Ask Lemmy

I don’t see the problem with people having communist views…capitalism isn’t great.

I haven't seen a rightist person here, ever.

90% of the shit spouted about Hexbear is just baseless nonsense. Soon as you actually try to have a good faith discussion, they're hecka cool.

The Communist Manifesto

The language can be a bit tough to understand these days though so might want to read Ted Reese's Socialism Or Extinction instead

I strongly recommend you to read Animal Farm, it's very easy to understand

You don't even have to be wise to understand the problems communism has, it only helps

So your comment doesn't make sense.

Especially people who never lived in a communist state

That’s a rather impossible requirement, considering that all “communist states” to date have been oligarchic autocracies that were just as much about communism as they were democratic.

Real communism is market ownership by the people, and not some elite cabal of politicians or capitalists. And a top-down planned economy is pretty much anti-communism, as it violates the very fundamentals of communism as being worker-driven.

It's a microcosm of Reddit, in a lot of bad ways IMO.

1. Reddit is clearly declining due to enshittification, so more ideological types leave. Radical liberals, Marxists, Anarchists, and so forth leave for other places.

2. Leftists and people who have more niche interests like programming, Linux, FOSS, Piracy, Star Trek, LGBTQIA+, or other such unique interests go to more specific instances, while people seeking a replacement for Reddit go to the largest generalist instance.

The consequences of 1 and 2 are that Lemmy.world is filled with ideological liberals, but typically not leftists, FOSS enthusiasts, Piracy nerds, Star Trek, or other unique interests. All that's left is the ideological generalist crowd, which is an echo chamber more defined by what it isn't than by what it is.

Comminism isn't anarchic, Anarcho-Communism is. While it's true that Communism has never been reached, it isn't because government remained. The State in Marxian terms refers to the mechanisms by which one class oppresses the other, once class is abolished there need not be a state.

Communism was always meant to be a world republic.

That is at a 'state' level, there are still smaller level communist places to live. Like where the word 'Commune' comes from and what communism was derived from and attempted to expand into. There are communes all over the world. US included. There is a famous one in London, lots of large ones in Spain. They are communities that exist in their own bubble of micro economics within their larger communities of normal living. You should look it up. They are interesting and normally very appealing.

Communism is by definition a society without a state, so nobody has ever lived in a communist state

The last stage of the Marxist evolution of communism involves the decay of state institutions through neglect, as they become redundant in a post-scarcity no-cops Utopia.

But there are a bunch of prior stages (including capitalist industrialization even!) that are neglected. And even then, the utopian end-game is routinely disputed by the subsequent generations of Leninists and Maoists who believe we will never truly escape the revolutionary cycle.

There absolutely are Already Existing Socialist states attempting to move themselves from primitive accumulation, through industrial capitalism, and into a collectively governed socialist post-scarcity society. And people absolutely are living in them. And none of them are Utopian (although the quality of life in many of these countries is exhaustively propagandized to be by degrees to be between Unbearably Hellish and FALGSC-adjacent).

The problems that these countries typically have, however, aren't ones that armchair communists on a niche western internet platform are capable of solving. You're not going to break the Cuban blockade. You're not going to settle the endless territorial disputes plaguing Vietnam. You're not going to undo the legacy of generations of apartheid in South Africa overnight. You're not going to Make the USSR Great Again.

So maybe save yourself some angst and stop trying to tell Nicholas Maduro and Kim Jung Un how to do their jobs. Maybe worry more about why your local chapter of the DSA can't get a teacher's union off the ground.

Socialism — the dictatorship of the working-class — is the transitional mode of production between capitalism — the dictatorship of the capitalist class — and the stateless, classless mode of production that is communism. You can't really separate the two.