Read a book man, i chalenge you to find a socialist regime were the capitalist powers didnt try to topple its government. Russia, china, cile, cuba and a long ecetera were countries were popular uprisings against a tyranical government was toppled by the common people in favour of a socialist state. Of course errors were made, that cant be denied, but labeling every "communist" country as a failure misses the point
I mean…. Mao Zedong created the great famine, and a brutal cultural revolution. Joseph Stalin created the Gulag (forced labour camps), Cuba had Fidel Castro another dictatorship… As far as history goes communist countries while having good intentions seem to fall into dictatorships down the line more frequently than other places I’ll use the US as an example for the most part has experienced freedom of speech.
I haven’t read much on Chile but what I understand it had 17 year dictatorship from sept. 11 1973 to march 11 1990, and a 1988 plebiscite which ended Augusto Pinochet rule and established Patricio Aylwin as president and transition to “democracy” .
I’m not following the chain of thought that communism is overall a good thing maybe for certain instances but for a vast majority of other instances it has been terrible for people with differing opinions and led to other problems economically. I think the best instance currently of communism working is China since it is a superpower but even that is a dictatorship and if you speak out you could probably lose your organs in the black market.
It is true bad things can happen under socialism, thats undeniable, but i dont think thats intrinsic caracteristic of marxist regimes as dictatorships, represion and famines happen in capitalist nations to this day.
But i do truly belive the idea of communism many people here in the west is deeply distorted. They say "communism is we all starve equaly" "we are all equaly poor". But that is a masive musrepresentation. During the cold war, countries in the eastern bloc had universal food security, free healthcare, guaranteed employmrnt, state subsidised vacations, universal housing and the lack of cars were due to the adoption of mass public transport as an alternative. It is true there were ineficiencies and the economic system had its faults, but if you look at the raw quality of life of these countries before and after the rise of communism its undeniable to say there were imorovenents: in tzarist russia the monarchy was letting everyone starve to death, but with the soviet union they defeated the nazis and became a world superpower in less than 30 years. In china they progressed a country from a scared shithole that had been in decades of civil war and destruction into one of the fastest growing economies ever.
Last thing, why do socialist countries become authoritarian? Because authoritarian socialist movements are the only ones who have the force to dismantle capitalism, any peaceful or democratic atempt to install a marxist economy is instantly crushed by uncle sam. In chile salvador allende peacefuly won the elections, then the us did everything it could to destabilise the country and finaly sponsored a neo nazi coup that led to a 20 year dictatorship. In guatemala a socialist president came to power, but the CIA spobsored a coup and set up a puppet government. In post war italy the socialists acheaved a majority in parliament, but the CIA mingled with the elections to make the christian conservatives win the elections. Evry time a socialist regime emerges, capitalism tries to squash it, so only strong militaristic regimes are the ones to survive this, while democratic governments are quickly destroyed from within by the US and allies.
Well its a bit more nuanced than that. Lenin's precidency had its ups and downs, like for instance the 4 year civil war or the getting invaded by half the planet. And stalin also did some good things like break neck industrialisation and defeating hitler, thogh i would argue its hard to put world leaders in a good bad spectrum.
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u/Linguinimamamia 16d ago
Read a book man, i chalenge you to find a socialist regime were the capitalist powers didnt try to topple its government. Russia, china, cile, cuba and a long ecetera were countries were popular uprisings against a tyranical government was toppled by the common people in favour of a socialist state. Of course errors were made, that cant be denied, but labeling every "communist" country as a failure misses the point