Even from people that never lived in a communist state
edit: im 17 and i hate communism
Lemmy, the social network, started off as a leftist hangout spot.
From the perspective of “Open Source developers who are anti-Reddit pro-Fediverse”, it makes a lot of sense for Leftist/Communist and anti-corporation leaning people to hang out.
After all, the more extreme the viewpoint, the more driven to action (ie: write tens-of-thousands of lines of code and release for free) people get. In some regards, its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology. IE: Free Software is driven by ideology, not by money. So you get ideological people, especially when the software is small and niche.
The July 2023 Reddit Blackout was a big challenge for Lemmy’s old community and the new community, as the new community basically “invaded” a large scale leftist hangout spot. But hopefully we all learn to work together and the nature of our neighbors moving forward.
I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion. Which is enough of an alliance to keep us together, for now.
It does mean that we’ll have to keep up with the far-left old-timers on this network who wish to push their viewpoints. But they are the legacy and the start of Lemmy in some respects, even as the hypergrowth (starting in July 2023) has moderated the community pretty severely.
I don’t see the problem with people having communist views…capitalism isn’t great.
Yeah, the problem is that you have instances like Hexbear and Lemmy.ml that tread more into tankie territory, where if you argue anything less than the complete annihilation of the West and hail China, you’re likely to get harassed. I think rational people can agree that there’s a pretty gap between “The current system is corrupt” and "anyone who thinks differently than me should die,’ but I’ve seen plenty of irrational leftists.
I mean, I don’t have much problem with people disagreeing with me. But I’m pretty openly pro-capitalist, though I’m not a dumbass libertarian.
I recognize the need for the “capitalist edge cases” (externalities, monopolies, etc. etc.) that must be regulated and fixed for the system to work. I also recognize that we’ve failed to regulate externalities (ex: CO2 emissions), and failed to regulate monopolies / anticompetitive behavior (see Google).
So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
Overall, I accept that the commies / tankies were here first, and the history of Lemmy makes it clear why that happened.
So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
Right there with you.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
We also HAVE to teach the kids how to protect it better than people did 100 years ago. Most of our problems today stem from people voting to remove “useless red tape” (that was put there for damn good reasons).
The Marxist answer to why the red tape is removed is not because people directly vote for it, but that the State serves the bourgeoisie.
I haven’t seen a rightist person here, ever.
Multiple reasons.
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Lemmy was crested by and is maintained by Marxist-Leninists.
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Lemmy’s structure and rejection of the Profit Motive is in line with Communist ideals, and attracts Communists and other leftists over Reddit, which is Capitalist.
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FOSS in general is supported by Communists and Anarchists.
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Be careful where you tread here. You must be careful to separate “communists” (people who believe in economic reorganization away from the power of capital) and “tankies” (those who support corrupt regimes that project the illusion of communism).
There are indeed quite a few communists and various other alt-camp political spectrum believers on here. They do have quite liberal beliefs but don’t typically cause much of a fuss, because rational people can coexist with differing beliefs… and i dont mind them one bit. But the tankes, like lemmygrad, hexbear, etc, do stir up an anti-west "commie propaganda"fuss every chance they get, without being related to actual communism, especially if one mentions a hot button like Israel or Ukraine. And if you get into an argument with a tankie, they will just sling mud on you and call you a Nazi.
The cool part is, you can filter a lot of the chaff by just blocking the ugly instances from your user settings page (since Lemmy supports that now), blocking frequent flyers, and trimming/moving your subscribed community list to other, often smaller instances. A minimal amount of effort VASTLY increases the quality of content you’ll see on lemmy.
I’ve lived all my life under capitalism and I hate it.
I’ve read Marx, (for real, grab the book and read it!) and I see the dude does have a point.
I strongly recommend you to read Animal Farm, it’s very easy to understand
I’ve read it.
Orwell was socialist my dude.
Ever read one of his other books Down and Out in Paris and London?
It helps explain why he is a socialist.
