Why is communism so appealing to so many people? - Despite, you know, its proven to be a failed system.

[Hyperbola]

To be honest, I'm a little more sympathetic than I ever thought I'd be.

Not that I think communism is anything but slavery. But if you've been told it's the only alternative to <whatever the hell we're doing now> which they'll call "capitalism", then I can imagine some interest if you don't know these people's history. Because what we're doing now is also going to reduce people to slavery.

We've got a bunch of different things munged up under the label "capitalism". The economy we had back in the 1870s - 1930s is called "capitalism": Most people owned their own livelihoods back then, or were employees of much smaller and less bureaucratic firms. There were large concerns, but they didn't dominate the economy to the point where nearly everyone was an employee of a megacorp. What the WEF wants to impose on the world is also called "capitalism" - the modern bizzaro economy where serfs and customers don't matter, and money rains from hyperspace for no apparently clear reason, catapulting "the right people" to squillionaire status while everyone else slowly goes broke trying to pay for housing, even though their desperate overtime labor makes the country work (to the extent that it even works anymore.)


Don't discount fairness. The libertarians are hyperfocused on process - they think that if the process is fair on a micro-scale, then whatever macro-scale outcome results is by definition "fair", no matter what it is. (Of course the process of a free market of roughly independent roughly peer actors isn't even close to what is happening anymore.)

A different view is that if where you end up is a few bastards like Gates and Bezos owning everything, while everyone else is their slave or pet eating bugs in a micro-apartment, then whatever process resulted in that outcome is wrong. (I don't think small-business entrepreneurship and small-holder property ownership had anything to do with it.) Some world of a few dozen monopolies and their company towns isn't anywhere you want to go. (Of course a communist state is pretty much equivalent.)

 

[Fatniggo1488]

Communism is just capitalism, but with better intent.

 

[Skeletonized Cow]

I guess we'll figure out how to make an actual functioning government once my lust for murder calms down"

This is unironically what left-wing revolutionaries want. Do you not hear the "burn it down" shit being pushed right now by leftist ideologues?

 

[Lemmingwiser]

Communism promises a utopia. Of course it has broad appeal.

 

[ConsentAccidentVictimNo98]

Jeez, communism has been tried too many times. Now, true Nationalist Socialism has never been achieved. I mean, they're basically the same when I bring them down to fundamentals in how they both advocate a form of class conflict, all try to form a more collective spirit amongst the "people" and both ultimately become hellish when in practice.

But, it's the promise of the gold at the end of the rainbow which keeps on having people wish to try. It'll wash away all your problems.

 

[Odd Opossum]

This is unironically what left-wing revolutionaries want. Do you not hear the "burn it down" shit being pushed right now by leftist ideologues?

It's what the extremists of both sides want, the left is just better at it then the right is. The "burn it down" crowd had their limelight during 2020 and have been put back on a leash no matter how much they scream. The reason why people continue to support the left is that they're better at making their ideas more palatable to society at large despite multiple failed attempts at making some of their ideas work, whereas the right-wing has become more extreme and socially toxic since 2020 and have no real interest in actually gaining power. "I want to help people and make their lives better, and here's how I'll do that" versus "Fuck niggers, fuck trannies, fuck jannies and fuck normies".

 

[Strix454]

We've got a bunch of different things munged up under the label "capitalism".

The label capitalism has always served since the days of Karl Marx as a negative definition. All things that are not Marxist and leading to Marxist communism are "capitalism". Intellectually its purpose always seemed to be to foreclose all other possibilities and reduce all debate to a binary decision between two systems. One of which was Marxism and the other which was anything not Marxist.

Marx developed a simplistic model where "workers" created all value and "capitalists" stole unearned income away from them. That anything other than simply making stuff with machines on a factory floor was unnecessary. There was an intellectual avoidance of the question of who built the factory and who built the machines in the factory. Because looking at those questions undermined his whole idea of where economic value came from.

The other thing about communism was that in practice what it usually did was substitute money-wealth in the economy for wealth in other forms. Rather than having cash in the bank, your "wealth" was holding a specific job and the benefits that the communist system associated with that job. There were still factory owners in the Soviet union who had all sorts of benefits and access to things that the workers in the factory didn't have. They got their access to better schools for kids, better cars, vacations, vacation homes, travel and so on as job perks. Most absurdly at all, people in communist societies would inevitably have different access to goods & services based on the state setting up different stores for different sorts of people with explicit rules about access.

The big conclusion of the communist experiments of the last century was that central planning of the economy didn't really create social or economic equality. That rhetoric aside, the centrally planned communist states had nearly all the same social and economic problems as a capitalist state.

 

[Stan]

I think people want to believe that other people are mostly good, and that we could build an equitable system where everyone can get ahead. They think communism would be the next great step.

So far unfortunately the best system to achieve it is capitalism; it's made most everyone's standard of living a lot better and it has made people more equal to one another; even though there's still a clear hierarchy.

