Afaik this happened with every single instance of a communist country. Communism seems like a pretty good idea on the surface, but then why does it always become autocratic?
Eventually, “our” pretty much always becomes “my”.
Why? I’m not clear, but power corrupts regardless of the political system surrounding it (e.g. look at pretty much any HOA).
They had no communist intentions to begin with. The benefits of communism are just an easy way to market any nefarious movement with anticommunist intentions
The core principles of communism are basically an antithesis of these authoritarians/totalitarians/autocratics/oligarchs (how ever you want to describe them). Such a shift isn’t accidental
They had no communist intentions to begin with.
All (>30 countries) of them (1)?
Which ones aligned with the principles?
Chile was a communist country and didnt become autocratic because of it, the US murdered their democratically elected president then planted a dictator in his place. So my guess is it doesn’t always end that way on it’s own. Russia speedran the capitalism to fascim transition to, it’s been capitalist since 1991, sham elections since 2005, so they’re not a good example of any kind of economic or government system. China has a tight grip on their population but don’t let the propaganda distract you from the fact that the US is just as much a surveillance state as China with the one exception being how much China micromanages it’s people when they leave the country, but I wouldn’t bet against America keeping tabs on expats the same way it was found out that America was spying on its allies in the EU.
I think this question ignores mountains of contexts in an attemtp at reducing a problem into one facet.
The US may collect as much or more information as China but their enforcement actions taken based on this information are far far more limited.
Not always. The US bombed striking workers on Blair mountain, and bombed a Philly neighborhood in the 80s to target activists. A portland protestor who shot a fascist demonstrator in self defence was summarily murdered by the cops days later before they even announced their presence. An unarmed cop city protestor was shot dead after one cop pretended a gunshot behind him was from the protestors. And god help you if youre a Boeing whistleblower or sex trafficker to the politicians. Even if China does this more often its hard to ascribe that to communism if the most anti communist nation in history does the same thing but just less often. These targeted things hide in the statistics for killings by cops because cops in the US kill more people annualy than mass shooters do.
The US has many flaws and these incidents were terrible. But these largely didn’t involve the modern intelligence apparatus we are discussing. We have large numbers of people here on Lemmy actively calling for a socialist revolution but they’re completely safe as long as they follow the law.
Try calling for revolution in China and see how it goes. Leaders of even relatively non-political protest movements or advocates for minority rights are frequently disappeared or executed. In the US, there may be isolated incidents of this nature (typically by local law enforcement) but largely social critics are free to organize legal resistance to the state without repression.
Of course, there are reasons to worry we might be headed in that direction. All the more reason to organize and resist while you still can.
To be clear, I don’t ascribe these actions to communism. China is not communist by any reasonable definition. I ascribe these actions to authoritarianism. While the US is somewhat authoritarian, it is less so than China (at least within its borders—foreign policy is a different can of worms).
OP how much of today’s markets and politics are definited by Oligarchs and the rich? Can you really say that a plutocracy isn’t it’s own kind of dictatorship?
Even more so, many westerners have been fooled by culture to think this is natural, inevitable, and good.
In terms of per capita rates, the Irish Catholic Church was incarcerating more of Irelands population than Stalin did to Russia during his reign.
Just two companies; The British East India company and the Belgian Rubber plantations of the Congo killed more people than Stalin or Mao (especially if you factor out the deaths from Lysenkoism, which wasn’t a part of communism).
So early Capitalism and Colonialism killed far more than Communist dictatorships have…
And finally there is this to say - Communism is an economic system designed to interrupt plutocratic rule. It’s not a governmental system of elections and checls and balances…
…and if we are to be the most up to date with this: China and Vietnam have Socialist Oriented Market Economies. The one in Vietnam, has almost eliminated homelessness entirely. Is that a dictatorship compared to the woes of the west’s housing crisises?
Early systems from both economic models - Capitalism/Colonialism and Communism - both had events of mass killings. Both have seen dictatorships… You only focus on these things in the Communist model, because of your background. Likewise, someone from China or North Korea might hear more about the famines, deaths and genocides of the Capitalist and Colonial corporations I’ve mentioned above.
P.S. Are Cancer deaths from chemicals Capitalists kept on the “safe” list indicative of a dictatorship by the wealthy? What about the deaths and famines from weather disturbances in the climate? If we’re counting the famines under Communism, then why not these things to? It’s because of a hidden Western ideology/indoctrination culture.
The road to autocracy is paved with people who meet every criticism of the system with, “But look at how bad this other system is!”
It’s really not. It’s mostly nepotism and reproducing the an untouchable ruling class that creates an autocracy. Put simply; when one system goes too far into autocracy, you should entertain the values of another system.
