Should just call it technoism, doesn't have the same stigma communism and socialism. Granted it somewhat has been earned.
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I didn't realize that the LateStageCapitalism subreddit loves communism
- Thread starter Trojita
- Start date
Should just call it technoism, doesn't have the same stigma communism and socialism. Granted it somewhat has been earned.
Not with the gerrymandering tho. It ain't representing a bunch of people when they also try to pushing voting regulations on certain types of people (poor and PoC).
But yeah you're right that a small amount of people would be running things anyway. Those people would listen to their voters right? Which isn't an oligarcy anyways.
Edit: Ugh, sorry my wifi and the fact I'm on a phone adds so many typos...
It's a sitewide problem because these communities are choosing to do it. They're still responsible for their own choices.
No they aren't. You're rationalizing what they are doing as that, but what's actually going on is people are essentializing Stalinism not only to Socialism but to any serious critique of Capitalism. It's part of why discussion on the topic is generally meaningless with 99% of people.
There is no true theoretical capitalism because Capitalism doesn't have a theorist on the level of Marx, despite what people who have quite clearly never read Smith claim. That's generally been to capitalism's rhetorical benefit.
That doesn't describe the collective aspect
The easiest thing to call it in the west is workplace democracy but that would only make sense under socialism and not necessarily communism.
Of course, no system is perfect.
It's not. Lobbies and big business, people who are in no elected , are the ones pulling all the strings. People have very little power.
IDK I've become far more open minded about socialism, communism, and alternative social orders but I still just can't give a shit about people who's engagement is memetic. I mean for all I know they genuinely engage in considerations of the challenges and avenues forward for transformative social change elsewhere, but the jokey stuff is always going to turn me off, of at least the jokey stuff specifically
Stalinism is inherently bourgeois, reactionary, and counter revolutionary. Tankies being lumped in with Right Wingers is okay by me.
If there is a State and Government then it is not Communism.
The important part is that it shuts down those fucking millenials.
They think they're so damned smart when they haven't lived through anything! What fools they are!
I get your point, but one could argue that Communism can only be implemented by way of authoritarian rule.
I'm talking about real world examples of communism. Not that theoretical nonsense.
OP
OP
I like the Nordic Model best.
I'd like to continue this conversation if you want to take this to PM's since I still don't know what Anti-Islam rhetoric you are talking about. I didn't report you either. I'm less concerned that it was said and more concerned where it came from.
And?
Stalinists purposefully stamped out any alternative interpretation to Socialism and this is the result of it.
I had a Romanian teacher and a Venezuelan coworker and both said that Mexico was paradise compared to those countries.
You can say it doesn't matter, but that doesn't make the claim itself laughable. People ignoring that out of sheer team sports ideology is another part of the reason this conversation never goes anywhere.
Capitalism has no "pure form," the word is so vapid as to be meaningless. Meanwhile Communism has a very specific definition. That reality has generally been a weapon used against Communism, not capitalism. It's very rhetorically useful to have little solid ground to have to defend.
I think few people (except for hardcore Libertarians maybe) would claim that capitalism is without fault. Unchecked capitalism is almost as shitty as communism but its finding the correct balance between free markets and state oversight that makes it work.
I personally believe that our current economic system can't last forever. Capitalism currently piles riches into a few people's hands and enslaves everyone else. The existence of countries (as we currently know them) and private property, IMHO, is one of those things that will stop existing in the future, if we are ever to subsist as one species.
That said, current communism (in any of its forms) is hilariously inept. I guess these guys believe the star trek economy is right around the corner. Take LateStageCapitalism as it is: A themed meme site.
That said, current communism (in any of its forms) is hilariously inept. I guess these guys believe the star trek economy is right around the corner. Take LateStageCapitalism as it is: A themed meme site.
The only real world examples of communism are from the hunter gatherer days
- Communists who constantly refer to "late stage capitalism" when the last truly major communist nation collapsed nearly 30 years ago while Capitalism keeps on ticking.
Lots of explanations in this thread for why Communism won't work unless combined with free market components are right on, but there's one further component I might add. Marxism as a cultural critique and a way of looking at the current state of the world is compelling and valuable. The problem is that most advocates of communism require a cult-like devotion to a very narrow range of ideology (like the terms and conditions of the subreddit that OP described). Communism is simultaneously simplistic and complex. It reduces a lot of the trends and phenomena of market forces into comprehensible social and historical concepts. It also requires you to know a lot of jargon and accept a lot of specific theory at the outset. Hence why a large amount of communists get in a huff at the very concept of endorsing capitalism or critiquing previous communist systems.
