Communism only works on a small scale. The second society gets bigger, you require a state with militaristic presence to keep the people in line. To this very day, the Marxist ideal of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” has ALWAYS resulted in centralized power structures that became brutal dictatorships.
No matter which country you pick, large ones like china or the soviet union or smaller ones like cambodia under pol pot or vietnam under the CPV, all of them have devolved into a dictatorship. Even “experiments” like yugoslavia under tito were, in the end, still dictatorships where political opposition was disallowed, a secret police was founded and tito still had absolute control. Now, you might say: “But the people lived well!”, yes, for about 10 years until the 1960s where the country suffered a massive economic crash, insane debt (because commies suck at economics) and inflation. Tito was able to hold it together with sheer force until he died, and after his death, yugoslavia completely unraveled into the mess it is today.
I know you like to cope with “oh no the evil CIA again >:(” but in the end, communism is a failed ideology that will never work on a large scale without completely suppressing individual freedom and brutally knocking down any sign of dissent.
Edit: By the way, I’m more than willing to argue about this - however, I just noticed that I’m on lemmy.ml so I’ll most likely get banned for not conforming to the tankie-ideals.
Capitalism only works on a small scale. The second society gets bigger, you require a state with militaristic presence to keep corporations in line. To this very day, the Thatcher/Reagan ideal of “market liberalisation and privatisation” has ALWAYS resulted in the centralised accomulation of capital that became a massive societal divider.
No matter which country you pick, large ones like the USA or Russia, all of them have developed into a divided oligarchy of “haves” and “have nots”. […]
I know you like to cope with “Oh no, the evil minority of bad apples in the owner class again. >:(” but in the end capitalism is a failed ideology that will never work on a large scale without completely surpressing the market and brutally regulating any sign of market dominance of a few corporations.
This is generally wrong, though. Communist countries have dramatically democratized society, it can only work at large scale because that’s the Marxist reason for Communism to begin with. Competition centralizes, so in the future it must be publicly owned and planned.
Communist countries have dramatically democratized society
No. That’s just a straightup lie. Name one.
it can only work at large scale because that’s the Marxist reason for Communism to begin with
And yet, it never did. Not one single time.
Competition centralizes, so in the future it must be publicly owned and planned.
Competition does the exact opposite of centralization. That’s why I can buy most goods from completely different vendors that differ in price and quality.
Are there mega corpos that harm people in general? Absolutely. Should we do something about it? Absolutely. Is communism the solution? Nope.
Pol Pot wasn’t even a Communist.
Pol Pot followed a radical form of Maoist communism, heaviely influenced by china. So no - that’s also a lie.
Competition does the exact opposite of centralization. That’s why I can buy most goods from completely different vendors that differ in price and quality.
Competitions have winners, and in this case it means the competition goes out of business and dies, leaving you with a near monopoly or outright monopoly.
That power then gets used to
lobby (bribe) the government to raise barriers to entry to prevent new competitors
buy out new competitors
intentionally price everything lower than competitors, at a loss, to kill competitors in a war of attrition that they can’t possibly outlast
And that’s even assuming there’s any competition at all, which often isn’t the case with certain things like healthcare, internet, electricity, etc.
Not really? Competition might cut into your profits, sure, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be bankrupt. Just because dyson vacuums are amazing doesn’t mean stuff like vorwerk is dead, right? They still exist and are very profitable.
I’m not saying that the ones at the top are not using their power and money to lobby and stuff, but that doesn’t really seem like a good argument to me why we should switch to communism instead of just fixing the issues we currently have lol.
The USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, etc are more democratic than theie previous systems.
Communism still works, just because the Soviet Union isn’t here doesn’t mean everything is a failure.
Competition forces centralization and monopolies over time due to increasinly complex production practices that raise the barrier to entry. It’s unavoidable.
Pol Pot denounced Marxism and focused on an odd agrarian system, and was backed by the CIA.
The USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, etc are more democratic than theie previous systems.
No?
