“But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that’s going to be Human and isn’t yet, or used to be Human once and isn’t now, or ought to be Human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.”
You’re mistaken, the state is a collection of proletariat meaning you are a part of the state. You may not be the whole state but it is your land as it is everyone elses
The US > literal any socialist state, and it’s not even close. The US is so far above any socialist state past and present that it’s comical when brain damaged Marxists try to compare the two and think it’s a gotcha for them. No, despite all its flaws, the US is objectively a great country, and that’s largely because it’s a liberal democracy. What’s funny is that it’s not even the best liberal democracy, there are others that are better. But even a mediocre liberal democracy is better than anything Marxist. Hell, even a bad liberal democracies are better than anything Marxist. I’d rather live in modern day Botswana or Peru any day of the week over modern day Cuba or any time during the Soviet Union.
The difference is that liberal democracy is underpinned on the idea that being able to elect a bourgeoise representative is all you need to be fully involved, whereas a socialist system must recognize that collective ownership of a state by the people requires the people have power over everything that happens in that state, law, economics, religion, war, everything. Socialist states exist with this as an ideal and only walk back from this goal with good cause, as opposed to starting with nothing, adding the opportunity to choose bourgeoise representation out of a small pool every once in a while, and calling it good.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at, can you elaborate? I’m not advocating making laws about what people are allowed to think, but I’m not sure that’s what you mean
socialist system must recognize that collective ownership of a state requires power over everything that happens in that state, law, economics, religion, war, everything.
That’s making laws about what people think. That is not socialism but tyranny.
Sorry, I think this is just a grammatical confusion, let me fix it:
socialist system must recognize that collective ownership of a state by the people requires the people have power over everything that happens in that state, law, economics, religion, war, everything.
You are maybe confusing communism for socialism. Communism is stateless by definition. Socialism is the phase of development before communism is achieved in which the people indirectly own the means of production through the state.
There’s no utopian vision advocated for by Communist philosophers. They talk exactly about how this would come through. So yes, they speak about it as an achievable and feasible thing.
The idea is that these socioeconomic orders are global. Capitalism today is global. Even if a country today tries to do not-capitalism, it still must engage in the capitalist sphere, doing trade with them, using money system, debt, and producing purely for the purpose of selling. These are aspects of capitalism we stuck with until the global order isn’t capitalism.
So communism would not come about unless it is global. In which case the question of “other countries” would not apply. You can assume that for whatever reason, a breakaway bunch decide to revert back to capitalism, but that would not go well. Why? Why would anyone whose needs are fully met and their entire time is only spent doing things for their own interests and community decide “I actually wish I had to give most my time to a capitalist in exchange for money that allows me to buy my needs”? For one, money wouldn’t exist in communism, so that part would not even appeal you. Capitalism only has the upper hand because it is already the global system. Once it is overthrown, it is the reverse.
Obviously a society will put guards to deal with lunatics wanting to destroy society for ideological reasons (trying to restore capitalism). It would be in their interest to do so.
I hope I answered your question. Unless your question was “how do we prevent resistance during the revolution / transition”?
Thank you! Given the amount of downvotes, I suspected nobody was going to give me an actual answer. Glad you proved them wrong and didn’t mistake my curiosity for internet trolling.
I understand your premise here, and it has a fair share of logic behind it, but how would such a thing happen?
I’m very happy to see you’re curious, and would love to answer your questions. Thank you for being open minded! :)
To get there, Communists think that the working class should take power, political power (that’s what they call dictatorship of the proletariat) and control of the means of production. Nowadays, those are both controlled by the capitalist ruling class (directly and indirectly). If the working class controlled the means of production, that means they can operate it for their own needs instead of for profit.
You’re probably thinking “well that doesn’t explain how it actually happens”. You’re right. The exact mechanism for the working class reaching power is something I’ve admittedly studied a lot less, and given their Communists are yet to succeed with that, I imagine the theories there aren’t complete.
The essential idea, though, is that the working class needs to become class conscious. In other words, aware of… Basically what we’ve been talking about. How capitalism is and how the different classes operate within the realm of capitalism. Then, the working class must organize together as a United force, and seek to overthrow the capitalist class.
In an ideal world, this would be pretty easy. Workers are the core of the economy, so workers could simply stop working or just operate their factories as they want.
In reality, things aren’t as smooth. There will always be unconvinced workers. There will be police that, if you take over your workplace, they’ll violently put you back in your place. This is something we’ve seen before in history. This is where things could get violent and bloody. The working class must be prepared to fight back.
It answers my question, and it also answers why social democracies with free markets aren’t considered by socialists and communists as actual socialism, and more of a hybrid that serves to lessen the yoke of oppression, but does nothing tangible to progress.
However, I must ask, would a lack of a nation cause a lack of organization? Would we be able to band multiple collectives in order to create, for example, a space program?
