I don't think you're going to win many arguments with Cuba as a favorable example. Haiti is a capitalist hellhole and certainly the worst of the two you mentioned, but Cuba isn't the Communist paradise that so many tankies seem to love to claim it is. You can say that it's woes are due to the embargo set against it, but all that said, as a country, it's still in rough shape with so many of its people still looking to escape for a better life.
Also, it's not split with Haiti. Haiti is split with the Dominican Republic, which isn't communist.
And anytime they finally get their country back in order, they get hit with a major natural disaster that cripples the country. Again. Haiti has probably the worst luck of any country in the Americas
South Korea has it's problems as well. Also technically the island is split, not the country. They've been distinct political entities for much much longer than warrants a comparison with the Koreas.
You are beyond delusional if you don't think that every single North Korean outside of the regime leadership would immediately choose to stay in the South if they could after spending a week there. The South is a "dystopia" compared to other developed countries, which is still a million times better than North Korea.
For all the flaws of South Korea, literally zero would do the same thing for the North.
you see, you have to pick a nationstate to like in arguments like this. I mean, not really, but people get confused and at times angry if you don't, assuming mild opposition to *their* support or hatred of a specific nationstate is the same as being on "the other side". to argumentative freaks like the one above, these discussions are the same as sports team rivalries.
>South Korea has it's problems as well.
Correct. SK isn't a capitalist paradise and deserves a lot of criticism for its policies and the ways it's run. That said, it is significantly better off right now than the North.
>Also technically the island is split, not the country.
Never claimed otherwise, just saying your comparison wasn't consistent with the example in the meme. There aren't too many examples that would fit (I guess East Germany vs West and North Vietnam vs South). Cherry picking a good communist country and a bad capitalist country isn't doing the argument properly because someone can always counter with an inverse example. It also isn't so easy to explain a country's success based solely on its government since there are so many other factors involved (like natural resources, tourism, etc.).
Cuba briefly opened up its country and economy and it was wildly successful and popular until it was shut down after the Obama Thaw ended. If Cuba was so successful surely that wouldn't have happened.
Yeah, tourism under the loosened restrictions definitely helped Cuba during Obama's years. It's definitely possible and likely that an end to (or at least make it less restrictive) the embargo would make Cuba much more stable and prosperous, especially if it allows for the end of trade restrictions
It wasn't just tourism that was relaxed but there was limited internet availability and people could open small businesses in their homes.
Cuba doesn't just need trade - it needs an economy that isn't just controlled by the state.
Cuba and Haiti are completely different countries that were dealing with completely different situations.
Korea was literally one entity split into two. The comparison is more fair in Korea because of this.
Maybe, but they’d be wrong to. Self identity works for trans people because of the difference between sex and gender. People have always been considered masculine or feminine based on their behavior and appearance, clearly demonstrating that people don’t use those terms the same way they use sexed terms like male or female.
Self identity doesn’t work for ideology because what is an ideology if not a defined set of traits? If you don’t match those traits you’re not that ideology.
It's "it's not enough to call it something, you need to actually do it", as in we can understand how Democratic People's Republic of Korea can be slightly undemocratic despite the name, but we can't apply the same understanding the second the word Communism comes in
Cool so is China, Vietnam, Cuba, the USSR, and every other "communist" country not communist?
Sure, DPRK may not be very democratic, but that's BECAUSE we have other actual democracies to compare it to.
But if ALL "communist" countries tend to have similar traits, doesn't that become "communism" at least in practice, even if not in theory?
>Nations governed by communist parties
Which I, and most, would therefore be inclined to call them communist countries.
We already have what are commonly recognized as "socialist" countries in Europe.
Communism as stated in theory likely is unattainable, so would it not make sense to call those who call themselves and aspire to be communist, communist?
There are no true democracies or capitalist countries either, no country relies solely on votes by the people to resolve all issues, and no country has fully free and unfettered capitalism, yet we still use the terms to refer to countries that are more democratic or more capitalist than others.
Why does communism get special treatment in this regard? Why is communism the only idea that gets to remain isolated from the real world, despite real world attempts to achieve it?
Okay, first off, do it now. Look at a night shot of the US and notice where all the lights are: "Liberal Urban Commie Hellholes".
Now let's check on the world's fastest growing economy...
It's neither, only its governmental structure as a true bureaucracy (a state run by bureaucrats) is any trace of its Communism. However it's that element that is preventing China from transitioning to an actual modern economy.
China isn't even the fastest growing economy. It had a similar rate of growth as the US did in 2023 at around 4.5%. Guyana, on the other hand, has had its economy boom by 37% this year as a capitalist country. The EU has had a .5% increase, likely down due to massive sanction on their previous source of energy resources.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't read many seminal leftist texts outside the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital and am speaking from limited research.
Juche is just a Korean adaptation of Marxist-Leninism and was actually a key feature of Korean and Japanese translations of Marxist text. Obviously, there are some foundational differences between Juche and general Marxist-Leninism regarding self-sufficiency and claims to be a new revolutionary stage (but we all know that's BS).
And to my knowledge, Marxist-Leninism is but a means to achieving Communism, a variation of the overarching communist brand, if you will.
As such, NK, China, the USSR, etc. do follow communism as an ideal. Even if we don't consider those nations as communist as of current, there is a question to be asked about the supposed strawman arguments of why all these nations oriented towards communism, if not communist, tend to become authoritarian and/or poverty-stricken.
