What do you think of Communism

[Bewaffnete Krafte]

I have a serious question for communists. What if you're wrong? If you brand anyone who disagrees as counterrevolutionaries, how can you ever grow and change?

Wrong about what in particular? Marxism as a philosophical tradition has been constantly challenging itself and growing to respond to new changes. Marxism-Leninism itself (which I assume you're referring to) arose as a response to conditions that were wildly different from what Marx and Engels could have foreseen.

It doesn't necessarily matter, as I'm not asking what you'd fix your ideologies to. I'm just asking how you'd respond to being proven wrong on something, be it your whole ideology or just a specific part of it (would you accept it or not) and stuff.

[Existential Cats]

I have a serious question for communists. What if you're wrong? If you brand anyone who disagrees as counterrevolutionaries, how can you ever grow and change?

Wrong about what in particular? Marxism as a philosophical tradition has been constantly challenging itself and growing to respond to new changes. Marxism-Leninism itself (which I assume you're referring to) arose as a response to conditions that were wildly different from what Marx and Engels could have foreseen.

Rather ironic that you bring up Marxist-Leninism, given the tendency of Marxist-Leninists to brand others "revisionists," and the fact that the states they did establish failed abysmally.

[Bovad]

Wrong about what in particular? Marxism as a philosophical tradition has been constantly challenging itself and growing to respond to new changes. Marxism-Leninism itself (which I assume you're referring to) arose as a response to conditions that were wildly different from what Marx and Engels could have foreseen.

Rather ironic that you bring up Marxist-Leninism, given the tendency of Marxist-Leninists to brand others "revisionists," and the fact that the states they did establish failed abysmally.

The soviet union was a sucess

[Existential Cats]

Rather ironic that you bring up Marxist-Leninism, given the tendency of Marxist-Leninists to brand others "revisionists," and the fact that the states they did establish failed abysmally.

The soviet union was a sucess

That's why it's still around today.

[North Macaronesa]

Rather ironic that you bring up Marxist-Leninism, given the tendency of Marxist-Leninists to brand others "revisionists," and the fact that the states they did establish failed abysmally.

The soviet union was a sucess

It really wasn't, sorry

[Civia Welephilostopia]

Rather ironic that you bring up Marxist-Leninism, given the tendency of Marxist-Leninists to brand others "revisionists," and the fact that the states they did establish failed abysmally.

The soviet union was a sucess

Yeah no sorry but it didn't succeed

[Terrorist Group]

Rather ironic that you bring up Marxist-Leninism, given the tendency of Marxist-Leninists to brand others "revisionists," and the fact that the states they did establish failed abysmally.

The soviet union was a sucess

If you consider Soviet massacres and totalitarianism a success, then for you it might be. But otherwise, no. It failed miserably.

I personally think communists should just rebrand themselves if they want to avoid the negative connotation that comes with it. I don’t see what all the fuss is about, it’s just a name that represents a vague ideology.

[SHAH-MAT]

my parents and grandparents grew up in the USSR, in whats now ukraine. they had a saying, "серп і молот, смерть і голод" or "sickle and hammer, death and hunger"

"communism" (call it fake communism or whatever i dont care) is something nobody should have to live through

[Bovad]

The soviet union was a sucess

That's why it's still around today.

How does it being couped reflect badly on communism as a whole?

[SHAH-MAT]

That's why it's still around today.

How does it being couped reflect badly on communism as a whole?

because it was going gangbusters until yeltsin and his buddies showed up?

[Nilokeras]

Every single one of us has an incredibly, incredibly high chance of being incorrect. despite all your attempts to say i'm wrong, it's not vapid to say "Alright, but what is the situation if you were?" I'm asking a question that, yes, should be seriously answered, because, again, there's about a 99% chance that any of us are wrong.
So, instead of ignoring my question, answer it. How do you guys learn and grow as a person politically?
I'm not asking you how bad you'd feel if you were wrong, I'm asking you how you'd learn you were wrong, how you'd take it, and what you'd do to rectify it.
And I'm not just talking about your entire ideology being wrong, I'm talking about general policies individually being wrong as well.

Marxism is a science. It is iterative, empirical and built on the assumption that all of our models are wrong, but some are useful, and can be used as the basis of the next set of models that are slightly less wrong. Asking us 'what if you're wrong, what will you do' is nonsensical because of course we're wrong, in the same way our understanding of the laws of physics is wrong. All we can do is make it better, one mistake and lesson at a time.

[North Macaronesa]

In my opinion, communism will never be achieved, just like democracy. Politicians are too greedy, so they get the ching ching while the general population suffers.