How would knowledge be distributed? Consolidated? How would Law function?
How would these issues be addressed in a Communist world?
Bob: “Guys… if we could get everyone in the whole world working together to efficiently organize labor and the allocation of resources, there would be no more poverty”
Alice: “Wow Bob, that sounds amazing! How do we make that happen?”
There’s no utopian vision advocated for by Communist philosophers. They talk exactly about how this would come through. So yes, they speak about it as an achievable and feasible thing.
What if i told you that marxist theory is not some isolated idea from a random guy but the conclusion of a scientific analysis of economic history through the lens of dialectical materialism, and built on top of the works of many other people?
An easy way too look at it is that marxism is for economics what darwinism is for biology.
The best read on this is “Dialectical and Historical materialism” by Stalin.
As marx put it, the only way capitalism would survive is by keeping an infinite growth. Tech is a prime example of that phenomena, where new needs are being created out of thin air: subscriptions, software, etc… Cars, phones have begun to be necessary. That’s how capitalism survives still today: growing more and more by creating new needs for the individual. Except this growth is at the expense of finite ressources, and this is where we’re gonna hit a wall.
Maybe this explains we haven’t seen a capitalist collapse yet. But with today’s ecological concerns, it seems closer than ever
That’s correct, but I’m not sure what you understand those terms to mean, because neither really supports taking all ownership away from people. I’m just gonna leave this blorb here, because I feel like this is where it fits best.
Communism in the style of Marx and Engels means that the workers own the means of production. They would have been completely in favor of a person owning their own farm (or jointly owning it if multiple people worked it). They didn’t really envision much of a state to interfere, much less own property.
That the Soviet Union (and later the PRC, fuck them btw) claimed to be building the worker’s paradise under communism was mostly propaganda after Lenin died. There hasn’t been any state that has implemented actual communism as established by theory.
Socialism (as I understand it, but I’m not well-read on it) means the state has social support networks, but largely works under capitalist rules, with bans of exploitative practices. There are some countries trying to implement a light version of this across Europe, to varying success (mostly failing where capitalism is left unchecked).
The issue is that the US started propagandizing like mad during the cold war, and “communism” was just catchier to say than “supportive of a country that is really just a state-owned monopoly”. Soon everything that was critical of capitalism also became “communism”, which eventually turned into a label for everything McCarthy labelled “un-american”. This is also the time they started equating the terms communism and socialism. A significant portion of the US population hasn’t moved past that yet, because it fits well into the propaganda of the US being the best country in the world, the American Dream, all that bs. The boogeyman of “the state will take away the stuff you own” turned out pretty effective in a very materialistic society. Although I’m very glad to see more and more USAians get properly educated on the matter and standing up for their rights rather than letting themselves be exploited.
Ah yes, because American democracy is going so well.
Who’s interests are the Republicans representing? Who’s interests have the Democrats protected after being in power for 3 years?
Democracy is meaningless if it doesn’t actually act to benefit the people. After all, the goal of government is to improve the lives of the people over which it governs. All of these experiments into different methods of governance should be evaluated based on how much the quality of lives of the population have improved and how happy the population is with their government.
AmeriKKKa also happens to be the same country that spreads propaganda about how capitalism is the only system that works (it does not), how communism never worked and is le ebil, also is publishing nonsense since 1997 on how China is going to collapse every next year (it has overtaken USA).
It’s not about brains, it’s about the flow of conversation. Everytime someone calls out China on anything there’s always a bunch of people that immediately say “Ah yes because the US–” No one is talking about the US. No one is saying it’s any better. It being a shithole too doesn’t magically make China not one. If that is the only thing you have to say then you don’t actually have an argument, just the vibe that it’s le based epic AES wholesome chungus country and if they do anything wrong it must be propaganda or not actually done by them.
YES, it is about the flow of conversation. That being… drumroll China/communism bad, followed by USA/capitalism works best and is only system that works (does not), then followed by a muh whataboutism nonsensical label (which you used), which, all it does is say “you cannot compare now cry boohoo we good u bad”, it being a form of primitive pedantic trolling.
This is why I said you need brains, because you are repeating the same NPC narrative that every braindead western liberal or conservative does everyday, thereby confirming you have no opinion of your own, and definitely nothing that brings something fresh to the table. If you had brains, you would try to bring some new manipulative argument, and if you had a moral compass, advocated against USA/superimperialism.