While these regimes may have dismantled previous monarchies, colonial systems, or oligarchies, they did not replace them with democratic governance, but rather installed rigid, one-party authoritarian states that eliminated political competition, suppressed civil liberties, and centralized power. By nearly every standard of democracy these systems fell short, making them less democratic, not more.
Communism still works, just because the Soviet Union isn’t here doesn’t mean everything is a failure.
No, it doesn’t. The USSR was the most successful country and only existed for like 60 years, and every other communist country that still exists today is an authoritarian shithole like Vietnam, North Korea or Cuba where people are executed and suppressed constantly.
Competition forces centralization and monopolies over time due to increasinly complex production practices that raise the barrier to entry. It’s unavoidable.
True for a very narrow spectrum of products and services, mostly those that are extremely expensive to manufacture/develop or those under government supervision, like medicine. Untrue for most.
Yes, competing with twitch.tv on streaming is nearly impossible because the infrastructure is extremely expensive. But you can compete with most other companies in the space. Look at lego, for example. 15 years ago, there was only lego, nobody was competing with them, they became worse over time, more expensive, less quality, people complained and suddenly, companies like cabo or bluebricks came up and invaded the market, offering a wider variety of products.
Pol Pot denounced Marxism and focused on an odd agrarian system,
He still followed communist ideals for the most part, or are we going to argue that maoism is not heaviely influenced by communist ideals?
and was backed by the CIA.
The US never directly supported pol pot. Before 1975, they supported Lon Nol, who was fighting against the communist Khmer Rouge.
The part that IS true is that the US did support China and Thailand at the time, which in turn used that aid to support resistance groups in cambodia because vietnam invaded cambodia in 1979 - something the US had no problem with since vietnam was backed by the soviets. Also, it is true that the US and other western countries supported keeping the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s official UN representative, however, that was mostly done to undermine Vietnam’s rule over cambodia.
So, yes, by extension, the US supported pol pot, but it’s not the big “gotcha” you think it is - it was the cold war, an extremely complex geopolitical time.
LOL
The horrible feodal system with serfs/slaves the Tibetans has was sooo much better.
Some CIA poking didn’t work to bring that back.
And there was a small minority radicalised terrorists by Turkey and OC again the CIA to cause trouble, which they did.
blew up a plane with civilians, multiple other attacks on busses, trainstations, etc…
The majority never liked them and are glad it’s over.
But nice try.
Not sure what you’re trying to say. Uyghurs are systematically eradicated and tibet is controlled by china since their invasion in the 1950s. Not exactly speaking in favor of communism.
So, if you’d like to expand on your point, I might be able to discuss this further.
eradicated LOL, their population is growing, despite the many some US backed terrorist killed.
And Tibet doesn’t have slaves anymore who literally had chains around their necks suffering under the religious buddhist monks terror.
Yawn, can you bring up Tiananmen square again to not be original? I’ll wait
According to who? The chinese government? Lmao. Ye I would DEFINITELY trust the ones that are performing the killings on reporting accurate numbers.
And Tibet doesn’t have slaves anymore who literally had chains around their necks suffering under the religious buddhist monks terror.
Imperialism good when country does bad things?
Yawn, can you bring up Tiananmen square again to not be original? I’ll wait
I could, but if you want some originality, I can also bring up one of the other atrocities directly ordered by communist regimes, like the Prague Spring, Hungarian Revolution or the mass executions by the Khmer in Cambodia.
oh, the khmer rouge, that one that the u.s. supported along with britain, china (not so dirty back then, right) and who were toppled by the socialist regime of vietnam?
I already answered that to someone else so I’ll just copy and paste it:
The US never directly supported pol pot. Before 1975, they supported Lon Nol, who was fighting against the communist Khmer Rouge.
The part that IS true is that the US did support China and Thailand at the time, which in turn used that aid to support resistance groups in cambodia because vietnam invaded cambodia in 1979 - something the US had no problem with since vietnam was backed by the soviets. Also, it is true that the US and other western countries supported keeping the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s official UN representative, however, that was mostly done to undermine Vietnam’s rule over cambodia.
