Korea is neither Democratic or a Republic?? Like they’d just lie?
You can’t do that???
I can name several countries that tried to do a communism, and wound up being what communists insist doesn’t count.
Such as?
Such as the Russian revolution that modern communists have mixed praise for until a dictator emerged and so it doesn’t count.
Or the Chinese revolution that modern communists have mixed praise for until a dictator emerged and so it doesn’t count.
Or the Cuban revolution that be serious you know goddamn well what we’re talking about. I wasn’t being coy. People call these dictatorships communist because they’re the only countries that were ever called communist, and - generally speaking - they became dictatorships after genuinely attempting to implement communism.
If you want to say it’s like shitting on democratic republics because of the French revolution, hey great sure, that’s an attempt gone terribly wrong. Revolutions are pluripotent and dictatorships can emerge from nearly anything. But advocates of secular democracy can point to examples that went right.
I can show many democracies in Africa like that! :D
Rule of thumb: If the US is sanctioning or at war with them, they’re communist.
Yeah, like Iran
Communism IS a dictatorship. There’s no other way.
Tell that to anarchocommunists.
I’m sure it will be news to them that they will want to hear.
Tell that to communes.
Every single IWW member is reading this comment and going “NO!!!”
I thought that dictatorship masked themself as Communism
Communism, especially Marxist-Leninism, seems to require some sort of benevolent dictator who is willing to work towards destroying their own power, which obviously never seems to happen. ML theories state the need for a Vanguard state, which is a dictatorship that is supposed to be there to simply enforce the rule of the working class until a time when it is no longer needed.
So the idea of dictatorship is built into the major form of communism that has been tried, basically. One of the main problems with this is that the steps a nation has to take before it gets to “true communism” in ML theory are ripe for abuse, and hard to get through without someone corrupt seizing power.
I think there are some good theories in Marx writings, it’s just the methods for attempting to implement it definitely need to be reexamined because they don’t work.
This is where I tend to disagree with Marx as well.
Capital is a fantastic book full of scathing and prophetic analyses of capitalism and its innate degradation of value and connection.
The Communist Manifesto is a book with some good ideas but some implementation that I find flawed. And that’s not a knock on Marx-- critiquing problems is a significantly easier prospect than offering solutions.
But a lot of Marx’s proposals for the implementation of Communism are rooted in authoritarianism, even if their end goal is the dissolution of the state and capital. Also, for an ideology versed in the formation and interdependence of worker communities, the Day of the Rope is kind of antithetical to establishing solidarity and mostly serves, I believe, as masturbatory schadenfreude.
But hey, I’m willing to fix some of the stuff that doesn’t work instead of throwing more fuel into the machine that over-harvests people and our planet to the point of destruction.
I really like this nuanced take, btw. Thanks for posting it.
The vanguard state is a mean to reach communism, it is not communism itself. That’s a pretty big difference.
The difference is the same with the gouvernement révolutionnaire in France during the revolution, and you can make parallels with US revolution too. I’m pretty sure the US government is very different from what it was during its war against UK.
Thanks for that. Astute and insightful.
This meme feels like projection.
Online discussions about capitalism:
People who have to pay rent
30 year old comfortable software developer:
“I know more than you”
The vibe when you’re a 30 year old software developer and still could never afford a house in this economy…
30 year old software developer from a third world country here, 8 years of job experience on my CV. My 60k/year salary from working as a contractor for US companies puts me at around the top 99th percentile of salary earners in my country. I still cannot afford to buy a house and have instead opted to live with my parents until I’ve saved up enough to move out.
Some small business tyrant, who left the USSR when they were four and who doesn’t pay his staff, telling me how bad the Soviet Union was.