Condemning that is approving of the current autocrats. But perhaps you’re a particular fan of Trump/Musk.
It’s really not.
It really is.
It’s mostly nepotism and reproducing the an untouchable ruling class that creates an autocracy.
And all along the way, people protecting the budding autocracy from criticism by diverting attention to the faults of some other system in some other place and/or time.
Put simply; when one system goes too far into autocracy, you should entertain the values of another system.
Um… sure. But that’s neither what you were doing nor what I was criticizing, so it’s not relevant.
Condemning that is approving of the current autocrats.
So… condemning people trying to shift attention away from the current autocrats by bitching about some totally different aurocrats is protecting the current autocrats?
Are you even trying to make sense any more, or are you just desperately stringing together random claims?
But perhaps you’re a particular fan of Trump/Musk.
Just desperately stringing together random claims. Got it.
Authoritarians everywhere: “You need my boot on your neck, because the other guy’s boot will be even worse!”
True, but when one system becomes sufficiently crushing, it’s best to popularize an alternative so the guy in the boot has to focus on other things for a moment.
If the boot changes colour and doctrine, and becomes crushing again, I’ll happily advocate for a free market system to distract him again…
Or perhaps some third system such as a mix of communitarianism, distributism, and Georgism. I’m not going to be particularly ideological in this.
…and the Truth is we’re speeding towards a techno-feudalism (it’s no longer Capitalism when places like Amazon dictate prices and promotions to both producers/sellers and consumers/buyers, that’s not Capitalism anymore), so unless you like licking that particular boot, your noted point may not actually serve anything than a heavier foot.
I think it’s more helpful to identify that the issue is boots on our neck, not who is wearing them. What’s the point of fighting for a new government that’s hardly better than the last?
Even if there’s no clear alternative focused on human liberation today, it’s better to build consciousness so that one can be created than tug of war back and forth between tyrants with different colored flags.
Lysenkoism, which wasn’t a part of communism
How so? Lysenkoism was wholely a result of the political ideology (environment determines wholely a crops’ yield), supressing scientific results (genetic differences exist).
No where in Communism does it say to fake one’s scientific results in order to simulate higher crop yields. That’s not part of the doctrine. That’s why it became known as Lysenkoism, because it came down to one con man.
Had the same man been born into the position under a different system, a similar result could emerge. If he were a UN director for farming undee Capitalism a similar result could occur.
Was it an inevitable byproduct of Communist doctrine that would have occurred no matter who Stalin picked? No. Did it happen in Vietnam and Cuba because of the doctrines there? No. So whilst Stalin chose him because he was told he was a good working class lad, doesn’t make Lysenko’s deceptions part of communism. They’re not written into it anywhere.
That’s why it became known as Lysenkoism, because it came down to one con man.
It happens all the time. Take Theranos as an example.
The famine and millions of death are a consequence of the communist doctrine of not having different ideas compete, and have market forces reward the better ideas. Instead they took Lysenko’s ideas as true, implemented it nationwide, forbidding competing ideas, because it was politically agreeable. That is communist doctrine.
I’d argue it always takes ignoring reality, favouring faulty wishfull and selective thinking, to be communist.
No, you’re measuring perceived deficits of “Communism” based on what you think about Stalinism (which is not the same thing). Technically Communism or “Scientific Socialism” would have used science to test various techniques of growing crops than selected the best (roughly what happened in Vietnamese Communism).
But Stalinism is called Stalinism because it’s not exactly faithful to Communism as a philosophy.
But yes there are plenty example of profit driven systems of Capitalism creating starvation famines ect. Whether it be the East India Company, or the leveraged loans of the World Banks in Africa, or the effects of Climate change, when combined they have a far greater death toll than Communism.
…and you had/have genocides and gulag style systems of punishment in Capitalism as well, whether it’s the workhouses of Ireland in the past century (with their mass graves of Children), Prison Labour in the US, or the blood mining and rare minerals in Africa… Hell Capitalism has set machine guns on workers before in South Africa. Even America has things like the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Ludowlow worker massacre in its history (where mine security had a license to r*pe the wives of workers).
You’re just not taught about these things. I can provide you references for any fact I give you here. Just ask.
So whilst you think I’m ignoring the ills of Communism (or it’s Stalinist incarnation), which I’m not. I think you’re being totally blind of the fact Capitalism has a far greater death toll, and other detriments to the world you’re purposefully overlooking, or just ignorant of.
PFAs, Bisphenol A, micro plastics in fetuses, thalidomide, the military industrial complex, the wars of the banana Republics (placing them under corporate tyranny), Pinochet, the list is infinite because it’s ongoing.