[SHAH-MAT]

Every single one of us has an incredibly, incredibly high chance of being incorrect. despite all your attempts to say i'm wrong, it's not vapid to say "Alright, but what is the situation if you were?" I'm asking a question that, yes, should be seriously answered, because, again, there's about a 99% chance that any of us are wrong.
So, instead of ignoring my question, answer it. How do you guys learn and grow as a person politically?
I'm not asking you how bad you'd feel if you were wrong, I'm asking you how you'd learn you were wrong, how you'd take it, and what you'd do to rectify it.
And I'm not just talking about your entire ideology being wrong, I'm talking about general policies individually being wrong as well.

Marxism is a science. It is iterative, empirical and built on the assumption that all of our models are wrong, but some are useful, and can be used as the basis of the next set of models that are slightly less wrong. Asking us 'what if you're wrong, what will you do' is nonsensical because of course we're wrong, in the same way our understanding of the laws of physics is wrong. All we can do is make it better, one mistake and lesson at a time.

Marx called communism "scientific socalism" if im not mistaken

[Suriyanakhon]

Wrong about what in particular? Marxism as a philosophical tradition has been constantly challenging itself and growing to respond to new changes. Marxism-Leninism itself (which I assume you're referring to) arose as a response to conditions that were wildly different from what Marx and Engels could have foreseen.

Rather ironic that you bring up Marxist-Leninism, given the tendency of Marxist-Leninists to brand others "revisionists," and the fact that the states they did establish failed abysmally.

Not really, I have no other idea what tendency of Communism they could be talking about, unless there's some Christian Communism movement that called people counterrevolutionaries that I'm not aware of.

Also the idea that Marxism-Leninism failed miserably when the rising superpower is a Marxist-Leninist state, and Marxist-Leninists drove the US out of mainland Southeast Asia, is really ironic.

[Bovad]

How does it being couped reflect badly on communism as a whole?

because it was going gangbusters until yeltsin and his buddies showed up?

Yes

[SHAH-MAT]

Rather ironic that you bring up Marxist-Leninism, given the tendency of Marxist-Leninists to brand others "revisionists," and the fact that the states they did establish failed abysmally.

Not really, I have no other idea what tendency of Communism they could be talking about, unless there's some Christian Communism movement that called people counterrevolutionaries that I'm not aware of.

Also the idea that Marxism-Leninism failed miserably when the rising superpower is a Marxist-Leninist state, and Marxist-Leninists drove the US out of mainland Southeast Asia, is really ironic.

I would hardly say china is a ML paradise...
the conservatives took over the party in '78

[SHAH-MAT]

because it was going gangbusters until yeltsin and his buddies showed up?

Yes

before or after glastnost?

[Bovad]

Yes

before or after glastnost?

Before

[SHAH-MAT]

before or after glastnost?

Before

ah ok, i see where you are coming from, at least

[Sordhau]

"Wrong"? About what, exactly? Capitalism has led to untold acts of genocide, imperialism, pollution, and the exploitation of the working class. Liberal Democracy has proven to impotent to defend it's own values from fundamentalists, Fascists, and corporations infiltrating it's institutions. Liberals themselves have proven time and again to be hypocrites who only care about their values when it's strategic to do so. Liberalism has proven that it's values are only ever guaranteed for society's wealthiest, with each section of the totem pole receiving less and less guarantees the further down you go. Social Democrats have promised the world and never delivered, Progressive Liberals dress up like radicals but always compromise in the end, Conservative Liberals continue to hold society back, Traditionalist Liberals continue to drag society through the muck even when they're a minority in government.

Liberals had 200 years to validate their ideology but all we've gotten is atrocities, hypocrisy, and a planet on the verge of total ecological collapse. What if *we're* wrong? What if *you're* wrong? Liberalism is the dominant ideology of the world and is thus responsible for the state of the world; a world where the rich can do as they please and the rest of us have to pound sand. The state of the globe is a sorry and depressing one and the future is bleak. Is directly the fault of Liberalism. You love to talk about how Socialism "fails" because the USSR and associated countries no longer exist, but from where I'm standing it's Liberalism that is failing. The Western democracies are backsliding and the rest of the globe can't seem to go forward at all. The climate crisis is going to be a catastrophic event the likes of which will surpass anything we've ever witnessed before as a species. If this is the "success" of Liberalism then it's not wrong in the slightest to say that the wrong side won the Cold War.