The language can be a bit tough to understand these days though so might want to read Ted Reese’s Socialism Or Extinction instead
I’d recommend Chris Harman’s How Marxism Works for an intro, or Engels’ Principles of Communism. The Manifesto is more of a call to action for Workers than an overview of Communism, though it’s still an important work nonetheless.
Why do you hate communism?
Nobody has ever actually done real communism on a national scale. The closest is probably the USSR, but that was a disaster because it was an authoritarian dictatorship that funneled money and power to the top. People only got token representation, the people were not actually in charge of anything, they got no real say in their leadership. Doesn’t matter that it was structured like communism says it should be, the reality of it was anything but communism.
Real communism would probably be pretty decent. There wouldn’t be too much to hate about it other than what you’d dislike in any government.
The problem is the humans running it. It’s a constant battle against power-hungry and self-serving people being in charge, just like any government, and no nation espousing communism has ever managed to prevent authoritarianism and basic kleptocratic people from settling in and running the show.
- I am not for communism or here to espouse any virtues it might have. The concept of communism certainly has appeal and presents many benefits, however the reality of implementation and human nature virtually guarantee it will never achieve its intended form.
Real communism will never work for the same reason a completely free market would never work.
Too many people are greedy and selfish.
People are shaped by their environment, people seem greedy and selfish because of Capitalism. Primitive communism existed for thousands of years, and people were cooperative and communal.
Why do you believe selfish and greedy people existing in Communism would strain or ruin it?
Guys please check the list of the communist countries and come back to me to tell if you want to live in there, ok?
You’re getting down voted but no one has answered you.
I’m being down voted for having a good point but they don’t like facts
You don’t have a good point, that’s the problem.
Fundamentally, why do you believe Communists exist, and what do they want? We can start from there.
Desiring Communism isn’t because people overwhelmingly desire one form of production over another, the draw is for what these modes of production allow for and who they benefit.
It’d be cool to live in an AES country, sure, but what would be even better is to transition existing Capitalist states towards Socialism. Having more international trade between like-minded Socialist countries would benefit these countries massively.
Because there are a lot of communists on lemmy?
Some can be very annoying. If you haven’t blocked hexbear, I highly recommend it. They got exiled from reddit years ago and have been stewing in a tankie echo chamber ever since.
90% of the shit spouted about Hexbear is just baseless nonsense. Soon as you actually try to have a good faith discussion, they’re hecka cool.
They’re abrasive kinda like Twitch Chat, but many are reasonable.
American says communism and means socialism
American says communism and means conservative democrat or Trump Republican, depending on who is saying it.
AES barely even registers, except for the occasional “Why don’t you move to Vuvuzela!”
Why isn’t anyone defending AEC countries?
Nobody actually wants to be Estonia anymore
Communism is by definition a society without a state, so nobody has ever lived in a communist state and I doubt there has ever been a communist society in recorded history.
Comminism isn’t anarchic, Anarcho-Communism is. While it’s true that Communism has never been reached, it isn’t because government remained. The State in Marxian terms refers to the mechanisms by which one class oppresses the other, once class is abolished there need not be a state.
Communism was always meant to be a world republic.
That is at a ‘state’ level, there are still smaller level communist places to live. Like where the word ‘Commune’ comes from and what communism was derived from and attempted to expand into. There are communes all over the world. US included. There is a famous one in London, lots of large ones in Spain. They are communities that exist in their own bubble of micro economics within their larger communities of normal living. You should look it up. They are interesting and normally very appealing.
I mean, OP asked specifically why comments don’t come from
people that never lived in a communist state
So I addressed the non-existence of communist states.
True, there can be smaller communist societies but I think OP was asking more on a USSR level scale and not 12 hippies living on a farm together.
Comminism, along Marxist lines, is meant to have a World Repunlic. It will have a government, but not a state.
Communes are more along Anarchist lines.
Communism is by definition a society without a state, so nobody has ever lived in a communist state
The last stage of the Marxist evolution of communism involves the decay of state institutions through neglect, as they become redundant in a post-scarcity no-cops Utopia.