… and here there I’ll make this point: Atleast Communism refines its practice and goals, it has progressively become less brutal as it refined its understanding of agriculture and to be VERY CLEAR that’s where the greatest number of deaths associated it come from, not as an intended or desire outcome but by accident.
The same cannot be said for the stagnation and purposeful creation of sufferings under Capitalism, from the minor wage slaveries and wage theft, to union busting (CokeCola even going as far as to kill union organizers in Latin America), to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire (where as with many factory fires, workers were locked in so their pockets could be checked for stolen sewing equipment), to more major things like mining strikes, or the awareness Exxon had around climate change in the 1960s, or Phillip Morris had about causing addiction, cancer, and fatalities.
Sorry, but in reality Capitalism has caused more suffering, in a more substantial and intentional way, that’s more connected to the Capitalist doctrine of profit making and wage minimization, than Communism ever has.
Even today America essentially has had its democracy usurped by Capitalist Oligarchs (Musk, Thiel, Andresseen).
You’d have to be absolutely blind to ignore all this history, all this connectedness to the doctrine, the purposes of profit and hence exploitation, and all that continues to this very day.
Without a doubt Capitalism is responsible for everything I’ve spoken about here, and it has within it no means, or even the suggestion of being a reformist system. Communism does and has made meaningful reforms and strides in the short periods it exists in. Which is why places like China, and Vietnam have made the strides they have, and why Americans visit Cuba for healthcare.
What I’ve said here, you cannot deny. Like I say, I can provide sources for all of it.
P.S Just to clarify China and Vietnam have Socialist Oriented Market Economies, Vietnam is probably the closest to a Marxist Socialism as its internal tension are mediated through giant Social Union movements that go far beyond just representing workers, there is a national union just for women, one for disabled people, one for students ect. They all have a voice/power capable of directing how the party forms policies and directs resources.
VERY CLEAR that’s where the greatest number of deaths associated it come from, not as an intended or desire outcome but by accident.
If it was an accident, the accident repeated several times. Even engineers got murdered for correctly saying you shouldn’t overload trains (1).
But then again, it wasn’t real communism, right. DDR, not real communism. Albania, not real communism. China, not real communism. Romania, not real communism. Etc. Etc.
I think you’re being totally blind of the fact Capitalism has a far greater death toll, and other detriments to the world you’re purposefully overlooking, or just ignorant of.
That’s because real capitalism hasn’t been tried yet. All the capitalist systems still had subsidies, governments beyond enforcing property law, …
Without a doubt Capitalism is responsible for everything I’ve spoken about here
No, because that was not real capitalism.
If it was an accident, the accident repeated several times. Even engineers got murdered for correctly saying you shouldn’t overload trains (1).
Wow, you mean Authoritarian Communism is still Authoritarian? Yeah no shit (and as you can read from earlier I’ve already mentioned many such things happening under conditions of Capitalism, directly from the doctrines practices of cost cutting and wage theft or brutalization, but fine, “I’ll see your engineers there and raise you the British Bopal disaster” that killed and deformed generations of Indians in their home village and is still causing health effects today).
As you’ve dropped in I’m going to assume you saw me mention that Stalinism was not Communism in its ideal form, but was a Stalinist form.
Your point is thus not about Communism, but about Communism under Authoritarian leaders… And I have already shown that Capitalism is capable of mass killings and atrocities under all sorts of conditions as part of the philosophy (ingrained to it). Where as Stalin’s actions here aren’t specifically connected to Communist doctrine. I’ve already covered this point several times with the previous respondant.
That there is a written philosophy - that of Marxism, that of the Communes and the Commons, is why I can say these things. It has a primary set of writings. But we can say that about Capitalism too…
That’s because real capitalism hasn’t been tried yet. All the capitalist systems still had subsidies, governments beyond enforcing property law, …
…because Marx was ALSO the person who first defined and wrote about CapitalISM, in his work DAS KAPITAL 1867.
You can look and find commentaries about other concepts in different languages and different sounding words that aren’t Capitalism, such as Merchantilism, or in The Hollantse, or you can find the word Capital here and there and claim it relates, or instance around the time of Marx’s first treatise on the subject, but none are systematic, focused on the right topic using the ism repeatedly and providing a widely agreed in definition of it.
Like all concepts it has these forerunners that are related but NOT it. So you have tried to be clever here without realizing that when we discuss Capitalism in the way I have - we are talking about Marx’s original definition of it. Which was the phenomena of using an unearned accumulation of KAPITAL in order to purchase, own, and exploit workers for the purposes of profiting from exploiting their now alienated Labor.
No, because that was not real capitalism.