The UN is only slightly less useless than the LoN, America destabilizes whole regions on a regularly basis with no one in a position to them, and the only alternatives to American hegemony are bandit states and Fascist regimes. "Just protest" you say, "just vote" you say, "just write your congressman" you say. But when we protest we get beaten, when we vote we can only vote for reps who were bought by corporations, when we write our congressman we only end up being ignored. We use every legal avenue to create change and only end up getting gaslit and broadsided by reactionary coalitions that don't want to actually fix the problems. And on the off chance we get lucky and do get into power? We get couped or assassinated.

We have no choice but revolution and the full rejection of Liberalism and it's offshoot ideologies. You had your time and you fucked everything up. Human civilization is on a path to total collapse because of your hubris, greed, and self-righteousness. We can't be "wrong" because that would mean you're "right", and if you're "right" then God help us all because you being "right" is putting us on the fast track to extinction.

Kind of off topic here, but I'd like to say that even though I disagree with your ideals, it's really freaking impressive how strongly you support them and are uncompromising in them. That's a pretty good trait for someone to have.

I've been a Liberal most of my life, and got burnt the whole time defending a system that never defended me. I repeated all the old lies we're told. "Work hard", "go to college", "learn a trade", etc. I believed them for a long time. Then I grew up and tried to get a job only to learn that companies that are hiring aren't actually hiring. I got a job through a temp agency and watched in real time as my supervisors allowed me to be physically assaulted with zero punishment toward the offender and treating me like just as much of a culprit whenever he decided to start shit again. I watched a conman presenting himself as man of the people win an election that forced me to vote for a psychopathic war criminal as the only alternative. I personally faced arbitrary evictions from cheap housing that was overpriced, relying on charity to feed ourselves because we couldn't afford groceries, mandatory overtime every week for five months straight when I was promised Saturdays off, flipping on the news to learn the name of the latest victim of police-sanctioned homicide, watched my own governor ignore a pandemic that was killing more people in my state than anywhere else in the country while trying to cover it up, watched with legitimate fear and terror as the aforementioned conman tried to stage a putsch when he lost the election to a geriatric war criminal I was also duped into voting for, and so on and so forth.

I haven't even personally experienced the worst excesses of Capitalism yet and already I struggle coping. Fretting about bills, employment, housing, debt, health, taxes, on a regular basis. I've had several mental breaks in the past few years as the stress became too much to bear. I don't sympathize with mass shooters but believe me when I say I understand where some of them are coming from. It truly does feel helpless at times. I'd never take it out on innocent people, nor would I ever take my own life, but I do get it. I don't agree with it, I fucking hate it, but I still get it. Our society does not take care of people; it uses them and throws them away. People moan to me about "free speech", "free press", "constitutional rights" and what not while the NSA is hacking peoples personal data, corporate-owned media is hashing out partisan propaganda and sowing division while downplaying the evils of Wall Street, and protesters are being gassed, shot, and beaten just for demanding the right to live without getting six warning shots in the back. Liberals want to talk about rights? How about the right to live, the only right Liberalism seems allergic to providing? Liberalism treats rights like privileges. The right to vote is intrinsically less practical than the right to have a roof over your head, food in your stomach, clean water, running air and heat, transportation to get where you need to go, education to teach you what you need to learn, healthcare when you need it, etc. Say what you will of Marxist regimes but they provided their people with these things - either through taxes or at a reasonable price that the average joe could afford. In Capitalism we're left at he fictional mercy of big business.

You're damn right I'm convicted. This is an inhumane system that needs to be torn down. Society is not livable enough for the working class, and there is no reason this needs to be the case. We have the resources, we have the means, and the only thing standing in the way is the free market. If the choice is between a powerhouse economy and a society in which people are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve as human beings, then I say crash the economy into the fucking ground.

Hating everyone else isn't an ideology.

Yes it is, it's called Fascism.

Hatred isn't what drove me to the Left. It is my life-long sympathy for the plight of the suffering that inevitably ensured I would become a Leftist, which was realized only when I woke up to the reality of our psychotic and cruel system after experiencing it first-hand. With the illusion destroyed only one path remained.

You need actual policies, just like other nations. What if they are wrong?

We have policies:

• Worker ownership of the means of production (i.e. worker's cooperatives)
• Abolition of the class system
• Unrestricted access to healthcare and education for all
• State-provided housing, transportation, and employment
• Affordable food, water, and utilities (i.e. essentials for survival)
• Anti-imperialism
• National self-determination
• Soviet Democracy (worker councils introducing a republican model of governance at the rural, metropolitan, provincial, and legislative level)
• Egalitarianism

And much more.

All of these things have been accomplished before, and they can be accomplished again.

And, that whole end part on if i'm right the earth is doomed can literally be said by any ideology against any other ideology. It's a non-argument to say "You can't be right because if you're right then in my mind the world is over."

