Communists - That time when 100 million people died wasn't REAL communism, comrade

Arcanineinchnails said:
@tamarlover
What happens to the people who stray from the community thinking in a communism society? Is hard to think they wouldn't be severely punished and I'm not talking about sending them to the gulags but shunning them from society and getting their privileges stripped away from them must be necessary to keep people under control. I can see a communism society working but only with a tight almost fascist like control.
Click to expand...

Depends if the communism is sovereign or dependent on a larger nation and subject to its rules. Severe punishments should be given to severe crimes. Those unwilling to submit to the society's authority would be deported. But as long as people were willing to submit to its authority, there should be no such thing as illegal immigration from other nations. Anyone should be welcome without being a citizen.

Yes i envision a tight extreme control over most facets of life as the best system.
 
  • Autistic
  • Dumb
  • Deviant
Reactions: Grand_Ole_Ostritch, Merried Senior Comic, Zero0 and 19 others
Guardian G.I. said:
If by communism you mean what the USSR was technically aiming for - there would be no money. The level of technological development would allow to fulfil all needs of people with minimum effort on their behalf, eliminating the need to sell their labour in exchange for goods and making money obsolete. "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" - pure utopian post-scarcity society.

If you mean the actual socialist system... well, it didn't really stop people from stealing various shit from their workplace, especially if they couldn't find anything like that in stores and the state would replace all losses (or at least they would be covered up). The ageless Soviet saying read "Тащи с завода каждый гвоздь - ты здесь хозяин, а не гость!"
Click to expand...
No i dont mean communism without money. I mean with money. But money that is strictly controlled and highly regulated.
 
  • Autistic
  • Dumb
Reactions: Ti-99/4A, polonium, purepowerlevel and 6 others
Dink Smallwood said:
I'm curious, what exactly do these tards consider real communism?
Click to expand...

A lot of them consider Karl Marx's definition of communism to be "real" communism. They will point out that technically, communism has never actually existed.

Communism is essentially anarchy, where society is classless, stateless, and moneyless. Socialism is meant to provide a transitional stage between capitalism and communism. To Karl Marx, a socialist state is where the means and ends of production are owned by the people, controlled through the state. Eventually, due to the high production levels of the society, everyone would have enough to live happily, and no control by any higher echelons would be exerted.

Of course, we all know what actually happens during this "socialist" stage because we've seen it happen with the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. Those in the government don't want to actually become communist because it means giving up their power, authority, and privileges. Thus we get nightmare totalitarian dystopias, because the government currently has all the power and will do whatever is necessary to keep it, even if it means killing thousands of their own citizens.

It doesn't even matter whether communist countries were actually communist or not; we know from history that any attempts to try to implement communism results in warfare, famine, poverty, genocide, corruption, the absence of the most basic human rights (especially freedom of speech), and intense propaganda. I consider myself to be an optimist, and I believe that most people are inherently good, but even I can see that Marx's communist ideals are completely unobtainable.

Plus, honestly, I think communism is just super outdated at this point. Marx lived at a time when factory workers would lose fucking body parts to machinery and still be expected to work through it (seriously, read The Jungle). People worked themselves to death to make barely enough money to survive anyway, and there was nothing they could do about it. Things aren't perfect today, but worker's rights are taken very seriously. We can argue about minimum wage, health care, and other financial issues all day, but at least if you get injured on the job due to employer incompetence you can sue the living shit out them. I bet Marx couldn't have dreamed of unions and workers' compensation.

Tl;dr- Real, Marxist communism has never existed and will probably never exist, and any attempts to implement it will lead to warfare, famine, poverty, genocide, corruption, the absence of the most basic human rights (especially freedom of speech), and intense propaganda.

Anyway, here's /r/communism scraping the bottom of the barrel to say nice things about North Korea.

RyWi8RE-1.png
 
  • Informative
  • Feels
  • Agree
Reactions: Grand_Ole_Ostritch, Yandere Science, Bob's Fries and 16 others
Tetraphobia said:
Che is the perfect example of "you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
Had he lived on he'd for sure become just another shitty communist.
Click to expand...
Che was so exceptional that Fidel had him killed.
Fidel was getting sick of Che's revolutionary antics pulling Cuba into foreign conflicts (eg, africa), and was becoming more of a liability than an asset to the Castro Regime. So, Fidel sent Che down to Bolivia, essentially abandoned him there, and let the CIA take care of him.
There is the potential that Fidel may have even tipped off the CIA or Bolivian government of his location. Che's problem was that he was a true believer, an absolute ideological fanatic that didn't know when to stop. People like him are extremely useful during a revolution, but once it comes time to govern, they're already looking for the next fight.
 
Last edited:
  • Agree
  • Informative
Reactions: Lensherr, Transvaalan, purepowerlevel and 9 others
Cosmos said:
Eventually, due to the high production levels of the society, everyone would have enough to live happily, and no control by any higher echelons would be exerted.
Click to expand...

Plus, honestly, I think communism is just super outdated at this point. Marx lived at a time when factory workers would lose fucking body parts to machinery and still be expected to work through it (seriously, read The Jungle). People worked themselves to death to make barely enough money to survive anyway, and there was nothing they could do about it.
Click to expand...

Really, this is it. Marxism means we all live happily, in a world where everyone lives just a liiiiittle better than the ideal average as envisioned in 1844. The 19th century life of virtue. When doctoring meant waiting it out and maybe some opium. On that scale, in a industrial society in the mid 1800s, its entirely possible to think Marxism is an inevitability. There were a lot of utopian communities at that point.

