this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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it WAS real communism and ur grandparents probably deserved it. absolute worst case senario no system is perfect and good people still get fucked over sometimes for no good reason, difference is under capitalism it is constant under socialism it is rare.
As I understand it, "real communism" is supposed to be some kind of stateless society. As the GDR was, well, a state, it clearly did not achieve that. Nor would it ever have been likely to, as actually doing what was ideologically promised would have required those with power within that system to relinquish that power, which is incredibly rare as it conflicts with human nature.
Real Communism, along Marxist lines, has a government. Marxism isn't anarchic, the "stateless" part is specifically referring to instruments of the government by which one class oppresses another. Marxism has always been about achieving a global Communist republic.
Communism is not anarchic. Stateless with respect to Communism refers to instruments of government by which one class suppresses another. Communism was always meant to have a world republic.
I suggest reading Marx.
i wonder what planet u came from; clearly u arent human cuz any human would understand the context here. actually u are human (probably) and u are just making a meaningless semantics argument in bad faith.
In what sense is this semantics or bad faith? I meant this sincerely.
fine ill humor ur bad faith argument.
when left leaning libs defend their ideals from right leaning libs by saying "it wasnt real communism" like in this case. they mean that the thing being talked about did not adhere to communist ideals.
when u say that "it wasnt real communism" u mean that there is a distinction between communism and socialism or lower stage communism as marx called it.
the gdr was a socialist country led by communist with the goal of establishing communism when they original lib said it wasnt real communism what he mean was that "the gdr was not a socialist country and it wasnt led by communist", then when i said it was real communism i meant to re state the fact that the gdr was a socialist country led by communist. so it is self evident that ur argument is irrelevant no one was actually talking about where the gdr was a stateless, money less, classless society, we were talking about whether the leadership of the gdr truly adhered to communist principles.
as to why ur argument looks to be in bad faith u would have to live under a fucking rock not understand this context or far more likely u are arguing in bad faith.
I think you have an unrealistic estimation of how much most people understand the topic of communism, if you think not labelling different types of communism as the same ideology is living under a rock. More than half the country doesn't even realize that socialism and communism aren't complete synonyms, and a good fraction think paradoxically that center right liberalism is somehow communist.
Basically, I think you're doing this: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/average_familiarity_2x.png
I mean, it wasn't, at least not according to the actual people who ran those governments. The USSR and the CCP were/are revolutionary governments, real communism happens when/if the revolutionary governments succeeds and transitions the means of control back to the proletariat.
Really working hard to build those bridges of mutual respect and cooperation I see. This is one of the key reasons the USSR imploded in the first place.
The expansion of Soviet influence happened under the influence of Russian chauvinism, a major contradiction with the more successful maoist ideology today. Instead of allowing communism to be shaped by individual ethnicities or nations they did their best to russify or simply purge the base of power in the country, bolshevists or not.
Stalin and Beria did a whole bunch of purging of leftist to secure their control over the party. If you actually think everyone the Soviets killed deserved it, please go read about the Makhnovist, the Mensheviks, the Georgian bolshevist, hell go read what the Soviets did to the original leftist leader in North Korea.
Unfortunately that's just not true. Revolutions are highly hierarchical due to their inherent need to react to militant reactionaries. As they begin to solidify their revolution and take over the responsibilities of the state, this hierarchy gets transferred from the the state.
Authoritarian governments are highly efficient, but are extremely hard to get away from once established. Often times the militant leader of the revolution is not the guy you want to be in complete control of the state after establishing a revolutionary government.
Mao was decent enough to accept this after the failure of the cultural revolution, Stalin on the other hand......
saying that lower stage communism as marx called it or socialism as we call it today wasnt real communism is meaningless, and at best petty. the argument was never a semantics one about the specifics of what communism is and where the lines between socialism and communism are, what was said when they said it wasnt real communism was that it wasnt led by communist and that it did not adhere to communist ideals and goals which it did. u would have to be some kind of alien lizard to not understand the context here which is why i know u are arguing in bad faith.
also some idiot lib going around saying that the gdr wasnt real communism because their ancestors had a bad experience with that system (or more likely they were landlords or capitalist and go what they deserved) isnt gonna change their mind cuz some random person on the internet told them otherwise nor do i care to make that argument.
The problem is that the Soviet Union couldn't even be correctly defined in Marxist terms to be socialist. Socialism according to Marx was a lower form of communism, one described as a transition from democratic capitalism to communism. The Soviets did not transition from a democratic state to communism, there were no valid democratic election from 38'-89'.
I mean I still think there's room for debate depending on who you're talking about. I tend to think that the most simple definitional test whether or not you are adhering to communist ideology is to examine how the means of production is being managed.
Has the state expanded the means of control over the production to the workers in an equitable manor? Is the equity created by the workers being shared to the entire population of workers? By what means do workers negotiate their control over the means of production?
My arguments against Soviet communism is that workers had no meaningful control over the means of production. Groups of workers had no real access to influence the government such as voting as Marx described. The equity created by the workers was not shared equitably throughout the Union, with non ethnic Russians generally acting as a resource to be extracted from.
I think the misunderstanding comes from the fact that when Marx was dreaming of a communist nation, he was not thinking it was going to start in Russia. It was an absolute shock when the 1rst country to commit to communism was autocratic Russia instead of Democratic Germany. Meaning a lot of Marxist writing isn't really applicable to the Soviet State, Marx didn't think about revolution occuring in a authoritarian state.
Or, they were one of the tens of thousands of leftist that were purged by Beria or Stalin. Pretending that the Soviets only killed landlords is not only academically dishonest, it's harmful to future leftist endeavors. Self criticism is essential to eliminating internal contradictions from arising within the state.
Take it from a self-identified pinko commie and someone born in one of those regimes, it was not real communism. It was authoritarianism with a strong (but at times selectively applied) social safety net. To say that their grandparents deserved it when you know nothing about them is fucking absurd. You're not helping your point or cause. You're just being a child.
first anyone who would call themselves a pinko isnt a communist, ur probably a rad lib. second do u truly think that some lib the grandchild of gusanos can even be convinced by a random person on the internet to be a communist im not helping my cause sure, this is just for fun but if i had wrote some essay pointing out why the gdr was a real socialist country led by real communist which really adhered to communist ideals and said that its unfortunate what happened to his gusanos but that bad shit still happens everywhere i wouldnt be helping anything either.
Gatekeep harder
Just... no. Coming from an anarchist communist