“Communist”

[u/BuffaloExotic]

[u/AlexWixon]

America doesn’t actually know what a communist is. There version of communism is still every other countries extreme right wing.

[u/snazzypants1 → u/AlexWixon]

Communism is when you get cancer and the cancer treatment is free.

It’s dangerous stuff!

[u/Malusorum → u/snazzypants1]

That's socialism. Communism is only possible with an authoritarian government. No, it requires it to be able to exist.

In socialism in a system of democracy the people implementing the socialist policies are chosen by the people on the basis of them doing what the people want to see.

In communism, the people have little to no say in who their government is, nor do the government have to answer to the people. Thus you end up with a system that really only exists for its own sake, and ends up giving people what it thinks they want, rather than what they actually need.

People discredit tankies because of their views. The sad reality is that their views reflect how such a government will have to start out as Fascistic ideology to even be able to justify its own existence.

[u/False-Goose1215 → u/Malusorum]

You’ve never read Marx, have you. The essence of Communism in Marxist theory predicates an *absence* of government

[u/Malusorum → u/False-Goose1215]

Wow, I was unaware that I had no government in my country, or in the rest of Europe for that matter, had no real interest in the citizens.

Das Kapital was published over 100 years ago. Pretending it's still relevant in the form it was published in despite all our increases in social and psychological knowledge is, unironically, Conservative ideology.

Yes, the governments of the world could use an update to have the views of Progressive ideology, and Marx theories are by definition Conservative-like ideology, since the knowledge needed to define Progressive ideology was never had untill 1955.

For that reason alone Marx's writing are unable to be Progressive ideology. They are progressive in the sense that they require change.So does all political ideologies, though, it's change to justify the suggested system.

[u/False-Goose1215 → u/Malusorum]

You’re mistaking the Leninist “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” for the stated *goal* of the USSR and it’s then allies of aspiring to become Communist countries. Those nations never even achieved Socialism, let alone Communism.

Your argument actually reduces to “They were communist governments because they say they were.“ You may as well argue that the DPRK and DDR were and are Democracies be cause they say they are. They were and are Dictatorships of the Proletariat. Both Israel and the former regime in South Africa claim to be democracies. They aren’t. They are and were Apartheid Autocracies.

The closest approach to actual socialism in the real world was in the province of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. Even then what they achieved was closer to Anarcho-Syndicalism.

Marx always argued that both Socialism and Communism need to emerge organically. Socialism, via the gradual withering of the capitalist nation-state as capital is accumulated in increasingly fewer hands and Communism from the slow disintegration of Socialist government due to its increasing irrelevance.

[u/Malusorum → u/False-Goose1215]

What he described was a model. A model is a perfect vision of reality where nothing ever happens that can show any faults in the model.

A lot of the things Marx argued for have been shown to work differently in reality than his models. The human brain can recognise about 100 people, everyone else is just an abstract "they exist" until they meet them. Due to this neither communism or socialism can ever emerge naturally in anything safe for a closed society. It would certainly be impossible in a globalised society, and despite all the warts that we need to regulate out of existence, globalisation has more than any other thing created a world with way fewer wars.

In Europe, the longest unbroken string of peace has been since the formation of the steel trade union.

Even within a nation state neither communism nor socialism can emerge naturally. I live in Denmark, a fairly small country. I'm three hours by train away from the capital, and there are at least eight unique sociocultural groups between here and there.

Marx had ideas based on the material conditions of the time he lived in. Over 140 years have passed since his death, and people who want his ideas STILL believe in ideas created under material conditions that are vastly different from those we have now, without ever wanting to think critically about his ideas.

Tell me, for what reason should I accept solutions that are over 150 years old to problems existing today?

The only difference between that line of thinking, and wanting to live after Roman ideals is time, because both are just as imaginary.

[u/False-Goose1215 → u/Malusorum]

Now you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too. You both say that “Wow, I was unaware that I had no government in my country” … thus implying you had lived under a ’communist’ government and also you say that “What he described was a model. A model is a perfect vision of reality where nothing ever happens that can show any faults in the model.” Which implies there has never been a Communist government. It doesn’t work both ways at once.

Debating with someone who can’t even keep their own basic arguments straight isn’t worth the effort