It's a verifiable fact that Capitalism is destroying the planet. It's a well-documented, objective truth. There is no solution to this from within the framework of Capitalism because it is explicitly Capitalism that is the problem.

[Bewaffnete Krafte]

Kind of off topic here, but I'd like to say that even though I disagree with your ideals, it's really freaking impressive how strongly you support them and are uncompromising in them. That's a pretty good trait for someone to have.

I've been a Liberal most of my life, and got burnt the whole time defending a system that never defended me. I repeated all the old lies we're told. "Work hard", "go to college", "learn a trade", etc. I believed them for a long time. Then I grew up and tried to get a job only to learn that companies that are hiring aren't actually hiring. I got a job through a temp agency and watched in real time as my supervisors allowed me to be physically assaulted with zero punishment toward the offender and treating me like just as much of a culprit whenever he decided to start shit again. I watched a conman presenting himself as man of the people win an election that forced me to vote for a psychopathic war criminal as the only alternative. I personally faced arbitrary evictions from cheap housing that was overpriced, relying on charity to feed ourselves because we couldn't afford groceries, mandatory overtime every week for five months straight when I was promised Saturdays off, flipping on the news to learn the name of the latest victim of police-sanctioned homicide, watched my own governor ignore a pandemic that was killing more people in my state than anywhere else in the country while trying to cover it up, watched with legitimate fear and terror as the aforementioned conman tried to stage a putsch when he lost the election to a geriatric war criminal I was also duped into voting for, and so on and so forth.

I haven't even personally experienced the worst excesses of Capitalism yet and already I struggle coping. Fretting about bills, employment, housing, debt, health, taxes, on a regular basis. I've had several mental breaks in the past few years as the stress became too much to bear. I don't sympathize with mass shooters but believe me when I say I understand where some of them are coming from. It truly does feel helpless at times. I'd never take it out on innocent people, nor would I ever take my own life, but I do get it. I don't agree with it, I fucking hate it, but I still get it. Our society does not take care of people; it uses them and throws them away. People moan to me about "free speech", "free press", "constitutional rights" and what not while the NSA is hacking peoples personal data, corporate-owned media is hashing out partisan propaganda and sowing division while downplaying the evils of Wall Street, and protesters are being gassed, shot, and beaten just for demanding the right to live without getting six warning shots in the back. Liberals want to talk about rights? How about the right to live, the only right Liberalism seems allergic to providing? Liberalism treats rights like privileges. The right to vote is intrinsically less practical than the right to have a roof over your head, food in your stomach, clean water, running air and heat, transportation to get where you need to go, education to teach you what you need to learn, healthcare when you need it, etc. Say what you will of Marxist regimes but they provided their people with these things - either through taxes or at a reasonable price that the average joe could afford. In Capitalism we're left at he fictional mercy of big business.

You're damn right I'm convicted. This is an inhumane system that needs to be torn down. Society is not livable enough for the working class, and there is no reason this needs to be the case. We have the resources, we have the means, and the only thing standing in the way is the free market. If the choice is between a powerhouse economy and a society in which people are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve as human beings, then I say crash the economy into the fucking ground.

Hating everyone else isn't an ideology.

Yes it is, it's called Fascism.

Hatred isn't what drove me to the Left. It is my life-long sympathy for the plight of the suffering that inevitably ensured I would become a Leftist, which was realized only when I woke up to the reality of our psychotic and cruel system after experiencing it first-hand. With the illusion destroyed only one path remained.

You need actual policies, just like other nations. What if they are wrong?

We have policies:

• Worker ownership of the means of production (i.e. worker's cooperatives)
• Abolition of the class system
• Unrestricted access to healthcare and education for all
• State-provided housing, transportation, and employment
• Affordable food, water, and utilities (i.e. essentials for survival)
• Anti-imperialism
• National self-determination
• Soviet Democracy (worker councils introducing a republican model of governance at the rural, metropolitan, provincial, and legislative level)
• Egalitarianism

And much more.

All of these things have been accomplished before, and they can be accomplished again.

And, that whole end part on if i'm right the earth is doomed can literally be said by any ideology against any other ideology. It's a non-argument to say "You can't be right because if you're right then in my mind the world is over."

It's a verifiable fact that Capitalism is destroying the planet. It's a well-documented, objective truth. There is no solution to this from within the framework of Capitalism because it is explicitly Capitalism that is the problem.