Really, a lot of what these new extreme left folks want would involve what would amount to tremendous nosedives in standards of living. They think they would just get like... their college loans forgiven and free health care. They are not seeing what "anti colonialism" taken to it's logical conclusion means. They are not seeing that world wide communism, with no borders, with their vision of sustainability, would not be lifting up the Global South. It would mean mass deportation and hauling the standard of living in developed nations waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down. Unfathomably down.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Wisseau, Lensherr, Jill Kews and 11 others
escapegoat said:
Really, this is it. Marxism means we all live happily, in a world where everyone lives just a liiiiittle better than the ideal average as envisioned in 1844. The 19th century life of virtue. When doctoring meant waiting it out and maybe some opium. On that scale, in a industrial society in the mid 1800s, its entirely possible to think Marxism is an inevitability. There were a lot of utopian communities at that point.

Really, a lot of what these new extreme left folks want would involve what would amount to tremendous nosedives in standards of living. They think they would just get like... their college loans forgiven and free health care. They are not seeing what "anti colonialism" taken to it's logical conclusion means. They are not seeing that world wide communism, with no borders, with their vision of sustainability, would not be lifting up the Global South. It would mean mass deportation and hauling the standard of living in developed nations waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down. Unfathomably down.
Click to expand...
But, like, everyone would be equal. So it's okay. /sneed
 
  • Like
Reactions: DirkBloodStormKing and ToroidalBoat
tamarlover said:
Its never been attempted on a large scale as far as i am aware. It has been successful when done in small scale communities
Click to expand...
The "no true scotsman" fallacy runs rampant in every one of these conversations.

Consider this: as soon as the conversation comes to "we need to restrict people who do X" or "we need to prevent people from doing Y", the battle is already lost right then and there. Because as soon as you acknowledge that one group's thoughts and beliefs should be imposed over another group in any way... boom. Class-restricted society with free leaders at the top and impoverished serfs at the bottom. Which is allegedly what communism aims to avoid.

And I'm not talking about just the thought leaders on tv. Every single group of champagne socialist college students who sits around drinking craft beer and playing video games (instead of working in the fields and factories) and saying "we should make those undesirables do what we want!" have already demonstrated they want a system of tyranny because they want themselves to be the tyrants. The only way communism could ever work is if its proponents completely eschew the concept of "us versus them" in any fashion. A true communist cannot ever say "those people" because you betray your own philosophy of equality the moment you create that divide. A communist cannot entertain the luxury of having enemies among his own people, yet every one of them enthusiastically embraces it! And every attempt at communism comes pre-packaged with a group of undesirables to vilify because that's the only fuel these tinpot tyrants can use to get their vessel off the ground. A group of undesirables that the leaders can forever point the finger at and proclaim "that's why our paradise isn't perfect yet! Because they are still here!!" And the useful idiots will boo and hiss and punch nazis with faith that they are good little citizens instead of questioning the demagogues who set the rules to begin with. Which is just like the supposed pawns of capitalism who dream of getting rich one day instead of calling out wall street as enlightened socialists believe is so terrible.

It is absolutely no different from the dreaded nazis pinning all of society's woes on the jews and using that as an excuse to ostracize them. What's a failed ideology without a bogeyman on which to pin the blame?

Tl,dr: if socialism/communism claims to avoid making society run by exploiting an underclass, then vilifying everyone who doesn't toe every line as a nazi and attempting to shun and disenfranchise them shouldn't be the modus operandi.
 
Last edited:
  • Winner
  • Agree
  • Semper Fidelis
Reactions: Bad Take Crucifier, Slimy Time, IamSpechal and 20 others
tamarlover said:
Depends if the communism is sovereign or dependent on a larger nation and subject to its rules. Severe punishments should be given to severe crimes. Those unwilling to submit to the society's authority would be deported. But as long as people were willing to submit to its authority, there should be no such thing as illegal immigration from other nations. Anyone should be welcome without being a citizen.

Yes i envision a tight extreme control over most facets of life as the best system.
Click to expand...
The thing about immigration is that you can't expect everybody to adapt to a secular communist society. This is way communism has failed miserably in Islamic countries, their religion do teach them that not everybody is equal, that the follower of Islam are superior to the rest and is the same for the others abrahamic religions.
But I agree that it could work in small and closed societies. The Amish who ironically are a religious based society depend of each other to live and share their production. They work because they all have the same belief, don't accept outsiders and are bound by kinship.
 
Last edited:
  • Agree
Reactions: Ti-99/4A, DirkBloodStormKing, Trilby and 1 other person
 
  • Informative
  • Like
Reactions: The Great Chandler, purepowerlevel, Dynamite Ninja and 4 others
Cosmos said:
Communism is essentially anarchy, where society is classless, stateless, and moneyless.
Click to expand...
Something like that could work with sufficiently advanced "post-scarcity" technology. Like living in virtual reality in "matrioshka brains" in Dyson spheres advanced, or something with replicators like those seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

And at that point, the classless/stateless/moneyless society could definitely develop naturally, rather than through a violent revolution.

But as said before, the people of interest this thread is about seem to prefer to think of communism as "everyone is on the tugboat" in the here and now.

Which could be projection.
 
Last edited:
  • Agree
  • Feels
Reactions: DirkBloodStormKing, Trilby, Syaoran Li and 3 others
As someone with right-wing sympathies, I'm echoing the complaints issued by my fellow users. I'm seeing the same problems ITT as I'd seen a year back with the Alt-Right thread.

There needs to be a clear metric to sort the wheat from the chaff. If you ask me, people like Slavoj Žižek are not lolcows whereas people like Jason Unruhe are.

Also, I think Deep Thoughts is a good place to discuss Communism and Marxism itself. This thread should be strictly about cows and their stupid opinions.
 
  • Agree
  • DRINK!
  • Feels
Reactions: salt, Diesel Boogaloo, Koby_Fish and 9 others
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back