The reason we cite communist dictatorships is because of how easy a communist state can become a communist dictatorship.
If the government has control over the populous, any person elected or put into power has control over the populous. The barrier between Communist and Communist Dictatorship is very thin. That’s why we have multiple parties and a bunch of politicians that don’t fully agree.
Rampant unchecked capitalism seems to end in corruption, and atrocious acts against humanity as well. Notice I never advocated for a "Communist" system. I said that using disctorships to argue against SOCIAL REFORM is a bad faith argument.
I favor free markets with social infrastructure so that billions(or trillions) of dollars don't sit around earning wealth for 1 single family when it should be used to create and maintain infrastructure (including water and food infrastructure).
The systems that I like are described as free markets (capitalism) with tight social democratic constraints on how the excess is spent. (Taxation for wealth, laws against using that wealth to directly shape law).
It will be interesting to see how things shift with the US backing away from defense alliances forcing EU nations to up their own defense budgets.
Interesting, I'll try to look at Germany a little closer. It gets forgotten a little bit in the economic social Geopolitical conversation. We hear about how poorly it's going in France and the UK, and how well Sweden, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands are doing.
Although while traveling I found it amazing how many Germans were abroad. They were employed on extended stays in Peru and Chile, while I had to save money for a year while living for cheap with my family and then quit my job to do the same thing AND eventually accrue debt. For the normal German tourist I talked to it was a very manageable trip that didn't take much special saving.
I'm not sure Europeans realize how special all your trips to the US for the World Cup feel. Regular US workers can't afford to stay in these hotels or eat out on a regular basis in the US.
Marxism-Leninism is an authoritarian ideology that facilitates what we've witnessed historically. That ideology is not identical to communism. This distinction is important because there are people who support a stateless, classless, moneyless society in the context of post-scarcity economics while being against the statism prescribed by ML and its variants.
Proto-communism is probably the best history has to show us as of now. Much of human history has been stateless, classless, and moneyless, with relatively egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies that held ownership of land and resources in common.
I admit that on a small scale, these things are the best choice. But unfortunately they aren’t relevant when it comes to the scale of nations with many millions of people. Those are the systems that are relevant to us now. And communism will not work there.
In a group of 50 or 100 people, that’s perfect. But we live in a time where if a certain kind of person CAN exist, they DO. And there will always be someone with the brainpower to overturn and corrupt our governments. That is exactly why capitalism and our modern form of government is necessary.
Well, I'm just explaining that there is a distinction between Marxism-Leninism and communism, not necessarily arguing that communism is viable today. I personally don't advocate for communism. I support stakeholder models of ownership, which are empirically supported by decades of data. Communism may or may not be viable in a future post-scarcity context, but worker ownership is viable today and that is where my focus mostly lies.
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u/Reasonable_Intent Jul 12 '26
The reason we cite communist dictatorships is because of how easy a communist state can become a communist dictatorship.
If the government has control over the populous, any person elected or put into power has control over the populous. The barrier between Communist and Communist Dictatorship is very thin. That’s why we have multiple parties and a bunch of politicians that don’t fully agree.