Capitalism isn't causing the destruction of the climate. It's unstoppable human urges, and the fundamental ways our society works and would continue to work under communism (AKA, those things that don't change throughout the change) No matter what system we choose, we're fucked, and Socialism and (to a lesser extent) Communism work only to make that take a few years longer. It's depressing, but it's a fact.
Also, Communism is verifiably not pro-self-determination. Many different types of communism have many different opinions, some think that a global collective is best suited, some thing individual nation-states.
Also, in the nicest way possible, under those goals, Communism isn't really very much different from Popular Liberalism (the Liberalism that the people on the ground practice, not the ones the democrats do)

[Kubra]

because it was going gangbusters until yeltsin and his buddies showed up?

Yes

so how you figure the USSR was gonna pay out its hard currency foreign debts

[Adirondack Commonwealth]

Rather ironic that you bring up Marxist-Leninism, given the tendency of Marxist-Leninists to brand others "revisionists," and the fact that the states they did establish failed abysmally.

Not really, I have no other idea what tendency of Communism they could be talking about, unless there's some Christian Communism movement that called people counterrevolutionaries that I'm not aware of.

Also the idea that Marxism-Leninism failed miserably when the rising superpower is a Marxist-Leninist state, and Marxist-Leninists drove the US out of mainland Southeast Asia, is really ironic.

China and the other communist states in SE Asia have long abandoned orthodox Marxism for free market policies. And besides Vietnam was always more of a nationalist war than a war for communist liberation.

[Duvniask]

-ideological grandstanding snip-

If this is the "success" of Liberalism then it's not wrong in the slightest to say that the wrong side won the Cold War.

It never ceases to amaze how all this ideological grandstanding of yours comes down to defending a dead terror regime with substandard health care, substandard housing, store queues, arbitrary arrests by secret police, environmental destruction in the name of "progress", corporations run by tyrannical managers exactly like in the West - a system so bound up in the self preservation of its own stagnant impotence that it let vital technical information be held secret from the people who needed to know it most, resulting in the world's worst nuclear disaster.

It is these types of conclusions that make you look so utterly childish and uninformed, or should I say in denial.

Social Democrats have promised the world and never delivered

Look into the mirror, please. That's you right there, as it made clear by:

We have policies:

• Worker ownership of the means of production (i.e. worker's cooperatives)
• Abolition of the class system
• Unrestricted access to healthcare and education for all
• State-provided housing, transportation, and employment
• Affordable food, water, and utilities (i.e. essentials for survival)
• Anti-imperialism
• National self-determination
• Soviet Democracy (worker councils introducing a republican model of governance at the rural, metropolitan, provincial, and legislative level)
• Egalitarianism

Social democracy, but with extra democracy^TM. It's all there, with the traditional welfare state demands and a syrupy layer of democracy for the, now completely petit-bourgeois as you would have it, working people to decide for themselves how they want to be enslaved by the bottom line (capital).

Some of these are not even "policy", they are just names of concepts that imply nothing concrete.

[Alexiandra]

-ideological grandstanding snip-

If this is the "success" of Liberalism then it's not wrong in the slightest to say that the wrong side won the Cold War.

It never ceases to amaze how all this ideological grandstanding of yours comes down to defending a dead terror regime with substandard health care, substandard housing, store queues, arbitrary arrests by secret police, environmental destruction in the name of "progress", corporations run by tyrannical managers exactly like in the West - a system so bound up in the self preservation of its own stagnant impotence that it let vital technical information be held secret from the people who needed to know it most, resulting in the world's worst nuclear disaster.

It is these types of conclusions that make you look so utterly childish and uninformed, or should I say in denial.

Social Democrats have promised the world and never delivered

Look into the mirror, please. That's you right there, as it made clear by:

We have policies:

• Worker ownership of the means of production (i.e. worker's cooperatives)
• Abolition of the class system
• Unrestricted access to healthcare and education for all
• State-provided housing, transportation, and employment
• Affordable food, water, and utilities (i.e. essentials for survival)
• Anti-imperialism
• National self-determination
• Soviet Democracy (worker councils introducing a republican model of governance at the rural, metropolitan, provincial, and legislative level)
• Egalitarianism

Social democracy, but with extra democracy^TM. It's all there, with the traditional welfare state demands and a syrupy layer of democracy for the, now completely petit-bourgeois as you would have it, working people to decide for themselves how they want to be enslaved by the bottom line (capital).

Some of these are not even "policy", they are just names of concepts that imply nothing concrete.

Lol side by side with 'abolition of the class system' she has 'worker ownership of the means of production', as if workers aren't a class unto themselves. The proper communist demand is social ownership of the means of production, since under communism the division of labour has been superseded, leaving only free individuals. The whole point of communism is that these individuals aren't constrained within social roles like 'worker' anymore. The division of labour has been abolished.

Not to mention the fact that she tries to smuggle the state, nations, money and 'governance' in too.