But there are a bunch of prior stages (including capitalist industrialization even!) that are neglected. And even then, the utopian end-game is routinely disputed by the subsequent generations of Leninists and Maoists who believe we will never truly escape the revolutionary cycle.
There absolutely are Already Existing Socialist states attempting to move themselves from primitive accumulation, through industrial capitalism, and into a collectively governed socialist post-scarcity society. And people absolutely are living in them. And none of them are Utopian (although the quality of life in many of these countries is exhaustively propagandized to be by degrees to be between Unbearably Hellish and FALGSC-adjacent).
The problems that these countries typically have, however, aren’t ones that armchair communists on a niche western internet platform are capable of solving. You’re not going to break the Cuban blockade. You’re not going to settle the endless territorial disputes plaguing Vietnam. You’re not going to undo the legacy of generations of apartheid in South Africa overnight. You’re not going to Make the USSR Great Again.
So maybe save yourself some angst and stop trying to tell Nicholas Maduro and Kim Jung Un how to do their jobs. Maybe worry more about why your local chapter of the DSA can’t get a teacher’s union off the ground.
You’re not going to break the Cuban blockade. You’re not going to settle the endless territorial disputes plaguing Vietnam. You’re not going to undo the legacy of generations of apartheid in South Africa overnight. You’re not going to Make the USSR Great Again.
So maybe save yourself some angst and stop trying to tell Nicholas Maduro and Kim Jung Un how to do their jobs
All these "you"s make me think that you might addressing me personally.
I make no claim to solve anything, nor how anyone should do their job.
I have provided an (incomplete) explanation as to what communism is, why it does not actually exist in practice and why therefore people commenting cannot be from a communist state.All these "you"s make me think that you might addressing me personally.
Apologies, I intended to use the Royal You and was speaking primarily to the British Crown.
I have provided an (incomplete) explanation as to what communism is, why it does not actually exist in practice and why therefore people commenting cannot be from a communist state.
A country in which the government has transitioned from primitive feudal to industrial capital and is now under a revolutionary socialist government is still communist at least in so far as its following the roadmap Marx and his peers tried to lay out two centuries ago.
If nothing else, these are communist governments in the sense that they take their governing philosophy from Marx, Lenin, and Mao (and Castro and Allende and Mandela and Ho Chi Mein and we can even throw in Fred Hampton and Rosa Luxemburg and Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim and the thousands of other notable revolutionaries if we’re being generous) in pursuit of the communist goal.
To claim otherwise would be akin to claiming you’re not a capitalist because you haven’t successfully privatized your industry. Or to claim you aren’t feudalist because you’re not in the Royal Family.
A country […] under a revolutionary socialist government is still communist
I would argue that in a world where the terms are not synonymous, socialist countries are in fact socialist, not communist.
at least in so far as its following the roadmap
Following a roadmap to some target literally means that you have not yet achieved that target.
The argument is not that their are no communists, the argument is that they have not established actual communism, therefore the states they govern are not communist states.
Whether or not they want to establish communism does not factor into it.To claim otherwise would be akin to claiming that a company on a roadmap to profitability is already profitable, while actually still losing money.
socialist countries are in fact socialist, not communist
Countries that reform their private sectors in order to adopt socialist policies are pursuing communism.
Countries that reform their socialist sectors in order to adopt privatization policies are not pursuing communism.
Following a roadmap to some target literally means that you have not yet achieved that target.
Right. You are implementing a policy that pursues a target.
Whether or not they want to establish communism does not factor into it.
“Mao wasn’t a communist in 1953 because his country hadn’t completed its first five year plan yet” is one hell of a claim.
To claim otherwise would be akin to claiming that a company on a roadmap to profitability is already profitable
It would be nutso to say Caryle Group isn’t interested in investing in profitable companies.
And yet the entire strategy of growth investing is to identify companies with strong roadmaps and lend to them at higher return rates.
So your analogy works, but not for the reason you’d expected.
“Mao wasn’t a communist in 1953 because his country hadn’t completed its first five year plan yet” is one hell of a claim.