In the end, it turns out that you saying I lack argument is a projection, and you are as intelligent as the Twitch chat shitposter raging on their keyboard while chugging the 5th can of Redbull.
followed by USA/capitalism works best and is only system that works (does not)
Neither me not the person you were responding to said this. They criticised China on something - you made up the “hence the US is good/only thing that works” line. You just assumed if anyone thinks anything slightly remotely bad about China it’s because they’re an evil idiot liberul!!!. It really is just a reflex for you people no?
followed by USA/capitalism works best and is only system that works (does not)
It is not a reflex, it is the MO of every “gommumism badd hehe” parrot. It is always about capitalism somehow just managing to be better on some imaginary parameters that coincidentally happen to favour Anglosphere and the subjugation of everyone to the cause of white man’s burden.
No it’s not. Much like you aren’t a CPC shill/russian bot/whatever, no one commenting on a lemmy post is a psyop agent with a secret agenda to manipulate everyone. Those guys have the entire media, they don’t need to hire people to pretend to be redditors. Just because you believe it really really hardly doesn’t make it true.
You can find a bad example for any form of government. By any reasonable metric of success, the US government is performing poorly compared to non-democratic countries… Even in terms of freedom of speech, given the prevalence of government and intelligence-funded “independent think tanks” that influence policy in Washington.
At least most people in Russia and China can distinguish between the truth and the party line.
This not an argument. You can’t respond to “X is doing something wrong” with “OH AS IF Y IS ANY BETTER” when literally no one was talking about Y. You’re just trying to derail the conversation. If you’re going to defend China stick to your guts and defend China, don’t attack completely unrelated countries implying I must think they’re any better, they’re not.
At least most people in Russia and China can distinguish between the truth and the party line.
I am sure that most people in the country with the largest censorship firewall in existence know the truth any better. And before you say B-B-B-BUT AMERICA— Yeah they censor shit too. I hate both of them.
I get what you mean, but the other guy brought up democracy as if it was the be-all end-all solution. Countries that disprove OP’s point about democracy being the solution are fair game.
Chinese people know they’re being censored, though. That’s the key difference. They know that the perspectives being presented are, by and large, coherent with national policy and most urban people either know how to flip the firewall or know someone who can - it’s really not that hard. Sure, there is this nationalist block that doesn’t want to do so, but when have right-wing people actually looked at content that doesn’t agree with them, anyway?
Ask any random American what they think, and they’ll go on and on about freedom of speech and blah blah blah… As if the large media organizations in the US don’t all cite reports from “independent think tanks” that are conspicuously all funded by the same billionaires and manned by “ex”-US intelligence. See: the Atlantic Council. The US has been the world leader in manufacturing consent in a way that China and Russia can’t really match. It’s been impressive to see tbh.
I get what you mean, but the other guy brought up democracy as if it was the be-all end-all solution.
Yes. No democracy, no support from me. “But the US isn’t democratic!” Which is why I don’t support it either. Not sure if the other guy is the same.
Countries that disprove OP’s point about democracy being the solution
No country disproves that democracy is needed. “Benevolent dictators” (all dictators think they’re benevolent) die. If you think a dictatorship is doing well just give it a few years.
most urban people either know how to flip the firewall or know someone who can - it’s really not that hard.
“Yes they censor everything, but it’s easy to circumvent!” is not an excuse. How accurate is this really though? Do you have any sources to prove this is the case? Genuinely interested.
As if the large media organizations in the US don’t all cite reports from “independent think tanks” that are conspicuously all funded by the same billionaires and manned by “ex”-US intelligence.
Chinese news cite chinese think tanks, both entities funded by the chinese government. How is it any different? Doesn’t China have more billionaires than the US too?
China doesn’t pretend that their media is unbiased, though. There’s no aura of unbiased media in China. Meanwhile, Facebook’s head of global threat intelligence, is literally a US intelligence plant (and most of the authors on his Meta adversarial threat reports are ex- or current US intelligence). Meta is just the most memorable example, which is why I’m picking on them. Given the algorithmic nature of news delivery nowadays, how much influence would you guess US intelligence has on what news people see?
Xiao Qiang at UC Berkeley did a study before the VPN crackdown and estimated that there are about 10 million DAUs (daily active users) of firewall-flipping VPNs in the country. DAU/MAU is usually between 20%-50%, so that gives 20-50 million people with VPN access monthly (2-5% of internet users). Last October, China clamped down on some VPNs, but then the user counts for those VPNs that were still working skyrocketed.
Anyway, these numbers are actually really quite high:
Bing has 100 million DAUs worldwide. Reddit has about 55 million DAUs worldwide. LinkedIn has about 22 million DAUs in the US. Twitter has about 54 million MAUs in the US. Threads has about 8 million DAUs worldwide (though probably less now, lol). 1-5% penetration of total users in terms of usage is indicative of very high awareness. Other options include using a HK SIM (widely available) and a VPS (harder to setup). I have no idea what kind of market penetration these methods have.
China doesn’t pretend that their media is unbiased, though. There’s no aura of unbiased media in China.