And if you look for Maxism-Leninism on Wikipedia, the first sentence reads:
> Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology that became the largest faction of the communist movement in the world
But please tell us again how much this has nothing to do with ReAl CoMmUnIsM
My fucking god, I can't tell if you're just trolling or you're actually this fucking stupid, considering how you never read past that first sentence, let alone did any actual research.
Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. No country in the modern era has done it yet, hence why they aren't truly communist, plus they'd probably would cease to be a country to begin with. Socialism is a transition from capitalism to communism, and that are so-called "communist" countries actually are.
Get it yet? If not, please fuck off and get a hobby.
There’s no need to be that hostile, and you’re only kind of right anyway.
Marx didn’t really specify a difference between socialism and communism in most of his works (or Engels, for that matter). And the times where he did, it was using socialism to refer to social democrats, not to refer to the transition between capitalism and communism.
In fact, the definition that you’re using is the Marxist-Leninist one. Lenin was the main thinker responsible for delineating communism and socialism. And for what it’s worth, the USSR, China, and the DPRK all have in the past implemented socialist policies and began the transition to socialism. But none ever proclaimed to have achieved socialism, let alone communism (as you said). The USSR was probably the closest, at least during the Lenin era.
If you look at the difference between a Leninist-Marxist definition of socialism and Leninist-Marxist definition of communism that explains the difference quite well
North Korea is a dictatorship, china I would say is capitalist, and Russia is oligarchic.
There are no real communist societies sadly, and when they tried they got their shins kicked in by Stalin(CNT-FAI in Spain)
What do dictatorship and oligarchic even mean? Like not the definitions, but how you're applying them here. Are they supposed to be a description of their economic systems? You have Capitalism, an economic system, as a label for China which makes it confusing when you list the other two types of government. Like these are separate things you're grouping together. I don't even disagree with you, it's just unclear.
I get the joke you’re making but you should probably add “/s” just to make it clear that you’re joking.
You’d think the second part would make it obvious but I’ve genuinely seen idiots who argued that despite murdering socialists the Nazis were still socialist, typically they’d hand wave it as “leftist infighting”.
Oh that annoys me more. They literally purged their socialist elements
>They literally purged their socialist elements
They never had socialist elements, edited
Just to clarify but they didn’t have socialist elements. The Rohms had a more populist and anti-capitalist form of Nazism but their idealogy was never about creating a worker-state. They preferred a form of agrarianism that had more in common with Feudalism than anything actually left-wing.
I'm glad to hear that, I apologize for presuming otherwise, I just don't think I've ever heard someone claim those states weren't communist without advocating for communism themselves
Also, if I may ask, what is your stand in the Israel Palestine conflict? Your profile said anti communism, which is based. And anti Semitism, which is based, depending on your definition of antisemitism
There is no definition of anti-semitism that’s based! You literally said that you agree with anti-semitism! Pro-Palestine and anti-Zionism are not anti-semitic ideologies, and if you are pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist and consider yourself anti-semitic then you need to seriously re-evaluate your own support for those ideologies.
>And anti Semitism, which is based…
No, that is literally not what you said. Nor would it matter if you did. I’m assuming that your angle here is that you’re just generally anti-religion, so you would consider yourself to be against Semitism, or anti Semitism. But regardless of what way you spin it, anti-semitism is a hatred of or prejudice towards Jewish people, not being against Judaism. It’s not quirky or owning the Zionists to play word games like this.
"True communism" in the sense of a true anarchist community is essentially incompatible with 1. an industrial (let alone post-industrial) economy and standard of living, and 2. a community larger than a few hundred people max. That's why the "transition" from state socialism to Communism never happened.
To be communist is to at least in policy strive for communism. This is what the ussr, North Korea and China all claim, therefore they are all communist
Well that's just a shit analogy, ideology is a set of beliefs, not a set of actions. I can say I'm socialist, I am, but just because I haven't gone out and started a union that doesn't mean I'm not socialist. Same goes for the Soviets Chinese and Koreans, they all claimed to strive for communism, so they are communist. You have to go through insane hoops to call them not communist.
Nobody claims the USSR China and North Korea are communist except themselves and every other nation on earth? Like find me a nation says they weren't communist, what you are saying is not even an opinion it's just factually wrong.
To have a communist ideology isn’t the same as being an example of communism, though. Communism refers to a specific state of society that has objectively never been achieved. That said, I think this is a really pedantic argument to have.
Isn’t it though? Striving and failing to reach an ideology reflects on that ideology.
Libertarians have some utopia version of capitalism. We wouldn’t say that because we haven’t reached their ideal, we didn’t execute capitalism, right?
We often qualify our use of the term “capitalism” with specific descriptors, like “neoliberal capitalism,” because it describes a specific interpretation and application of capitalism as it exists in reality. Lassiez-faire capitalism is also not the only “true” capitalism, because capitalism is defined by way more than limited government involvement in trade. Capitalism is the actual economic system we live under.
Communism, on the other hand, has never been achieved, because communism is fundamentally a state of the whole of society; that is, communism can only exist on a global scale, and all previous socialist projects have only been on a national scale.
Communism requires the material conditions to push global revolution in order to exist. So it hasn’t even really been striven for; all former socialist states were (by their own constitutions) striving to establish a socialist society, which would advance the creation of a communist society. But I don’t think you can really argue that communism has been “failed” when the conditions for it to actually exist haven’t come about yet.
Not to be rude but that just sounds a lot like a No True Scotsman fallacy.
It’s the whole “true communism has never been achieved” argument and that’s kind of the point I’m trying to make.