Oh yes, as you can read above, it very much is. It is in its original description as found in the criticism by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, in 1867. A description so accurate that it’s widely agreed with - even among the Capitalists. He was the first and primary text on what the doctrine of “real Capitalism” is. Capitalists hitherto didn’t want what they were doing to be known so openly, and intimately and for good reason. Just as any abuser doesn’t want what they’re doing to be described. It comes naturally to them, and that is no excuse for it, doesn’t make it more moral or acceptable. Only once it’s pointed out accurately described does the argument start, only then can the behaviours meet reforms. Which is why in Marx’s writings we also find advocacy for labor rights.
Sorry my friend, but what I’ve spoken about is indeed, Real Capitalism™ - down to the origin of the term.
P.S there’s also Proudhon: the capitalist’s employee was “subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience” - so not much better. People of the era were writing things as they saw them emerge. It’s still the problem of the abuser as described above.
Oh yes, as you can read above, it very much is. It is in its original description as found in the criticism by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, in 1867.
It isn’t according to the earlier definition of capitalism. Real capitalism hasn’t been tried yet. Show me an example of a real capitalist country? What’s Marx’s opinion on capitalism worth, as he hasn’t ever experienced a real capitalist country?
Because, at a high level, communism requires that a leader or group of leaders get things on track and then give up all of their power over time. Instead, the type of people who tend to lead revolutions are the same type of people who are unlikely to want to give up power and instead end up wanting more power. So no true communism has ever existed because it never gets to that phase.
That’s Leninist “Communism”.
As a reminder, Lenin lost the 1917 election and then seized power to make himself a dictator, then wrote about how dictators are essential to communism.
The Truth is that Dictators are anathema to communism. A dictator who seizes the means of production is called a king, and the people are then called serfs. It’s a full step backwards in the pursuit of the communist dream.
Theoretically, one could spontaneously be created from scratch starting with a small group of people on a new world who have never experienced a centralized form of government. Formal governing is not required if the society is small enough and there are no outside forces at work to create a threat. But once governing is required, there will generally be forces at work that will centralize it. The only exception might be in a society with very limited need for cooperation due to plentiful resources available to all, such as a utopia like Star Trek’s Earth.
In all other, realistic scenarios, there will need to be a revolution. That will always be led by a person or group of people to organize the overthrow and coordinate the changes. This group will inevitably be in search of power themselves, corrupted by the power they are given, or infiltrated by those in search of such power and are unlikely to give up that power.
That village that talks out their problems and thus needs no government is A, a fiction, and B, a form of extreme democracy. Every decision is discussed and agreed upon by the group. That’s extreme democracy.
And if you push for more democracy, you can get it. But you have to resist the revolutionaries and the fascists. All while prepping to be a revolutionary if required.
Work within the system as much as possible, because when it’s gone, when that fragile peace is broken, nothing good can come out. As you said, the revolution is inevitably betrayed.
Now if we could actually teach people what a Tariff is. Fuckers voting for Trump wanting to bring prices down, when that’s exactly the opposite of what happens with a Tariff. And Democrats abandoning their base to chase a mythical center that just does not exist…
I understand the push for revolution. I just know that in order for things to get better, the transition to communism needs to happen slowly and democratically.
Which is why I was emphasizing that theoretically it is possible, but that it’s not realistic. The realistic scenario is revolution which would require centralized leadership which then never actually gives up the power and money they were put there to redistribute and decentralize. Thus it’s never been done. The only way for communism to exist without the need for a group of people to give up power would be in that theoretical world where no elite-run government ever existed to need to take the power and wealth away from and that only historically has existed in very small communities prior to them having regular contact with hostile outsiders. Currently only a few “untouched” tribal societies exist in that way.
Of course, we’re ignoring the European Social democracies, many of which are well on their way to true communism.
It’s a slow process, but they’re doing the work to get there. But they don’t count? for reasons?
Seriously. The blueprint of how to get to communism from democracy is right there in the European Social Democracies.
Universal healthcare and efforts to make food and housing basic rights. That’s like 90% of what you need.
Social Democracies cannot get to Communism without revolution and replacement with Socialism. This is because the dominant system in Social Democracy, especially the nordic countries, is Capitalism and Imperialism. They fund their safety nets from massive exploitation of the Global South with brutal IMF loans, exporting Capital for outsourcing production, and more, they are parasitic.
Further, European Social Democracies are seeing sliding worker protections and social safety nets. Because the Capitalists are in control, they wear down the safety nets via austerity politics to further their profits. This is due to the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, Capitalists are forced to expand internationally and seek further and further exploitation due to competition forcing rates of profit down, so they counteract by expanding to raise absolute profits. Austerity measures are one example of Capitalists lowering their expenditures.