One hell of a straw man, you mean.
At what point have I denied that people are communists?
Mao may be a communist and follow a philosophy called communism but China has not established a social order called communism as envisioned by communists.At what point have I denied that people are communists?
socialist countries are in fact socialist, not communist
Countries -> Large collections of People
Not communist -> denying that these large collections of people are communist
Mao may be a communist and follow a philosophy called communism but China has not established a social order called communism as envisioned by communists.
Uh huh.
“I’m 17 and I hate communism”
😂 enough said. Come back when you’re a bit older and a bit wiser.
You don’t even have to be wise to understand the problems communism has, it only helps
So your comment doesn’t make sense.
What problems does Communism have?
It doesn’t fucking work.
Why?
Especially people who never lived in a communist state
Especially people who never lived in a communist state
That’s a rather impossible requirement, considering that all “communist states” to date have been oligarchic autocracies that were just as much about communism as they were democratic.
Real communism is market ownership by the people, and not some elite cabal of politicians or capitalists. And a top-down planned economy is pretty much anti-communism, as it violates the very fundamentals of communism as being worker-driven.
I think you should read Marx. State planning is definitely in line with Communism, the state is of the Workers and not a separate entity in Socialism and Communism.
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When I was 15 me and my friends made fun of communists and joked they were probably posting from their parent’s computers. Now that I’m middle aged I’m a socialist, although wouldn’t quite say communist. I haven’t read Marx, but I do believe the point of a government is to help people, and our governments aren’t doing enough in that regard. I believe privately held corporations are designed to make their owners money, and if that interferes with the common good then they should be stopped.
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There are definitely failed communist states. Everyone always talks about bad examples and not successes like say, Nordic countries. And I realize I’m not saying something new here, but if we can agree those countries are doing well, but argue they’re not socialist, then why don’t we go ahead and implement the programs they have?
I don’t particularly care what the label is, I care about the outcome. I want people to get treated for illness without going bankrupt. I want everyone to have access to education. Every person should have somewhere to sleep. Every person should have enough to eat.
If this was the middle ages we could argue that it’s the law of the jungle, and the strong survive while the weak fall to the side. Today we have abundance to the point that we absolutely have enough for everyone. It’s the system that distributes goods and assigns tasks which isn’t up to the job.
Call it what you want, but I believe we should improve our system to address those problems, and I believe it’s possible to address them.
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I’m fairly familiar with the Nordic countries and I think it’s important to have a market. Still, they’re known for “socialist” policies like universal healthcare, strong welfare benefits and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund. They also manage to have strong democracies (including proportional representation) without turning into dictatorships like people accuse communist/socialist countries of doing.
What I was getting at is would you agree the countries are doing well? If so, who cares about the label, why don’t we do some of that stuff?
Those aren’t Socialism though, lol
You don’t think universal healthcare is socialist? Free higher education?
Again, I don’t care as much about the label, but when these things are suggested in America it’s socialist. When you point out anything good about the Nordics or just Europe generally the answer is they’re not socialist, and it’s not because of socialism. But we can’t do those things in America because it’s socialist.
why not? if you’d like a more capitalist experience you can always go to reddit. don’t forget to download their shitty app that no longer has competitors.
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I’m beginning to see why people call lemmy.world the Reddit of the fediverse
It’s a microcosm of Reddit, in a lot of bad ways IMO.
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Reddit is clearly declining due to enshittification, so more ideological types leave. Radical liberals, Marxists, Anarchists, and so forth leave for other places.
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Leftists and people who have more niche interests like programming, Linux, FOSS, Piracy, Star Trek, LGBTQIA+, or other such unique interests go to more specific instances, while people seeking a replacement for Reddit go to the largest generalist instance.
The consequences of 1 and 2 are that Lemmy.world is filled with ideological liberals, but typically not leftists, FOSS enthusiasts, Piracy nerds, Star Trek, or other unique interests. All that’s left is the ideological generalist crowd, which is an echo chamber more defined by what it isn’t than by what it is.
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It is a communist platform, you will find communists