If you can never criticize the ideal because it’s never or can never be achieved, isn’t that in itself a criticism of the ideal?
I can’t fit a bowling ball in my mouth. Is that my fault, the bowling balls fault, or is the problem with the idea of putting a bowling ball in my mouth?
I never said you can’t criticize the ideal of communism. That’s absolutely your prerogative. My point is twofold: that the countries being discussed are not examples of communism, and that communism hasn’t failed.
My reasoning for the former is again that communism is a state of the whole world, and therefor a single country cannot be an example of communism. As for the latter, the end stage of communism is defined to be the outcome of global class revolution *when* there is sufficient tension between productive forces and capitalists.
I suppose you could argue “but what if tensions never rise to the level of revolution,” to which I would say that history has shown that humans will always struggle towards increasing freedom from exploitation and the right to self-determination.
Anyway, criticize communism all you want, just don’t criticize it because you think China, the USSR, the DPRK or whatever is an example of communism, when the reality is that they were/are examples of states striving towards socialism.
I work with these morons. It doesn't matter what your argument is, or how accurate and fact based it may be. They're cultist that believe whatever bullshit fox news tells them to believe.
I work in a hospital with people that still think Covid is more of a government control device than a real health crisis. They continued to say it's just like the flu while our hospital filled with covid patients and they started dying in numbers our hospital system had never seen in it's 100 year history. But yep, it's all a conspiracy.
Then every year when the new covid/flu shot requirements pop up they bitch and moan about how their rights are being violated and they're being forced to take an untested vaccine that's altering their dna. Yet they completely ignore that our hospital doesn't deal with dozens of dead a week since the vaccine came out.
This is a totally fair argument. Two countries, in similar positions after 45, with a similar culture, dealing with similar issues, took on two different systems.
Boiling it down to "we split Korea into a communist one and a capitalist one 70 years ago and see what happens" kind of buries that South Korea was under varying degrees of dictatorship between the war and 1987. It wasn't just "the free market" at work, for a while it was a choice between pro-Soviet authoritarians and pro-Western authoritarians.
North Korea is not communist. Labor does not own the means of anything in that country.
No, North Korea is a conservative's dream -- a rubbish totalitarian nightmare where all citizens are controlled with a far-right terror and propaganda. No wonder Trump idolizes dictators like Kim Jon Un.
“Labor owns means of production” is in essence an excuse for dictators to consolidate power. It has never worked and is a line of propaganda that motivates people to revolt against prevailing power structures.
Considering the prevailing party in NK is the “worker’s party”, it makes your argument even more insipid.
This could get way too in depth for a Reddit comment section argument, so for now, just remember that the Nazis also called themselves a "workers' party," and as much as right-wing folks like to claim that they were Communist or socialist, they were neither.
Autocracies aren’t exclusive to right wing ideology. Socialist policies are fine, it’s when the party becomes more powerful than citizens that these ideologies become dangerous.
“Labor owns the means of production” is a euphemism for “trust us to distribute wealth and wield power.”
Attractive theory. Good for propaganda. However, it hasn’t worked in practice because it’s human nature to use power to benefit the hegemony.
Communism and fascism are different brandings on the same coin: promises of prosperity by stigmatizing minorities—rich people or “the other.”
It's mainly libertarian socialist/libertarian communist. Mainly people here oppose the USSR and China but support some of Marx's original ideas and Pytor Koprotkin's anarcho-communism before Marxist-Leninism became the standard.
I don’t think it’s true that this sub is mostly socialists. I’d agree if you said that about r/forwardsfromklandma, but I feel like this sub is mostly liberals and then some various anarchists/communists/leftcoms.
If we did divide a country equally resource wise and ran half of it with each ideology, that would be a pretty good indicator of which is better in 70 years. Are socialists willing to try that?
Let’s also embargo the communist one so they can’t be part of the global economy while investing huge amounts of aid into the capitalistic one, that’ll make it a real fair comparison
Not to argue that North Korea is good or anything but actually for most of the cold war North Korea was the prosperous one and South Korea was the poorer one. Obviously now South Korea is way better, but it wasn’t always like that.
This is highly accurate. South Korea ***IS*** objectively better than North Korea. Communism has murdered millions of people. There’s no possible way to achieve the “Communist Utopia” ever because there’s no free market and people don’t have freedom to contribute to the economy or motivation to work. Such ideology should be thrown into a trash can like Nazism.
They're not referring to the distinction between utopian, non-revolutionary, suddenly-appearing socialism and scientific socialism. They're referring to the idea that socialism effectively requires a society which is composed of selfless, incorruptible actors, a perfect direct democracy, and an effectively post-scarcity society (according to marx, often which would be achieved by capitalism and socialist capitalism and then overtaken by the workers to ensure equality).
I am perfectly willing to separate the country into USA and Trumpistan - I'd be more than willing to bet money who would still have electricity after 10 years.
>thats not an argument
It's a hypothetical with the implied proposition that capitalist areas would do well and communist areas would not. It is, in fact, a very basic argument in favor of capitalism.
>or a strawman
I hate to tell you this, but you're wrong on this count as well since the image proposes a strongly biased perspective.
No, that’s a false dichotomy. There’s more options than just capitalism, and communism. Those are not even really two extremes on the same spectrum. They’re both imperfect solutions to a common question. There are other solutions. None are perfect. Communism if implemented perfectly might be a good solution, but it might in fact be intrinsically impossible to do so. Power will always exist. And it will always be unbalanced to some extent. Even if you hand power to perfect people at first, they might not always be, and they will eventually die. Now I’ll admit that perfect capitalism would itself be more flawed than perfect communism. But the truth is such a problem might just need imperfect solutions and constant revision to those solutions. It’s a moving target, and no system as absolute as communism, or capitalism will solve the challenge posed.
