World News
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
view the rest of the comments
No true Scotsman
Russia very much was communism in the real world.
Great argument. What do you base this on?
It's like china calling itself communist right now.
Yes there was rhetoric in the USSR that suggested they were but it was an instrument to legitimate the horrible things that they did to their people.
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society
That was not the case. It was state owned, as the transition from whatever system was there before to socialism plans. Communism is supposed to be something different.
I am not arguing that it would be good or better than anything we have today but am saying that we never saw communism in the modern world.
Change my mind with arguments and not down votes.
You are right, I mixed something up
Same argument though for socialism. They are a capitalist country that calls itself something else. You don't seriously believe they are socialist In any other way than their name.
China is Socialist, in that it maintains a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and is progressing towards full Socialization of the economy. The Dengist liberal reforms occured after Mao's Great Leap Forward backfired, Mao put too strong of an emphasis on the idea of Class Struggle. As Engels puts it in Principles of Communism:
Xu Hongzhi and Qin Xuan elaborate on the decisions made in implementing liberal reforms as a part of "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics," specifically with respect to errors made under Mao in trying to "skip ahead to Communism:"
Whether or not the CPC has their bourgeois class reigned in or not, whether the Bourgeoisie in China is in control or the people via the CPC, these are genuine concerns that we can have, but the central idea that "having Capitalism means the entire system within context is Capitalist" is wrong. What matters is trajectory and control.
too many threads to keep track of. so if anything gets mixed up ...
regarding engels: yes its a process, i agree. that didnt transfer for me into what we call the phase (or state) that the country was in. i am rethinking this right now, as it makes sense to keep the expressed goal (communism) not only in mind while going through (the troubles) socialism and power struggles. since i never saw the next step i never made that connection. still not sure about it, but i am willing to learn.
regarding china i have a different perception than you. coming back to trajectory matters and control over the direction a country and its society is taking it the communist idea doesnt fit the china of the last 20 years.
the "great leap" criticism is all fine. they are taking a step back and dont try to jump ahead. that, for me, doesnt manifest itself in the economic doctrine (yeah, economic system and political system are not the same, i know). in the case of china the economic impact of the production and trade with the rest of the world seems to be so all consuming that its hard for me not to see it as a capitalist system. in control are a political class, most of them akin to oligarchs (and the US equivalent) in wealth and power. the trajectory seems to be there just to be able to say something positive to the people while they die for the capital (in the original sense). that remindes me of every capitalist country i know.
an example came to me:
a startup has an idea, tries to realize it into a product. gets money from investors but isnt profitable yet. the cant seem to finish the protoype and start to run into walls. i wouldnt listen to these people regarding the protoype or sound business advice just because they set out to change something for the better.
I think you need to do more research on the trends, structures, and systems in place in China. The idea of "oligarchs" running everything is ill-founded, the Chinese Democratic system requires politicians to work their way up from the very bottom and continue to be elected, as an example. Safety nets are expanding and large, public infrastructure projects are happening without being privitized.
This is what I mean. Communism isn't an "idea to be realized," but a process of development along historical modes of production. Mao tried to create Communism now through fiat, something impossible. The characteristics of developed Capitalism allow Socialism to emerge from it, ie Lower-Stage Communism.
How familiar are you with Dialectical and Historical Materialism?
Okay lets use wiki as a source.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_states
The following communist states were socialist states committed to communism. Some were short-lived and preceded the widespread adoption of Marxism–Leninism by most communist states.
Would you look at that....
Communism isn't about ideological purity. The USSR never made it to the global, total, Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society Marx describes as Upper Stage Communism, but the Soviets never argued that they had. What the Soviets did, was begin the process of working towards that.
Thanks for a proper response. More than others in this thread are capable of.
The clear distinction is hard, I accept that point. The phases at least how I learned it are clear. First state owned then truly society owned as a goal. They never got anywhere near that. Nor a classless society. It wasn't the old classes from before 1900 but classes as in power structures were very much present.
And yes it was their expressed and I believe trat they were truthful about that to create a communist state. But there were power struggles and the clear ideas became unclear and what remained (intentionally or not) was the name of the goal justifying all the horrible things.
Again, I am not arguing against or for communism, just making the argument that there was never a communist country as in the sense they reached something resembling the idea of the word. Keeping in mind that there is not a clear line of demarcation, this much is clear to me.
This is a bit confused. The USSR did eventually form a Beaurocratic section over time, especially towards the 80s until its dissolution, but to call it a "class" is not quite accurate. In The State and Revolution, Lenin does a good job of explaining what even constitutes a State, in explaining the economic basis for the "withering away of the State." The Soviet model functioned like this graphic:
Again, though, this isn't what people are saying. The doctrine of the USSR was Communist. They were working towards Communism. The fact that they did not reach that point does not mean their ideology was not Communist.
sidenote: if they didnt reach this point not due to time constraints but because they took a turn along the way, does it still count? ;)
i think what annoyed me about the whole thread and got me on the path about "the real communism" (until it got decent, thanks again!) was this comment. i made something out of it that wasnt the point of the whole debate.
There were a multitude of factors that led to collapse. Generally, WWII was fought with the blood of the Soviet people, it thoroughly destroyed them, and in the process of building back beaurocracy snuck in and allowed the USSR to be killed from the inside.
My problem with your point is that it's a common misconception by leftists who haven't usually studied theory much, they just know that Communism as a status is a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society. The issue with that outlook is that it entirely ignores the theory of development that is core to Marxism, Communism as a status is not the goal because it sounds good, but because it's the natural progression beyond Capitalism and Socialism.
Put another way, Communism isn't an idea that you build, that's Utopianism. If you drop a bunch of future Communists off onto a planet with nothing else, they will still go through primitive communism, feudalism, Capitalism, and back to Socialism and then Communism! That's the point I am trying to get across, you can't skip stages because the next is born from the previous!
This is a semantic matter. No socialist state has ever claimed to have reached the stage of communism, including China. But some socialist states—including China—have been/are run by communist governments/parties, which claim to be working toward reaching that stage.