What they “pretend” to be doesn’t matter, what matters is the thoughts they want to put on the people who read it, why they want to, and how many of them do read it. Any and all state media or state collaborative media tries to paint the state it comes from in a good light. This is not somehow more benevolent or less manipulative when it’s done by China, even if “it’s easy to circumvent” or “people know it’s biased”.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s head of global threat intelligence, is literally a US intelligence plant
According to its CEO and founder Ren, Huawei’s corporate culture is the same as the culture of the CCP, “and to serve the people wholeheartedly means to be customer-centric and responsible to society.” Ren frequently states that Huawei’s management philosophy and strategy are commercial applications of Maoism.
Ren states that in the event of a conflict between Huawei’s business interests and the CCP’s interests, he would “choose the CCP whose interest is to serve the people and all human beings”. Qiao and Marquis observe that company founder Ren is a dedicated communist who seeks to ingrain communist values at Huawei.
I wonder if WeChat and TikTok are any different, too.
Bing has 100 million DAUs worldwide. Reddit has about 55 million DAUs worldwide. LinkedIn has about 22 million DAUs in the US. Twitter has about 54 million MAUs in the US. Threads has about 8 million DAUs worldwide (though probably less now, lol). 1-5% penetration of total users in terms of usage is indicative of very high awareness.
Last October, China clamped down on some VPNs
So basically, it’s easy to do, but illegal, but it’s rarely persecuted? That’s a really weird policy.
It’s not even illegal to cirumvent the Firewall… It’s literally a glorified recommendation feed. It’s technically illegal to use a VPN to circumvent the Firewall, but in practice this law is only ever used against the VPN vendor (and even then, it almost never is). Accessing and producing illegal content (e.g. CP) is, obviously, still illegal. Using a HK SIM in China is, obviously, still legal.
My claim is that the Chinese propaganda dissemination system is less developed and less competent than the American one, in large part BECAUSE of China’s blatant censorship rather than in spite of it. Whereas the American system operates in this illusion of freedom of speech, China makes no such indication. People know that media in China will, by and large, follow government policy. As a result, manufacturing consent is very challenging because people are inherently more skeptical of “news” they read. As a result, there’s a strong understanding around the fluidity of “fact” in modern Chinese culture.
Non-Chinese perspectives are easily accessible across the firewall as well as through travel to Hong Kong/Taiwan (which is both very cheap and very accessible for those in tier 1/2 cities).
Unlike Putin with Ukraine, Bush with Iraq, Bush with Afghanistan, or Clinton with Yugoslavia, Xi Jinping has struggled to get any sort of significant traction for an invasion of Taiwan. Public support for it is estimated at around 25% after adjusting for polling bias, with support for an invasion without first pursuing economic normalization or other solutions dropping to as low as 1%. This is despite Xi Jinping posturing on the issue for years. It’s a startlingly failure of what many claim to be one of the most restrictive Internet systems in the world. In contrast, the Iraq War was started when public perception was polling at 60% happy for an invasion in the next week or so (54% if the UN didn’t allow it).
I believe that this failure is in large part because Chinese propaganda is too blatant. Whereas the US has teams like the 4th PsyOps Airborne and “NGOs” like Atlantic Council, Chinese propaganda comes from the government or from people who are knowingly parroting government policy. While that’s pretty good at getting broad public perception to align, it fails at driving any decisive action because it provides neither the illusion of choice nor the radicalization necessary for decisive policy to pass.
They literally have above 90 percent approval according to international studies from people as conservative as fucking Harvard University.
You’re wrong about their institutions but regardless of what you think of their institutions they have a popular mandate, which is how democracies define themselves as legitimate.
Your definition of socialism is more akin to a definition of social democracy, which is… maybe a form of socialism, depending on who you ask – it is historically contentious and generally accepted that social democrats aren’t socialists.
Socialism can have all of the things that you described, but it is decidedly anti-capitalist. It reorients how workers relate to the means of production. Under capitalism, the means of production are owned by the bourgeois class, while under socialism, they are collectively owned by the workers.
Holy shit, this is exactly how the whole big picture of comunism is.
Not even self proclaimed communist understeand this and seems that they think communism is the same thing America propagandises against, so they end up being apologists for tyranical regimes that are the contrary of what comunism and even socialism should be, and end up making an ass of themselves and fitting more with the tankie description. And yes fuck the CPSU/КПСС and the CCP.
Socialism means the state has social support networks, but largely works under capitalist rules
What you’re describing is “social democracy” — capitalism with safety nets, where production is still controlled by owners rather than workers. “Socialism” explicitly implies worker control of production. “Nordic socialism” could more accurately be called “Nordic social democracy.”
“Communism” refers to a classless, stateless society where everyone has what they need, no one is exploited or coerced, and there are no wars. It’s an aspirational vision for the future, not something you can do right after a revolution when capitalism still rules the world.
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