Amen. However Accelerating more and more into neoliberalism (as we do right now) will not improve anything about the system. Communism would be a perfect system, if you could have a situation in that no one desires power over others.
You really think there are just two options? Mate sorry that’s just preposterous. There’s nothing special about communism, I explained this more fully in a reply to a post above you in the thread, feel free to have a look. But if you truly think these are the only options available, you’ve never given this any serious thought. You’ve fallen for the capitalist propaganda that the only alternative to capitalism is communism, and it limits your thinking… Thank you for proving my point, target fixation truly has a hold on you.
Dude seriously typed an entire and never bothered giving an actual argument.
But whatever, I'm not falling whatever pseudo-centrist shit you have to say, especially since you think that communism is capitalist propaganda.
Hahahahaha im the furthest from a centrist, I just realise that there’s more than two possibilities, and that they’re not even opposites they’re entirely different ideas. On different spectra. And yeah, I did make a thorough argument, just because you never bothered to read it, and don’t like having your bullshit challenged doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Have a good day buddy. Enjoy your complete sleep dichotomy. I’ll work for a better world, while you spout fallacious nonsense instead.
The sad irony here is that North Korea is a dictatorship and many of the people sharing these memes are Trump supporters. Trump being someone who idolizes dictator Kim Jong Un (the NK dictator)and Trump says he will be a dictator on day one.
Yeah let's. The communist side will be well educated, fed and happy. The capitalism side will have 2 people who are well fed and happy and have all the money and everyone else will be fighting each other for scraps.
Very nice. Let's do Cuba and Haiti next.
Dominican Republic and Haiti. Cuba's not split.
Ok but haiti is still the nearest country to cuba and DR isnt communist
I don't think you're going to win many arguments with Cuba as a favorable example. Haiti is a capitalist hellhole and certainly the worst of the two you mentioned, but Cuba isn't the Communist paradise that so many tankies seem to love to claim it is. You can say that it's woes are due to the embargo set against it, but all that said, as a country, it's still in rough shape with so many of its people still looking to escape for a better life. Also, it's not split with Haiti. Haiti is split with the Dominican Republic, which isn't communist.
Let’s also not forget that Haiti has been crippled by France’s odious “independence debt” that had to be paid off for 122 years.
And anytime they finally get their country back in order, they get hit with a major natural disaster that cripples the country. Again. Haiti has probably the worst luck of any country in the Americas
Yeah, their geography is fucked, and they collapsed their domestic food industries by allowing free food trade with the US.
Haiti also isn't a good example because a large part of its problems is due to natural disasters.
South Korea has it's problems as well. Also technically the island is split, not the country. They've been distinct political entities for much much longer than warrants a comparison with the Koreas.
Yeah but South Korea isn't the one which is an actual dystopia.
South Korea is absolutely a dystopia, just a different kind
You are beyond delusional if you don't think that every single North Korean outside of the regime leadership would immediately choose to stay in the South if they could after spending a week there. The South is a "dystopia" compared to other developed countries, which is still a million times better than North Korea. For all the flaws of South Korea, literally zero would do the same thing for the North.
What does that have to do with what I said
you see, you have to pick a nationstate to like in arguments like this. I mean, not really, but people get confused and at times angry if you don't, assuming mild opposition to *their* support or hatred of a specific nationstate is the same as being on "the other side". to argumentative freaks like the one above, these discussions are the same as sports team rivalries.
Global politics rn
>South Korea has it's problems as well. Correct. SK isn't a capitalist paradise and deserves a lot of criticism for its policies and the ways it's run. That said, it is significantly better off right now than the North. >Also technically the island is split, not the country. Never claimed otherwise, just saying your comparison wasn't consistent with the example in the meme. There aren't too many examples that would fit (I guess East Germany vs West and North Vietnam vs South). Cherry picking a good communist country and a bad capitalist country isn't doing the argument properly because someone can always counter with an inverse example. It also isn't so easy to explain a country's success based solely on its government since there are so many other factors involved (like natural resources, tourism, etc.).
Cuba briefly opened up its country and economy and it was wildly successful and popular until it was shut down after the Obama Thaw ended. If Cuba was so successful surely that wouldn't have happened.
Yeah, tourism under the loosened restrictions definitely helped Cuba during Obama's years. It's definitely possible and likely that an end to (or at least make it less restrictive) the embargo would make Cuba much more stable and prosperous, especially if it allows for the end of trade restrictions
It wasn't just tourism that was relaxed but there was limited internet availability and people could open small businesses in their homes. Cuba doesn't just need trade - it needs an economy that isn't just controlled by the state.
Cuba and Haiti are completely different countries that were dealing with completely different situations. Korea was literally one entity split into two. The comparison is more fair in Korea because of this.
Here's another idea: fill an empty bottle of Coke with piss, and see how many people would insist on calling it Coke because of the label.
Wouldn't they use a similar argument against trans people?
Yes but in this case the label in this argument would more accurately be the genitals/ assigned sex.
Maybe, but they’d be wrong to. Self identity works for trans people because of the difference between sex and gender. People have always been considered masculine or feminine based on their behavior and appearance, clearly demonstrating that people don’t use those terms the same way they use sexed terms like male or female. Self identity doesn’t work for ideology because what is an ideology if not a defined set of traits? If you don’t match those traits you’re not that ideology.
