Memes

I am from Eastern Europe and I share this sentiment when I see anyone from the West defending communism. The issue is complicated but, to put it bluntly:

No, Timothy, communism didn't fail in Eastern Europe because it was implemented wrongly. This is a very complicated topic but the tldr summary is "It is a broken idea, it did not work and it will never work. The natural and logical outcome of any attempt at Marxism is a bloodbath followed by autocracy."

That being said, communism isn't the only way to achieve a more equitable society. You have social democracy (in Lennin's words - communism's greatest adversary); organized labour movements; collectivist anarchism; communitariasm, etc.

Communism, as applied in the 20th century, violently fought against or oppressed all of these movements and is incompatible with any of them.

Not to mention that in most countries nowadays orthodox communists have been hugely discredited for excusing the Russian war of annihilation against the Ukrainian people.

In conclusion, if you live in the USA or Western Europe and you are unhappy with how corporate greed has ruined society, don't look to communism for answers. There are many other proposed solutions out there - go and research these. Communism is very well known, which makes it easily accessible to people who want change - but it is never, ever the solution.

Communism isn't the issue the same way Capitalism isn't the issue, the issue is rich people abusing working class and poor people. Removing democracy from these systems just make them absolutely horrid in the long run. Also China isn't communist it's state capitalist dictatorship.

As a someone whose country belonged to the western bloc, I can relate xD

How dare teenagers not become Neoliberals while growing up in a late capitalist hellscape where climate change can't be taken seriously because it isn't a profitable problem to solve.

By "East Europeans" you of course mean your fellow fascists. The vast majority of post Soviet citizens disagree.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/14/unhappy-russians-nostalgic-for-soviet-style-rule-study

http://www.debatingeurope.eu/2015/02/03/have-living-standards-in-eastern-europe-decreased-after-communism/#.V5ZJ4DVc88q

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-big-question-why-is-stalin-still-popular-in-russia-despite-the-brutality-of-his-regime-827654.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-youth-idUSL2559010520070725?feedType=RSS&rpc=22&sp=true

http://www.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122.html

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/29/in-russia-nostalgia-for-soviet-union-and-positive-feelings-about-stalin/

western teenagers praising capitalism

the children sewing their clothes, harvesting their food, mining their metals, ...

Capitalism and Communism aren't a binary thing but instead something on a spectrum. Both ends of the spectrum are terrible and inhumane. The point is finding a balance.

The US is too capitalist and the UDSSR was too communist.

I think many modern european countries strike a good middle ground.

Idk if I speak for other people here but being critical of capitalism doesn't necessarily mean you want to copy paste North Korea. Or the Ukrainian SSR.

*rich eastern europeans

Define communism.

Educated people in general have to say on politics the same things that I said earlier, but they are very nostalgic over less criminalized popular culture, better technical education and rules being followed. So am I to some extent actually.

In Moscow? You're not being fair. Educated people in the soviet union from Moscow lived extremely well and have very positive views. Engineers, scientists, etc will all say positive things. You know as well as I do that hundreds of video interviews will confirm this. Be fairer, claiming that everyone that supports the ussr among the over 60s is just uneducated is definitely untrue. This particular video series is in Moscow and this lady is exactly what I am talking about.

You can't live in Moscow and say this is untrue. You're being unfair.

No recollection at all, I’m 1996, but since transition from USSR to modern Russia didn’t happen in an instance, in various institutions and organizations you can still see in some ways how it was. More in my childhood than now, but still.

Brought up in shock therapy then.

if you weren’t in denial.

I'm not in denial. I'm asking you to be fairer. The data does not support your position. You know as well as I do that 75% of the country consider the soviet era to be when the country was at its greatest (and that this is easily verifiable from many sources), and you know damn well that 75% of the country aren't all uneducated people. You are not being fair.

Because the single only way to do communism is how the UdSSR did it, there's no other way.

And of course it's only possible to either agree with the whole of a specific ideology, or none of it. There's no "good parts of communism" or "bad parts of capitalism" it's only ever all good or all bad.

Politics is the mind-killer.

A meme like this is what happens when you believe the GOP that doing anything to benefit regular people is communism.

Redditors try not to froth and post anticommunism for 120 seconds challenge (impossible!!!)

Meanwhile in the real world

• A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same. In no other Central or Eastern European country surveyed did so many believe that economic life is worse now than during the communist era. This is the result of almost universal displeasure with the economy. Fully 94% describe the country's economy as bad, the highest level of economic discontent in the hard hit region of Central and Eastern Europe. Just 46% of Hungarians approve of their country's switch from a state-controlled economy to a market economy; 42% disapprove of the move away from communism. The public is even more negative toward Hungary's integration into Europe; 71% say their country has been weakened by the process.

• The most incredible result was registered in a July 2010 IRES (Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy) poll, according to which 41% of the respondents would have voted for Ceausescu, had he run for the position of president. And 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism, while only 23% attested that their life was worse then. Some 68% declared that communism was a good idea, just one that had been poorly applied.

• Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an "illegitimate state." In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.

• A poll shows that as many as 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best in the former Yugoslavia -"during the time of socialism". The survey focused on the respondents' views on the transition "from socialism to capitalism", and a clear majority said they trusted social institutions the most during the rule of Yugoslav communist president Josip Broz Tito. The standard of living during Tito's rule from the Second World War to the 1980s was also assessed as best, whereas the Milosevic decade of the 1990s, and the subsequent decade since the fall of his regime are seen as "more or less the same". 45 percent said they trusted social institutions most under communism with 23 percent choosing the 2001-2003 period when Zoran Djinđic was prime minister. Only 19 per cent selected present-day institutions.

• 75% of Russians have expressed increasingly positive opinions about the Soviet Union over the years. Only a small portion of those surveyed said they had negative associations with the Soviet Union. The economic deficit, long lines and coupons were named by 4% of respondents each, while the Iron Curtain, economic stagnation and political repressions were named by 1% each, the Levada Center said.

It's funny because if you look at living standards in eastern Europe during communism's peak they were wayyy better than they are now