Next, Socialism is democratic. Whether it be the Soviet Model (for more in-depth accounting of it, Soviet Democracy by American Pat Sloan who participated in and observed it directly in the 1930s), or otherwise, Socialism has always been democratic. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the dictatorship by the proletarian class as a whole against the bourgeois clasd as a whole, as a direct contrast to liberal democratic dictatorships of the bourgeoisie found in the world over, including European Social Democracy.
Social Safety Nets alone are not Worker supremacy over Capital, hence why the US saw the erosion of social safety nets from FDR to complete obliteration, and why we are seeing the same trend in European countries. This is unavoidable as long as Capital is the dominant factor in the economy and humans are not, due to the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall. In 1900, Rosa Luxemburg already proved why this is the case in Reform or Revolution. Reformism has never worked, because it cannot work. Even when a Communist does get in via existing democratic systems, such as Salvadore Allende in Chile, they get couped by the national bourgeoisie with the aid of Imperialist countries like the United States or EU.
Finally, there is no “true communism.” Every country will have a different path to Communism, but certain factors will remain the same, such as the necessity of revolution. The idea of a pure, untainted “true communism” that has never been actually tried is a western-chauvanistic attitude that necessitates that workers in AES countries are simply “too dumb” to understand what communism is or how to build it, despite their real, practical work. The only Communism is the kind that exists in the real world, not in the figments of imagination alone.
You would do well to watch Dr. Michael Parenti’s 1986 lecture and read his seminal historical book Blackshirts and Reds.
In 1917, there were 2 governments, the Worker and Peasant supported Soviet Government, and the Bourgeoisie and Petite Bourgeoisie supported liberal Provisional Government. Lenin was elected via the Soviet system, and the Socialist Revolutionaries were elected in the bourgeois controlled Provisional Government. After the election, the Soviet Government disbanded the Provisional Government via revolution, the same measures proposed by Marx the entire time.
Secondly, Lenin never once wrote about how dictators are essential to Communism. Lenin fully believed in Soviet Democracy, ie workers councils, and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, a term coined by Karl Marx to describe a Socialist State that had not fully absorbed all Capital into the Public Sector, and thus had to suppress the still existing Bourgeoisie. The reason for this is that Capital can only be wrested by the degree to which it develops! Per Engels:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
Dictators are indeed antithetical to Communism, but you’ve entirely misframed Marx, Lenin, the USSR, and the October Revolution. The Soviet Republic in control of a largely Publicly Owned, Centrally Planned economy is in no way comparable to feudalism, but is actually existing Socialism.
Funilly enough, Lenin described exactly what you’re now doing in The State and Revolution:
What is now happening to Marx’s teaching has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the teachings of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes struggling for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their teachings with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. At the present time, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the working-class movement concur in this “doctoring” of Marxism. They omit, obliterate and distort the revolutionary side of this teaching, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don’t laugh!). And more and more frequently, German bourgeois scholars, but yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German” Marx, who, they aver, educated the workers’ unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of conducting a predatory war!
It’s funny that you describe Communism as a “dream,” it accurately depicts your idealistic understanding of it, along with your “reminder.”
That’s an interesting reading of history… I’m sure.
But the truth is that Lenin lost the 1917 election, threw a hissy fit and demanded that the newly elected assembly cede all power to him, or else.
The Bolsheviks seized power and banned all opposition parties, and then Lenin justified his coup by claiming that “Vanguard Parties” are part of communism, when all they actually are is a dictatorship.
Stalin wasn’t the first Soviet Dictator. He was just more honest about being a monster. Well, to himself, anyway.
It isn’t an “interesting reading of history,” it’s what literally happened. The fact that you’re placing such importance on the vestigial Provisional Government’s election when the Workers had already embraced the Soviet Government and used it for all intents and purposes as their only government is liberalism, and anti-revolutionary.
Secondly, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as envisioned by Marx is fully compatible with a One-Party system. Multi-party systems are not more democratic, just more divided. Within the Soviet system, there was more democratic control than in the liberal Provisional Government system.
Finally, the idea that a mass worker party can be a dictatorship, as in the modern, single-person autocracy, is absurd. Vanguard Parties, moreover, are a proven method to establish Socialism. They aren’t unaccountable cabals, but large worker parties made up of the most politically experienced of the Proletariat, which has been successfully replicated in countries like Cuba and the PRC in establishing Socialism.
You seriously need to read Marx, it’s desparately obvious that you are working off of Wikipedia articles and not actual Marxist theory. I suggest my intro to Marxism list.
Lenin was a monster. He just had slightly better PR after his death because Stalin was so much worse.