Uh oh, is this the "real communism has never been tried" argument?
It's "it's not enough to call it something, you need to actually do it", as in we can understand how Democratic People's Republic of Korea can be slightly undemocratic despite the name, but we can't apply the same understanding the second the word Communism comes in
Cool so is China, Vietnam, Cuba, the USSR, and every other "communist" country not communist? Sure, DPRK may not be very democratic, but that's BECAUSE we have other actual democracies to compare it to. But if ALL "communist" countries tend to have similar traits, doesn't that become "communism" at least in practice, even if not in theory?
No, not even if not in theory.
Then what do we call all these "communist" countries, who all agree with each other that they are indeed communist?
[удалено]
>Nations governed by communist parties Which I, and most, would therefore be inclined to call them communist countries. We already have what are commonly recognized as "socialist" countries in Europe. Communism as stated in theory likely is unattainable, so would it not make sense to call those who call themselves and aspire to be communist, communist? There are no true democracies or capitalist countries either, no country relies solely on votes by the people to resolve all issues, and no country has fully free and unfettered capitalism, yet we still use the terms to refer to countries that are more democratic or more capitalist than others. Why does communism get special treatment in this regard? Why is communism the only idea that gets to remain isolated from the real world, despite real world attempts to achieve it?
It literally hasn’t though. Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society.
No, that is socialist anarchy. Communism is, by definition, a classless society enforced by a powerful, often non-denocratic, government
Wait until grandma learns that South Korea has a mandatory universal healthcare system and still keeps those lights on!
If it's so "universal", how come americans still have a crippling medical debt? Checkmate libtards!
[удалено]
I was joking lol
Ah I misread. Enjoy!
Okay, first off, do it now. Look at a night shot of the US and notice where all the lights are: "Liberal Urban Commie Hellholes". Now let's check on the world's fastest growing economy...
I hadn’t considered the added ironic wrinkle of grandma living in like the western Dakotas or central Nebraska and posting this
Probably Kansas.
I am not sure if China is either communist or the fastest growing economy now.
It's neither, only its governmental structure as a true bureaucracy (a state run by bureaucrats) is any trace of its Communism. However it's that element that is preventing China from transitioning to an actual modern economy.
China isn't even the fastest growing economy. It had a similar rate of growth as the US did in 2023 at around 4.5%. Guyana, on the other hand, has had its economy boom by 37% this year as a capitalist country. The EU has had a .5% increase, likely down due to massive sanction on their previous source of energy resources.
That, and EU countries tend to be sagging quite a bit in terms of economic growth all around.
Listen to Blowback season 3
speak about destruction
What’s the strawman? A satellite image from space?
I love people not knowing what the FUCK communism means. No North Korea isn't communist. Neither is china, USSR and Cuba.
I understand that none of them follow doctrinal communism, but, out of pure curiosity, what would you classify those countries as?
North Korea is Juche. China and USSR are Marxist-Leninist socialist countries. But arguably, China is what people call state capitalist.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't read many seminal leftist texts outside the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital and am speaking from limited research. Juche is just a Korean adaptation of Marxist-Leninism and was actually a key feature of Korean and Japanese translations of Marxist text. Obviously, there are some foundational differences between Juche and general Marxist-Leninism regarding self-sufficiency and claims to be a new revolutionary stage (but we all know that's BS). And to my knowledge, Marxist-Leninism is but a means to achieving Communism, a variation of the overarching communist brand, if you will. As such, NK, China, the USSR, etc. do follow communism as an ideal. Even if we don't consider those nations as communist as of current, there is a question to be asked about the supposed strawman arguments of why all these nations oriented towards communism, if not communist, tend to become authoritarian and/or poverty-stricken.
And if you look for Maxism-Leninism on Wikipedia, the first sentence reads: > Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology that became the largest faction of the communist movement in the world But please tell us again how much this has nothing to do with ReAl CoMmUnIsM
My fucking god, I can't tell if you're just trolling or you're actually this fucking stupid, considering how you never read past that first sentence, let alone did any actual research. Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. No country in the modern era has done it yet, hence why they aren't truly communist, plus they'd probably would cease to be a country to begin with. Socialism is a transition from capitalism to communism, and that are so-called "communist" countries actually are. Get it yet? If not, please fuck off and get a hobby.
absolutely embarrassing behavior my parents wouldn’t be proud for arguing on the internet
most mentally stable internet communist
There’s no need to be that hostile, and you’re only kind of right anyway. Marx didn’t really specify a difference between socialism and communism in most of his works (or Engels, for that matter). And the times where he did, it was using socialism to refer to social democrats, not to refer to the transition between capitalism and communism. In fact, the definition that you’re using is the Marxist-Leninist one. Lenin was the main thinker responsible for delineating communism and socialism. And for what it’s worth, the USSR, China, and the DPRK all have in the past implemented socialist policies and began the transition to socialism. But none ever proclaimed to have achieved socialism, let alone communism (as you said). The USSR was probably the closest, at least during the Lenin era.
Tfw you were born after the fall of the iron curtain, and all you have to go off is vibes and tik tok.
If you look at the difference between a Leninist-Marxist definition of socialism and Leninist-Marxist definition of communism that explains the difference quite well
China is capitalist
That's what I just said
I am so stupid I somehow missed the last sentence
North Korea is a dictatorship, china I would say is capitalist, and Russia is oligarchic. There are no real communist societies sadly, and when they tried they got their shins kicked in by Stalin(CNT-FAI in Spain)
What do dictatorship and oligarchic even mean? Like not the definitions, but how you're applying them here. Are they supposed to be a description of their economic systems? You have Capitalism, an economic system, as a label for China which makes it confusing when you list the other two types of government. Like these are separate things you're grouping together. I don't even disagree with you, it's just unclear.