So, yes, by extension, the US supported pol pot, but it’s not the big “gotcha” you think it is - it was the cold war, an extremely complex geopolitical time.
Communism only works on a small scale. The second society gets bigger, you require a state with militaristic presence to keep the people in line. To this very day, the Marxist ideal of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” has ALWAYS resulted in centralized power structures that became brutal dictatorships.
No matter which country you pick, large ones like china or the soviet union or smaller ones like cambodia under pol pot or vietnam under the CPV, all of them have devolved into a dictatorship. Even “experiments” like yugoslavia under tito were, in the end, still dictatorships where political opposition was disallowed, a secret police was founded and tito still had absolute control. Now, you might say: “But the people lived well!”, yes, for about 10 years until the 1960s where the country suffered a massive economic crash, insane debt (because commies suck at economics) and inflation. Tito was able to hold it together with sheer force until he died, and after his death, yugoslavia completely unraveled into the mess it is today.
I know you like to cope with “oh no the evil CIA again >:(” but in the end, communism is a failed ideology that will never work on a large scale without completely suppressing individual freedom and brutally knocking down any sign of dissent.
Edit: By the way, I’m more than willing to argue about this - however, I just noticed that I’m on lemmy.ml so I’ll most likely get banned for not conforming to the tankie-ideals.
Capitalism only works on a small scale. The second society gets bigger, you require a state with militaristic presence to keep corporations in line. To this very day, the Thatcher/Reagan ideal of “market liberalisation and privatisation” has ALWAYS resulted in the centralised accomulation of capital that became a massive societal divider.
No matter which country you pick, large ones like the USA or Russia, all of them have developed into a divided oligarchy of “haves” and “have nots”. […]
I know you like to cope with “Oh no, the evil minority of bad apples in the owner class again. >:(” but in the end capitalism is a failed ideology that will never work on a large scale without completely surpressing the market and brutally regulating any sign of market dominance of a few corporations.
This is generally wrong, though. Communist countries have dramatically democratized society, it can only work at large scale because that’s the Marxist reason for Communism to begin with. Competition centralizes, so in the future it must be publicly owned and planned.
Pol Pot wasn’t even a Communist.
No. That’s just a straightup lie. Name one.
And yet, it never did. Not one single time.
Competition does the exact opposite of centralization. That’s why I can buy most goods from completely different vendors that differ in price and quality.
Are there mega corpos that harm people in general? Absolutely. Should we do something about it? Absolutely. Is communism the solution? Nope.
Pol Pot followed a radical form of Maoist communism, heaviely influenced by china. So no - that’s also a lie.
Competitions have winners, and in this case it means the competition goes out of business and dies, leaving you with a near monopoly or outright monopoly.
That power then gets used to
And that’s even assuming there’s any competition at all, which often isn’t the case with certain things like healthcare, internet, electricity, etc.
Not really? Competition might cut into your profits, sure, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be bankrupt. Just because dyson vacuums are amazing doesn’t mean stuff like vorwerk is dead, right? They still exist and are very profitable.
I’m not saying that the ones at the top are not using their power and money to lobby and stuff, but that doesn’t really seem like a good argument to me why we should switch to communism instead of just fixing the issues we currently have lol.
The USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, etc are more democratic than theie previous systems.
Communism still works, just because the Soviet Union isn’t here doesn’t mean everything is a failure.
Competition forces centralization and monopolies over time due to increasinly complex production practices that raise the barrier to entry. It’s unavoidable.
Pol Pot denounced Marxism and focused on an odd agrarian system, and was backed by the CIA.
No?
While these regimes may have dismantled previous monarchies, colonial systems, or oligarchies, they did not replace them with democratic governance, but rather installed rigid, one-party authoritarian states that eliminated political competition, suppressed civil liberties, and centralized power. By nearly every standard of democracy these systems fell short, making them less democratic, not more.
No, it doesn’t. The USSR was the most successful country and only existed for like 60 years, and every other communist country that still exists today is an authoritarian shithole like Vietnam, North Korea or Cuba where people are executed and suppressed constantly.