Because one party bullshit dictatorships are not the proletariat.
They are the new feudal lords, who then need the guillotine.
The Bolsheviks were a minority party overall, if they hadn’t been they would have won Russia’s only free and fair election. But they lost and launched a coup.
Then the tankies come in and pretend the new lords are still part of the people.
One Party democratic systems are not dictatorships. I don’t know how else to explain this in clearer and more simple terms, moreover the Bolsheviks were made up of the Proletariat, and countless workers joined their ranks.
Further, the economic system of the USSR was based on Public Ownership and Central Planning, not agrarian feudalism. You keep using words that have specific meanings to elicit an emotional response despite having no actual bearing in reality.
Finally, the Bolsheviks were the majority, that’s what the name “Bolshevik” stems from. Why is it that you rely on the muddy results of a vestigial illegitimate government that had already been abandoned by the Workers, and not the Soviet Government that existed alongside it and had already elected Lenin and the Bolsheviks prior to the disbanding of the Constituent Assembly? You are calling liberal dictatorships of the bourgeoisie “free and fair elections,” this is the level you stoop to in order to piss on Marx’s grave one last time.
Additionally, it was a revolution, not a coup, as the majority of people supported the Soviet Government over the liberal Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks enjoyed the power they had because they were real representatives of the Working Class, even Kropotkin recognized this.
Your idea of “Marxism” doesn’t follow any strain of Marxism historically, it’s so confused and self-contradictory that you end up praising liberalism and calling Socialism “feudalism.” Again, read Marx.
Keep telling yourself that.
But no, the truth is single party “communism” is just a new form of nobility and peasants. How many millions did Stalin and Mao kill? All because they had totalitarian control.
If Leninism worked, the Soviet Union wouldn’t have fallen. But no, Leninism led directly to Stalinism. There were no guardrails, no protections, because Lenin had already banned opposition, Which is dictator 101.
This is an incorrect interpretation of the phrase “withering away of the state,” which I elaborated on here.
I’m not really talking about Marxist communism. See my other comment, but in any realistic scenarios, communism is unlikely to form spontaneously as the first form of government in a new society.
And since revolution on a large scale requires centralized coordination and leadership, there will always be someone or some group given centralized power that is unlikely to allow for decentralization to happen on a large scale and is actually more likely to grab the power of the previous government system and keep it centralized, “for the good of the people” or “to defend the people” or whatever. Even well meaning revolutionaries are highly likely to crave control and be unlikely to want to allow “someone else” to change what they put in place. This then leaves in place the centralization indefinitely and never leads to communism.
Communism is centralized. Central Planning and Public Ownership are the core foundations of the economy in Communism. You’re talking about Anarchism as though Marxists were trying to achieve that, and you’re calling Anarchism “Communism.”
But communism is less centralized than representative democracy or dictatorship or whatever the pre-revolution government likely was. These portions of the government must decentralize as part of the process of moving between government types. That decentralization is essential or it’s not true communism, it’s the fake things that pretend to be communism like PRC, USSR, DPRK, etc.
The only way that some amount of decentralization doesn’t need to happen is if were talking about a society with no previous need for government forming into a communist state, which is what I mentioned was extremely unlikely, even if there were societies isolated enough to still exist without any form of centralized government.
No, Communism is centralization. It isn’t less decentralized than pre-revolution government, but more. That’s the point, to fold the entire private sector eventually into the Public, with Central Planning. You keep saying “decentralization is essential for Communism” but that’s Anarchism. AES are examples of Socialist States trying to work towards Communism.
Where on Earth are you getting your ideas? It certainly isn’t Marx.
No, now you’re talking only about Marxist communism. Communism as a whole does not state that a single central power owns everything or that individuals can’t own property. Marx was very much against almost all personal property, but communism is simply about making the means of production owned by the people doing the production and not a small subset of individuals. That doesn’t mean ownership by a single entity. That very much could be local community governments that own each factory or power plant or whatever. And it’s only about the “means of production” not the products necessarily. People can still own the products in many forms of communism. Communism doesn’t necessarily dictate a specific economic theory beyond the idea that entities that produce goods that are to be owned by the people, should be owned by the people making the goods, not individuals, and especially not individuals who don’t participate in the production, only in the sale and profit of the goods they don’t produce.
You’re conflsting Communism, which refers in 99% of cases to Marxism, with Socialism, which is more broad.
Ideologically, Leninism supported vanguardism, a variation on Marxism that said that the Communist party was supposed to drag the early-20th-century proletariat into the revolution, instead of waiting for late capitalism where the proletariat would (according to Marx) naturally become revolutionary. This, and the notion of “false consciousness”, authorized Communist parties to go against the expressed (democratic) will of the proletariat, on the theory that the proletariat’s judgment was clouded by false consciousness, while still claiming to act in the interests of the proletariat.