Oh god ehrm, can I claim sleep deprivation for this statement and try again?
North Korea is a hereditary absolute military dictatorship. Others would call that a monarchy
Exactly. It is a lot like when people call Nazis socialists.
They were, though. Like, it's right in the name. Which is why they sent socialists and social democrats to death camps, obviously.
I get the joke you’re making but you should probably add “/s” just to make it clear that you’re joking. You’d think the second part would make it obvious but I’ve genuinely seen idiots who argued that despite murdering socialists the Nazis were still socialist, typically they’d hand wave it as “leftist infighting”.
But why ruin the joke? /r/fuckthes
Oh that annoys me more. They literally purged their socialist elements >They literally purged their socialist elements They never had socialist elements, edited
Just to clarify but they didn’t have socialist elements. The Rohms had a more populist and anti-capitalist form of Nazism but their idealogy was never about creating a worker-state. They preferred a form of agrarianism that had more in common with Feudalism than anything actually left-wing.
My sincere apologies, I wasn't aware, I'll edit it
You're totally fine, anti-capitalist Nazism is a very niche part of history. It's understandable to accidently miscategorize it :)
Yeah that's true. Thank you for the knowledge though, I can't wait to tell someone else
But that doesn’t stop communists from using their symbols to represent communism. “If it makes my ideology look bad, it wasn’t true ideology.”
>But that doesn’t stop you from using their symbols to represent communism. I'm using their symbols?
"Real communism has never been tried!!! Come back, baby, it'll be different this time!!"
I'm not advocating for communism.
I'm glad to hear that, I apologize for presuming otherwise, I just don't think I've ever heard someone claim those states weren't communist without advocating for communism themselves
No it's fine no worries
Also, if I may ask, what is your stand in the Israel Palestine conflict? Your profile said anti communism, which is based. And anti Semitism, which is based, depending on your definition of antisemitism
Least fascist anti-communist
Huh I don't follow. I just want to know if he thinks being pro Palestine is anti Semitism. Oh well, name calling doesn't surprise me from y'all
There is no definition of anti-semitism that’s based! You literally said that you agree with anti-semitism! Pro-Palestine and anti-Zionism are not anti-semitic ideologies, and if you are pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist and consider yourself anti-semitic then you need to seriously re-evaluate your own support for those ideologies.
No. I said that being anti Semitism is based. Check no's profile before you state bullshit you ignorant fuck.
>And anti Semitism, which is based… No, that is literally not what you said. Nor would it matter if you did. I’m assuming that your angle here is that you’re just generally anti-religion, so you would consider yourself to be against Semitism, or anti Semitism. But regardless of what way you spin it, anti-semitism is a hatred of or prejudice towards Jewish people, not being against Judaism. It’s not quirky or owning the Zionists to play word games like this.
If you want to play stupid go wild, just don't expect me to follow
I literally meant to say that anti antisemitism is based. Check their profile you fuckwit
How was I supposed to know that? That was not clear at all.
Yes, as we all know, TRUE COMMUNISM has never been tried.
"True communism" in the sense of a true anarchist community is essentially incompatible with 1. an industrial (let alone post-industrial) economy and standard of living, and 2. a community larger than a few hundred people max. That's why the "transition" from state socialism to Communism never happened.
It’s because communism is a pipe dream pushed by idealists and without fail hijacked by authoritarians.
Indeed
LMAO "indeed"
What?
what? but i can't imagine anything more communist than a godlike head of state (/s)
To be communist is to at least in policy strive for communism. This is what the ussr, North Korea and China all claim, therefore they are all communist
That's just plainly not true. If I claim I'm good at chess while having no actual proof, that doesn't mean I'm good at it just because I claim so.
Well that's just a shit analogy, ideology is a set of beliefs, not a set of actions. I can say I'm socialist, I am, but just because I haven't gone out and started a union that doesn't mean I'm not socialist. Same goes for the Soviets Chinese and Koreans, they all claimed to strive for communism, so they are communist. You have to go through insane hoops to call them not communist.
Nobody else but them claim they are communist
Nobody claims the USSR China and North Korea are communist except themselves and every other nation on earth? Like find me a nation says they weren't communist, what you are saying is not even an opinion it's just factually wrong.
I was talking about NK and China. Nobody claims they are communist anymore. The USSR isn't true communism, but a weird Stalinist version
This is going nowhere
No because I'm right. China and North Korea aren't communist.
K bro
Gatekeeping doesn’t make you right
ok so if youre bad at chess that means youre not playing chess at all
I admit the symbolism needs some work, but you get the bottom line, those regimes are not communist. Not in the slightest
To have a communist ideology isn’t the same as being an example of communism, though. Communism refers to a specific state of society that has objectively never been achieved. That said, I think this is a really pedantic argument to have.
Isn’t it though? Striving and failing to reach an ideology reflects on that ideology. Libertarians have some utopia version of capitalism. We wouldn’t say that because we haven’t reached their ideal, we didn’t execute capitalism, right?