David Simon said it best: Marx was a terrific diagnostician of economic life in 19th century Western civilization, he wasn't a great clinician. Marxism is compelling because it provides explanations for previously unanswered problems. But those explanations are often short-sighted or otherwise flawed. Most communists now are just kind of sad annoying pedants sho are completely correct about one big thing (that capitalism in its current state is both unsustainable and injust) and wrong about pretty much everything else. I wouldn't worry about them too much.
OH SO YOU WANT US TO GO BACK TO PRIMITIVE SUBSISTENCE LIVING EH, POL POT?
Of course, but trying to pin this as a "aha, people who like communism are never open to dissenting views!" thing is silly, because you're only focusing on one (bad) site. And it isn't specific to the communist community on that site. I say this as someone who doesn't even support communism outside of a utopian theoretical dream world.
Was this when the premiere communist state artificially induced a famine in one of its subject nations that killed between 7 and 10 million people, an act which is now recognized as a genocide? Or was it when that same state embarked on a campaign of repression and mass executions of its own officers where over a million people were murdered or given fatal injuries during their captivity? Are we forgetting about those 1930s?
We didn't start doing that though until after it was too late to avoid suffering and bloodshed. I'm not exactly optimistic that we're wise enough to avoid making the same mistake by dragging our feet for too long.
That might be a better idea, especially considering the knee-jerk reactions in this thread to even the word.
Communism isn't a rigid ideology. Versions of communism are compatible with the idea of a state.
This is nonsense. You don't argue against massive economic and social systems with personal anecdotes. This is for good reason, as you can find them to dismiss anything. The bolded is just begging the question.
yeah i agree we probally are heading to another great depression. When more and more Americans stop paying their debts etc its gonna be a crazy time.
Imagine looking at the state of the world in 2018 and thinking that capitalism "keeps on ticking"
Also I mean if you want to blame the failures of socialism in South America on communist ideology and not very direct and deliberate meddling from western countries, that's your prerogative I guess.
Yeah I got banned there for suggesting something that didn't exactly agree with their motives. I forget what I said (reddit search sucks ass), but it was something about how jobs are dwindling through automation.
this was the ban message i got:
Those people are living in a fucking dream world. That ban message doesn't make any sense in a real world situation.
this was the ban message i got:
Those people are living in a fucking dream world. That ban message doesn't make any sense in a real world situation.
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I'm trying to think of something bad done by a capitalist state in the 1930s but I can't think of anything, someone help me out please
People would have more power if they voted. Special interests absolutely have too much power, but they got a lot of it because people got lazy/voted for the GOP.
You know I was fucking around right? It was a TERF joke.
I agree because even doing a simple thought exercise would mean the logical conclusion would lead to a convergence where eventually all wealth would belong to one individual, yeah...not good.
Why do you prefer this model?
Why do you like this best?
I don't think this is the result of Stalin or the Russia state, it's the result of endemic processes within the West's public sphere that were generalized with the end of the cold war. Stalin made things easier, but I don't think Stalinism was causative here.
The and is that the kinds of arguments marshaled in threads like this are generally beyond terrible. That's part of the reason that personal attacks are so common in these threads. Like the Hank Hill guy that just always calls everyone that disagrees with him an idiot.
yeah i don't know why anyone would even bother trying to debate politics on reddit, there's a reason why subreddits like The_Donald thrive there
I am only speaking from my own experiences and from what I've encountered. I am not trying to make sense of it or see it as something rational. But I see a lot of communist memes and adoration coming from the same people that can be classified as alt-right. It is bizarre, it doesn't make sense, but that's what I see.
It is chaos, but it seems to be working out for them.
Sometimes you just want to discuss stuff with people who already have a baseline understanding or agreement about a subject. It's possible to post on multiple message boards.
I hate using the term whataboutism here since it's overused and often not correctly, but I think it applies here. Pointing out faults of capitalism isn't a valid defense of communism.
Its as if its not a realistic economic system or something.
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Nothing changes much even if people got vote. Gerrymandering and voter surpression are quasi-fascist tactics to keep the influence of the people at a minimum.
To add to that as well, the ridiculous undemocratic electoral college system. In a country where the supposed motto is that everyone is born equal, you have a system where people's votes have different weight.
it's not a form of government. It's a economic system.