One way to think about how communism should work is to think about something super common and cheap. Let's use cardboard boxes as an example. Cardboard at one point was actually worth something and people could hoard and resell it to cardboard collectors for recycling. Now, cardboard boxes are so common as to be a nuisance. I'm sure you probably have unwanted cardboard boxes right now. If someone needs cardboard for something (art project, for example) they can find what they want for free; and nobody's going to get after you for hogging all the cardboard. And you wouldn't want to stockpile or hoard cardboard because it's so plentiful: so everyone just takes the cardboard they need, and recycles the cardboard they don't need.

Communism's goal is to make every single thing you could imagine like that. Clothes, shoes, food, etc; you'd take what you need and wouldn't feel an urge or hoard because there's plenty to go around. The reason communism hasn't worked to date is because for most everything, there isn't enough to go around. We don't have the automation and electricity to make Hungry Man frozen dinners so cheaply that they're not worth charging for.

I think at some point that could change, and that socialism represents a middle way where we can share what we do have and split the burden. And from what I can gather, at least some of you guys would tend to agree, even though you’re allergic to the words socialism and communism.

When I go to other threads around here and read wish lists of what y’all wish you could have (lifelong employment in blue collar jobs with a real pension, educational alternatives to university, benefits that cover your needs, and the elimination of the oligarchy/Plutarchy that takes way more profit and capital than it can use…) that kind of sounds like socialism or communism to me. Or at least a paternalistic, socialist-adjacent government that prevents accumulation of capital like what we have now so everyone gets a piece of the pie.

 

[Toolbox]

My previous reply apparently owned OP so hard that he deleted the entire thread so I told the jannies and had them undelete it because this is Kiwi Farms and on Kiwi Farms your shame follows you to the ends of the earth.

Dyn, you've stooped to the doubleposting level?

 

[Ser Prize]

The more I work with shitty co-workers and my shit job,the more I wished the whole Communism Allows You To Be Lazy part was true.

Cause really fuck having to work for shit wages that doesn't even pay rent. The housing market is fucked and gas and groceries is following suit.

You slowly kill yourself for a job you hate but have to deal with and it is even worse when you have to deal with shit customers and co-workers on a daily basis.

The addition of Genocide and people dying is a plus for misanthropes which are growing by the number. Kinda hard to care when Boomers set that precedent to leave the problem to the next generations.

Sadly you can thank feel-good stuff like income and payment regulation for the gradual decreasing of the average man's worth. Fuck minimum wage and fuck mass immigration.

 

[Stan]

My previous reply apparently owned OP so hard that he deleted the entire thread so I told the jannies and had them undelete it because this is Kiwi Farms and on Kiwi Farms your shame follows you to the ends of the earth.

Ty dyn! I had written out that whole thing about cardboard communism and was so put out when I tried to submit it to find the thread was yeeted.

 

[Dyn]

Dyn, you've stooped to the doubleposting level?

I've always double posted because I don't value the time of the janny cuckolds who clean up after me.

 

[PipTheAlchemist]

I think at some point that could change, and that socialism represents a middle way where we can share what we do have and split the burden. And from what I can gather, at least some of you guys would tend to agree, even though you’re allergic to the words socialism and communism.

Socialism is just Communism-Lite. It leads to the same shitty results everytime.

 

[anustart76]

To be honest, I'm a little more sympathetic than I ever thought I'd be.

Working a shit job tends to make people more sympathetic to communism because they think it might solve that problem, except you're just going to end up doing a shitty job under even worse circumstances.

Whatever system we have now is absolutely not a free market. It's some kind of horrifying corporate-socialism, where the ultra-rich and megacorporations use the government to suck up the money from the poor masses.

 

[Stan]

Socialism is just Communism-Lite. It leads to the same shitty results everytime.

Idk the Scandinavians seem to make it work. It’s promising, and I’d vote for it if there was a candidate that was willing to implement it (last real option was Bernie.)

 

[PipTheAlchemist]

Idk the Scandinavians seem to make it work. It’s promising, and I’d vote for it if there was a candidate that was willing to implement it (last real option was Bernie.)

The Nordic Model isn't socialist. In some ways, it's arguably more free-market than The United States
Sweden was once socialist, back in the 80's. They quickly realized that socialism sucked dick though, so they switched to a more capitalistic economic model.

 

[Overwritten Tapes]

I just wanna trick these faux commie sluts into smashing . Tell them it's the greatest shit ever for all i care

 

[Angry Alt Right Nerd]

Whatever system we have now is absolutely not a free market. It's some kind of horrifying corporate-socialism, where the ultra-rich and megacorporations use the government to suck up the money from the poor masses.

According to conservatives this system is communism. According to anyone who's not a dumbass it's probably closer to neoliberalism.

 

[skykiii]

Minor PL, but I remember being in my teen years, and back then all I understood was communism was a system where you got everything handed to you without needing to work.

Thankfully this was the early internet where most people explained to me why that was dumb (my parents sucked at explaining stuff and still do) and I quickly got over it.

But the point is I feel like a lot of people give in to the fantasy that communism will be a lazyman's paradise, and the modern internet indulges practically every fantasy and you're bad for questioning it.

 

[Male Idiot]

This all depends on the era.

For the current era, it is free shit. When someone says communism on twitter, they mean free gibs.

They want free shit without working. It is base greed, nothing deeper.