Basically, “we (the party) know better than you (the people)” was ingrained into Leninism from the beginning, and the major communist revolutions either were or became Leninist. Maoism was a branch off of Leninism as well.
I love learning new things that had just never occurred to me before. It happens a lot more here than it ever did back on Reddit.
Keep in mind that it wasn’t even the proletariat that accomplished the Revolutions, it was the peasantry. Marx wasn’t against the idea but he would have been surprised.
Marx wasn’t against the idea but he would have been surprised
Towards the end, Marx actually expected Russia to go through a communist revolution, and that it may even be the start of the revolutionary wave in Europe. See the preface for the 1882 Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto for reference.
Attempts to implement communism at the scale of a nation state have always involved significant concentration of power. It may be impossible to do otherwise.
Power corrupts, and concentrations of power attract the corrupt.
So you’re saying with enough checks and balances that distribute power widely enough through legal offices and separations of power, some sort of democratic socialism would in theory be possible (assuming a peaceful transition via pre-deternend legislative changes were in place and ready to be followed)?
For a real Marxist revolution to take place, the entire populace has to stand up at once and decide to make this change. This requires humanity to do some pretty broad and general evolution before we, as a race, are nearly ready. Checks and balances won’t fix the fundamental problem that humans are selfish and want more for themselves at the expense of others.
I wouldn’t say it’s human nature, more like nature nature, as everything here seems to revolve around getting something at the expense of others. We’re just doing that at a larger/deeper/ a tad mo intelligent scale.
It’s odd that humans being selfish and wanting more for themselves is an argument for a system where stamping on people to make your share bigger and keeping others down is encouraged rather than trying to dampen those impulses.
Or on the flip side, maybe they seem so much of that philosophical/ethical black hole “Human Nature” in a system where they’re encouraged because our current economic mode strongly encourages them, rather than them being immutable fact?
People forget that humans are evolutionarily based on familial groups above all else. People like to act like humans in the past were all sharing and helping each other for funsies when in reality you’d be slaughtering your neighbors children for their food if it meant your children got to eat.
Humans are 9 meals away from anarchy at all times. The minute things go south it’s every family for themselves. This is a fact for the majority of the human population. That fact extends to periods of prosperity as well because why would I share with a stranger when I could stockpile for my family?
I wouldn’t say it’s human nature, more like nature nature, as everything here seems to revolve around getting something at the expense of others. We’re just doing that at a larger/deeper/ a tad mo intelligent scale.
If you do the thing and you do it right and you don’t fuck it up. Then it might work.
Because nobody’s claiming all this stuff that’s now just freely lying around. Someone better claim it before it gets gone.
Well it didn’t happen in every case. In the UK socialists became a big faction within the post war labour party and created the NHS. Almost every other country in Europe has a similar story with the creation of their own healthcare systems. Russia and China have never been democracies at any point in their history so maybe that has more to do with it than socialist and communist ideas.
3 explanations, in order from what I believe most likely to least:
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It could be selection bias. All communist nations originated from dictatorships, and as democracy isn’t a key part of communism, any democratic ideas get kicked to the side. It may require a dictatorship in the first place for a communist revolution to occur, as democracy may lead to people feeling content enough with the system that they may not feel it needs fundamental change.
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The inevitable need for concentration of power in the hands of a few. Assume that the powerful will always try to concentrate power in their own hands one way or another. Capitalist societies use wealth (a.k.a. purchasing power) to replace the concentration of political power that a dictator would enjoy. As communist societies lack such a mechanism, the powers-that-be can only use political power to force their own superiority.
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The centralization of economics leads to concentration of economic power that can be used effectively to buy loyalty from would-be challengers to a dictator’s power.
Democracy isn’t a core requirement of capitalism either. Saudi Arabia is very capitalist and they’re a Monarchy.
It’s far more likely to just be that communism was the new flavor for a while and they suffered the same fate as most rebellions. When the guard rails, (whatever they are), come down, then the bad guys will try to take advantage.
democracy is actually key to communist philosophy, dictators simply conveniently ignored that
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Bureaucratic systems world based on control of information and decision making. If there are insufficient mechanisms for maintaining checks on power accumulation, those systems can be abused by psychopaths and used to accumulate power. The same applies to capitalist structures.
Most countries we would label as communist didn’t form as Marx expected. Marx expected relatively advanced nations to revolt and claim control over capital. Instead, most Communist revolutions occurred in generally despotic and less developed countries.