True for a very narrow spectrum of products and services, mostly those that are extremely expensive to manufacture/develop or those under government supervision, like medicine. Untrue for most.
Yes, competing with twitch.tv on streaming is nearly impossible because the infrastructure is extremely expensive. But you can compete with most other companies in the space. Look at lego, for example. 15 years ago, there was only lego, nobody was competing with them, they became worse over time, more expensive, less quality, people complained and suddenly, companies like cabo or bluebricks came up and invaded the market, offering a wider variety of products.
He still followed communist ideals for the most part, or are we going to argue that maoism is not heaviely influenced by communist ideals?
The US never directly supported pol pot. Before 1975, they supported Lon Nol, who was fighting against the communist Khmer Rouge.
The part that IS true is that the US did support China and Thailand at the time, which in turn used that aid to support resistance groups in cambodia because vietnam invaded cambodia in 1979 - something the US had no problem with since vietnam was backed by the soviets. Also, it is true that the US and other western countries supported keeping the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s official UN representative, however, that was mostly done to undermine Vietnam’s rule over cambodia.
So, yes, by extension, the US supported pol pot, but it’s not the big “gotcha” you think it is - it was the cold war, an extremely complex geopolitical time.
You made a lot of claims here. Do you have any sources to provide support?
Soviet Democracy
Here’s a well-sourced post on China’s democracy, but really, read their constitution and government structure if you want more.
Cuba was under a fascist slaver before Socialism, and now has a democracy.
The PRC is Socialist, and has one of the largest and most rapidly growing economies in the world, I don’t think you need a source for this.
As for competition and centralization, where do you think the megacorps came from? We are more centralized now than ever before.
Pol Pot and the CIA, alternatively Blowback lists their sources and they went over it in Season 5.
Im sure the uyghurs and tibetans see it differently
EDIT: \s
LOL
The horrible feodal system with serfs/slaves the Tibetans has was sooo much better.
Some CIA poking didn’t work to bring that back.
And there was a small minority radicalised terrorists by Turkey and OC again the CIA to cause trouble, which they did.
blew up a plane with civilians, multiple other attacks on busses, trainstations, etc…
The majority never liked them and are glad it’s over.
But nice try.
Im sure they love making iphones until they jump off a roof
Not sure what you’re trying to say. Uyghurs are systematically eradicated and tibet is controlled by china since their invasion in the 1950s. Not exactly speaking in favor of communism.
So, if you’d like to expand on your point, I might be able to discuss this further.
eradicated LOL, their population is growing, despite the many some US backed terrorist killed.
And Tibet doesn’t have slaves anymore who literally had chains around their necks suffering under the religious buddhist monks terror.
Yawn, can you bring up Tiananmen square again to not be original? I’ll wait
According to who? The chinese government? Lmao. Ye I would DEFINITELY trust the ones that are performing the killings on reporting accurate numbers.
Imperialism good when country does bad things?
I could, but if you want some originality, I can also bring up one of the other atrocities directly ordered by communist regimes, like the Prague Spring, Hungarian Revolution or the mass executions by the Khmer in Cambodia.
oh, the khmer rouge, that one that the u.s. supported along with britain, china (not so dirty back then, right) and who were toppled by the socialist regime of vietnam?
I already answered that to someone else so I’ll just copy and paste it:
The US never directly supported pol pot. Before 1975, they supported Lon Nol, who was fighting against the communist Khmer Rouge.
The part that IS true is that the US did support China and Thailand at the time, which in turn used that aid to support resistance groups in cambodia because vietnam invaded cambodia in 1979 - something the US had no problem with since vietnam was backed by the soviets. Also, it is true that the US and other western countries supported keeping the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s official UN representative, however, that was mostly done to undermine Vietnam’s rule over cambodia.
So, yes, by extension, the US supported pol pot, but it’s not the big “gotcha” you think it is - it was the cold war, an extremely complex geopolitical time.
Lol I meant to reply to the main thread, but you could pretend im being sarcastic and it kinda works