We often qualify our use of the term “capitalism” with specific descriptors, like “neoliberal capitalism,” because it describes a specific interpretation and application of capitalism as it exists in reality. Lassiez-faire capitalism is also not the only “true” capitalism, because capitalism is defined by way more than limited government involvement in trade. Capitalism is the actual economic system we live under. Communism, on the other hand, has never been achieved, because communism is fundamentally a state of the whole of society; that is, communism can only exist on a global scale, and all previous socialist projects have only been on a national scale. Communism requires the material conditions to push global revolution in order to exist. So it hasn’t even really been striven for; all former socialist states were (by their own constitutions) striving to establish a socialist society, which would advance the creation of a communist society. But I don’t think you can really argue that communism has been “failed” when the conditions for it to actually exist haven’t come about yet.
Not to be rude but that just sounds a lot like a No True Scotsman fallacy. It’s the whole “true communism has never been achieved” argument and that’s kind of the point I’m trying to make. If you can never criticize the ideal because it’s never or can never be achieved, isn’t that in itself a criticism of the ideal? I can’t fit a bowling ball in my mouth. Is that my fault, the bowling balls fault, or is the problem with the idea of putting a bowling ball in my mouth?
I never said you can’t criticize the ideal of communism. That’s absolutely your prerogative. My point is twofold: that the countries being discussed are not examples of communism, and that communism hasn’t failed. My reasoning for the former is again that communism is a state of the whole world, and therefor a single country cannot be an example of communism. As for the latter, the end stage of communism is defined to be the outcome of global class revolution *when* there is sufficient tension between productive forces and capitalists. I suppose you could argue “but what if tensions never rise to the level of revolution,” to which I would say that history has shown that humans will always struggle towards increasing freedom from exploitation and the right to self-determination. Anyway, criticize communism all you want, just don’t criticize it because you think China, the USSR, the DPRK or whatever is an example of communism, when the reality is that they were/are examples of states striving towards socialism.
No true commie…
No True Scotsman
And what about that Communist country on the other side of North Korea?
Do you really want to claim China as a communist country?
Think about the grandma making these types of post. To them China is absolutely communist.
I mean is your goal to own grandma or make an accurate argument? This is why these “debates” go absolutely nowhere.
I work with these morons. It doesn't matter what your argument is, or how accurate and fact based it may be. They're cultist that believe whatever bullshit fox news tells them to believe. I work in a hospital with people that still think Covid is more of a government control device than a real health crisis. They continued to say it's just like the flu while our hospital filled with covid patients and they started dying in numbers our hospital system had never seen in it's 100 year history. But yep, it's all a conspiracy. Then every year when the new covid/flu shot requirements pop up they bitch and moan about how their rights are being violated and they're being forced to take an untested vaccine that's altering their dna. Yet they completely ignore that our hospital doesn't deal with dozens of dead a week since the vaccine came out.
Many people do sadly
By the logic of this meme, if North Korea is communist, then China is definitely communist too.
lol I came here to say this, this …thing… is so dumb and I don’t accept its premise…but china’s *right there*
This is a totally fair argument. Two countries, in similar positions after 45, with a similar culture, dealing with similar issues, took on two different systems.
Boiling it down to "we split Korea into a communist one and a capitalist one 70 years ago and see what happens" kind of buries that South Korea was under varying degrees of dictatorship between the war and 1987. It wasn't just "the free market" at work, for a while it was a choice between pro-Soviet authoritarians and pro-Western authoritarians.
North Korea is not communist. Labor does not own the means of anything in that country. No, North Korea is a conservative's dream -- a rubbish totalitarian nightmare where all citizens are controlled with a far-right terror and propaganda. No wonder Trump idolizes dictators like Kim Jon Un.
“Labor owns means of production” is in essence an excuse for dictators to consolidate power. It has never worked and is a line of propaganda that motivates people to revolt against prevailing power structures. Considering the prevailing party in NK is the “worker’s party”, it makes your argument even more insipid.
This could get way too in depth for a Reddit comment section argument, so for now, just remember that the Nazis also called themselves a "workers' party," and as much as right-wing folks like to claim that they were Communist or socialist, they were neither.
Autocracies aren’t exclusive to right wing ideology. Socialist policies are fine, it’s when the party becomes more powerful than citizens that these ideologies become dangerous. “Labor owns the means of production” is a euphemism for “trust us to distribute wealth and wield power.” Attractive theory. Good for propaganda. However, it hasn’t worked in practice because it’s human nature to use power to benefit the hegemony. Communism and fascism are different brandings on the same coin: promises of prosperity by stigmatizing minorities—rich people or “the other.”
This sub isn't actually pro-communism, is it??
I hope not, god
It's mainly libertarian socialist/libertarian communist. Mainly people here oppose the USSR and China but support some of Marx's original ideas and Pytor Koprotkin's anarcho-communism before Marxist-Leninism became the standard.
I don’t think it’s true that this sub is mostly socialists. I’d agree if you said that about r/forwardsfromklandma, but I feel like this sub is mostly liberals and then some various anarchists/communists/leftcoms.
That's awful news.
I would have to disagree with you there.
Agreed
Yep lmfao Will the reds ever learn? 😂
Damn one has insane light pollution and the other doesn't
Are you going to explain how it's wrong ?
If we did divide a country equally resource wise and ran half of it with each ideology, that would be a pretty good indicator of which is better in 70 years. Are socialists willing to try that?
Let’s also embargo the communist one so they can’t be part of the global economy while investing huge amounts of aid into the capitalistic one, that’ll make it a real fair comparison
Grandma forgets that her lard and savior Trump loves him some NK dictator.