When times are good, the government can use the material improvement of people’s lives as a reason to be in power. However, if times stop being good, the government becomes more overtly autocratic to maintain control.
My take on it from the theory is that most advocates say that you have to go through a period of single party socialism before the state somewhat fades away and it becomes communism.
I don’t think it’s actually possible in reality for a single party state to cede the power back to the people afterwards.
That’s a type. It’s what Russian Communism developed into. Not all Communist theory says you need to get rid of the state either, that’s Chinese Communism.
There’s even Communist theory that includes a thriving democracy.
Not all Communist theory says you need to get rid of the state either, that’s Chinese Communism.
…
And?
Communism requires no state, no class, and no money. So, yes, all communist theory calls for the abolishment of the state.
Lmao. No.
That’s literally the definition of communism.
That’s the definition of one kind of communism.
Its literally the communism described by Marx, which, is, by nature, THE Definition of what communism is: https://web.archive.org/web/20090605001014/http://www.economictheories.org/2009/05/full-communism-ultimate-goal.html
This might be news to you but it’s not the mid to late 1800’s anymore. Marx is about as relevant as Locke.
This is what actually got me banned from lemmy.ml. I said that although Communism can be done in a ML way, it has never actually happened because it has never actually be a revolution by the people. In the case of Russia and the places they influenced, it was a group of self-appointed elites that did the actual revolting, and then they imposed a new system on the populace.
In all of my debates with those types they always see shadowy conspiracies preventing Americans from having real actual communism…whereas I see that nobody in this country – especially in this country – would vote for a communist.
The US spent 60 years actively treating Communists as enemies of the state and propagandizing against them. There’s no need to talk about shadows and conspiracies. The capitalist and political elite were very open about it.
There’s multiple elements to why people won’t vote for a communist, but they still won’t.
Certainly state actions play a role, and communists were victims of free speech violations in a much realer sense than victims of “cancel culture” ever were.
In the case of Russia and the places they influenced, it was a group of self-appointed elites that did the actual revolting, and then they imposed a new system on the populace.
What on earth are you talking about? How would “a group of self-appointed elites” even be enough to overthrow the government? That fundamentally doesn’t make any sense.
It’s also whitewashing the Tsar. As if the Russian people were happy and content while they were starving and subject to serfdom and being fed into the meat grinder of WWI.
Hell, Lenin is even on record saying that Russia wasn’t going to have a revolution, before it did, and by the time he arrived in Russia, the Tsar had already been forced to abdicate!
This is kinda off topic so I’m putting it in a reply to myself like a weirdo, but despite being something of an anarchist / left-libertarian in mindset… I don’t actually think most people are capable of living in a world where someone isn’t ordering them around. Many people need and crave a power hierarchy, and if they were ever gifted some kind of anarchist utopia by way of magic they’d likely form up another hierarchy based system all over again from scratch.
Yea its called vanguardism, where a “vanguard party” takes total control and then tries to estsblish communism, and once that is acheived, the state “withers away”.
Yea thats not gonna work in real life. Why ever give up power once you have it?
The Marxist theory of the State is as an instrument of class oppression, not all forms of government. The idea is that the Proletariat, after destroying the Capitalist State and replacing it with a Proletarian State, this “dictatorship of the proletariat” will gradually fold Private Property into the Public Sector after markets cease to be an effective tool for developing and Public Ownership and Central Planning becomes more effective.
This happens unevenly, and there are different points where some sectors can be publicly owned much earlier than others, so this doesn’t happen overnight. Once all property is in the Public Sector, there are no more classes, and thus all instruments that protected against the bourgeoisie become superfluous and “dies out,” leaving a stateless, classless society with central planning. Engels calls this the “administration of things.”
On Authority by Engels, question answered almost 200 years ago
Where was communism adopted?
Countries with a strong history of authoritarian leadership, which continued under communism but with a fig leaf of public support. Kind of like how the US was formed as a democracy, but only for male white land owners who were already the ruling class.
The governmental structure has an impact on culture, but it doesn’t magically override existing social connections and norms. The people really did elect Putin before he consolidated power and turned it into completely sham elections. The communist party in China was originally what the people wanted before being turned into an authoritarian regime.
It isn’t like this is that unique to the countries that adopted communism. Many large countries, including western democracies, end up leaning into authoritarian tendencies over time because central leadership structures tend to encourage the leadership styles of ‘strong men’. If the culture isn’t there to hold those that abuse their power accountable, that country will slide into authoritarianism over time.
Personally, I don’t see communism ever scaling well above maybe a few hundred people because the more people that someone doesn’t know is involved the harder it is for the whole to feel like a community. Democracy has a similar scaling problem, but it doesn’t lean into authoritarianism as fast. yeah,
