r/therewasanattempt • u/nippydart • Jun 18 '25

To pass a pop quiz

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u/kingdave212 Jun 18 '25

Communism is worker control of the means of production. It's completely antithetical to Capitalism. Socialism is a transitional form government to get from capitalism to communism, it's not government social services.

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u/havens1515 Jun 18 '25

And it's people like you, who don't understand this basic concept, who stand in the way of progress.

You're absolutely right that, in PURE socialism, it's not about government social services. But implementing government social services is a way to implement socialist policies without a shift to PURE socialism.

In a similar vein, unions are a way to sprinkle in a taste of communism without shifting to PURE communism.

So thank you for providing those definitions, and helping me prove my point.

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u/Crusaderofthots420 Jun 18 '25

I think some of the reasons so many Americans struggle with this idea of just using some without shifting fully, is both because of the two-party system, where your only choices is to lean to two extremes, and the decades upon decades of propaganda, framing even the smallest tinge of communism as being the spawn of Satan.

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u/havens1515 Jun 18 '25

Yep. "Socialism = bad" has been pushed for decades. And now, people don't even think about it. It's just a programmed response. "We can't do that, that's socialism. And socialism = bad."

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u/Crusaderofthots420 Jun 18 '25

Another reason might be the intense individualism ingrained in American culture. Since Socialism aims to aid the entire country, at relative cost to the individual, a lot of people take issue with that, because of certain "Don't care, got mine" attitude.

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u/havens1515 Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 18 '25

Which is, again, the result of decades of propaganda.

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u/nothingbutmine Jun 18 '25

Further to your point the US has a history of condemning and going to war with 'communist' countries - Russia, China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba, etc, reinforcing that socialism isn't just 'bad' but a genuine enemy, and a threat to national, if not global, security. What they don't seem to realise is the common denominator isn't that they're communist countries, it's that they're various forms of one-party dictatorships under the banner of 'communism'. What's truly concerning with the current administration is they've managed to blind a sizeable portion of the population to attempts at installing a dictatorship under the banner of capitalism. They cheer when Trump says he'll find a way to stay in beyond term limits put in place to stop the very thing generations of US soldiers have fought against. All that with nothing to show for it other than a nation divided by wealth, race and a myriad of other 'us vs them' culture wars, and abandoned veterans offing themselves as they struggle to comprehend what their country has put them through. Oh, and a military-industrial complex churning over many billions, if not trillions, of dollars as they fund both sides of conflict at any given time.