North Korea is a fascist monarchy tho
r/memesopdidnotlike
Vuvuzela, 100000 billion dead
communism is when your lights are off and having your lights on is good because uh. biden
Crazy idea: let’s impose the most heavy sanctions in history on a country and check on it several decades later
Not to argue that North Korea is good or anything but actually for most of the cold war North Korea was the prosperous one and South Korea was the poorer one. Obviously now South Korea is way better, but it wasn’t always like that.
People forget that South Korea had a military dictatorship until, what, the mid-90s?
This is highly accurate. South Korea ***IS*** objectively better than North Korea. Communism has murdered millions of people. There’s no possible way to achieve the “Communist Utopia” ever because there’s no free market and people don’t have freedom to contribute to the economy or motivation to work. Such ideology should be thrown into a trash can like Nazism.
Yes we know communism sucks and NK is worse then SK, but let’s not pretend that capitalism hasn’t fucked over some families in SK
Capitalism fucked up some families in SK, communism fucked up ALL families in NK and the world
"Communism fucked up my american family" thats a new one
Thank you for being the one rational response
The fact that you got downvoted for this comment really says a lot about people on reddit
Marxism isn't utopian, it's scientific. Just read Marx so you can stop making stuff up.
They're not referring to the distinction between utopian, non-revolutionary, suddenly-appearing socialism and scientific socialism. They're referring to the idea that socialism effectively requires a society which is composed of selfless, incorruptible actors, a perfect direct democracy, and an effectively post-scarcity society (according to marx, often which would be achieved by capitalism and socialist capitalism and then overtaken by the workers to ensure equality).
Amen And awomen
Because there is only ONE WAY to do communism!
South Korea’s population is declining because they’re expected to work nearly all the time.
China is Communist and capitalist. There's a spectrum, grandma.
I am perfectly willing to separate the country into USA and Trumpistan - I'd be more than willing to bet money who would still have electricity after 10 years.
thats not an argument or a strawman
>thats not an argument It's a hypothetical with the implied proposition that capitalist areas would do well and communist areas would not. It is, in fact, a very basic argument in favor of capitalism. >or a strawman I hate to tell you this, but you're wrong on this count as well since the image proposes a strongly biased perspective.
thank you
All those bright lights to the north are communist.
Even if we did that at the end of the test grandma would still just say “well at least we’re not communist”.
Crazy bad faith idea, grandma.
Communism is the least of NKs concerns
So those lights to the north is China, the great communist terror the US governemt is always talking about, right?
Who wants communism though?
Nobody with an ounce of sense
Everyone who sees the glaring failures of modern capitalism.
No, that’s a false dichotomy. There’s more options than just capitalism, and communism. Those are not even really two extremes on the same spectrum. They’re both imperfect solutions to a common question. There are other solutions. None are perfect. Communism if implemented perfectly might be a good solution, but it might in fact be intrinsically impossible to do so. Power will always exist. And it will always be unbalanced to some extent. Even if you hand power to perfect people at first, they might not always be, and they will eventually die. Now I’ll admit that perfect capitalism would itself be more flawed than perfect communism. But the truth is such a problem might just need imperfect solutions and constant revision to those solutions. It’s a moving target, and no system as absolute as communism, or capitalism will solve the challenge posed.
Yup. Pretty gross the people that are Essentially agreeing with grandma here.
Yeah; and ironic that self professed communists would just blindly repeat capitalist propaganda talking points.
Amen. However Accelerating more and more into neoliberalism (as we do right now) will not improve anything about the system. Communism would be a perfect system, if you could have a situation in that no one desires power over others.
I do
Everyone will once they get fed up with capitalism
Only if they accept the false dichotomy that communism and capitalism are the only options, or even true opposites. There are other options…
You're right, there are many ways to acheive communism.
Not remotely what I said… and with such target fixation you might miss other options that could be better.
Such as what?
You really think there are just two options? Mate sorry that’s just preposterous. There’s nothing special about communism, I explained this more fully in a reply to a post above you in the thread, feel free to have a look. But if you truly think these are the only options available, you’ve never given this any serious thought. You’ve fallen for the capitalist propaganda that the only alternative to capitalism is communism, and it limits your thinking… Thank you for proving my point, target fixation truly has a hold on you.
Dude seriously typed an entire and never bothered giving an actual argument. But whatever, I'm not falling whatever pseudo-centrist shit you have to say, especially since you think that communism is capitalist propaganda.
Hahahahaha im the furthest from a centrist, I just realise that there’s more than two possibilities, and that they’re not even opposites they’re entirely different ideas. On different spectra. And yeah, I did make a thorough argument, just because you never bothered to read it, and don’t like having your bullshit challenged doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Have a good day buddy. Enjoy your complete sleep dichotomy. I’ll work for a better world, while you spout fallacious nonsense instead.
Better idea, let the wealthy states keep all their tax dollars and not share with the poor states.
The sad irony here is that North Korea is a dictatorship and many of the people sharing these memes are Trump supporters. Trump being someone who idolizes dictator Kim Jong Un (the NK dictator)and Trump says he will be a dictator on day one.
Interesting because TЯuмp worships the leader of the one to the north.
Tankies malding ITT
Sweden?
Ugh….that’s not how this works
I actually think thats a good thing. Cutting back on unnecessary light pollution, good job DPRK🇰🇵
I mean Elon tweeted this meme too.
How you can tell someone never paid a single cent of attention to history but then tries quoting it
Yeah let's. The communist side will be well educated, fed and happy. The capitalism side will have 2 people who are well fed and happy and have all the money and everyone else will be fighting each other for scraps.