this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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This is really one sided. I'm not saying there isn't truth in it, but there are also other factors. Communist revolutions can be bloody and can lead to authoritarian states. They can be inefficient and stifle innovation. It often was just a power grab not an attempt to make a country better for everyone.
I wouldn't want to live in the mid 20. century idea of communism. But otherwise I support that the means of production belongs to the worker and anyone affected by the production.
@NoiseColor @yogthos
1/2 [Communist revolutions can be bloody and can lead to authoritarian states.]
– Yes, revolutions can be bloody, whether they're communist or otherwise. That's not really unique of communist revolutions.
"Authoritarian state" is a meaningless redundancy; there's no such thing as a non-authoritarian state. If your criticism is that the revolutions didn't immediately result in a communist society, then that's also a poor criticism since they were never meant to...
@NoiseColor @yogthos
...immediately transition to communism because that would be impossible, or at least strategically impractical. The plan of Marxist-Leninist revolutions was always to create a transitional state that would eventually transition into a stateless classless society once the state was no longer needed.
@Radical_EgoCom @NoiseColor @yogthos immediate transition is not only possible in theory but actually has some precedent (although so far it's only happened in the wrong place and time to last at scale for more than a few years). On the other hand expecting a transitional state to actually continue the transition is even less rational than expecting Jesus to show up and start helping.
The actual reason anarchist experiments always fail is because they lack organization and structure necessary to keep them going. Maybe if spent some time to learn what a state is, then you wouldn't feel the need to make inane statements like this.
The actual reason most anarchist places fail is because they lack military power. Places that are actually recognized like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania still run today.
These things go hand in hand. Military power requires organization, ability to create industry, build factories, have a trained workforce, and so on. Creating these things requires having some form of central planning and authority. This is an excellent read on the subject incidentally https://dashthered.medium.com/where-do-tanks-come-from-8723ff77d83b
@yogthos @Aatube "creating these things requires having some form of central planning and authority" is literal superstition.
👆 How to say you're historically illiterate without saying you're historically illiterate.
@yogthos no, your superstitions are not "history", they're just superstitions.
Repeating nonsense over and over isn't going to make it true buddy. Feel free to provide examples of anarchism working in practice though.
@jeremy_list @NoiseColor @yogthos
[immediate transition is not only possible in theory but actually has some precedent]
– How is it possible in theory, and what precedent does it have?
[expecting a transitional state to actually continue the transition is even less rational than expecting Jesus to show up and start helping]
Why?
@Radical_EgoCom @NoiseColor @yogthos Rosa Luxemburg explained all this better than I could and she wasn't even an anarchist (but really take your pick of almost any non-ML communist theorist).
But in summary: implementing communism inherently deprives counterrevolution of the capital it needs to function, so any delay in implementing communism is at best a strategic error and at worst an indication that the org has already become counterrevolutionary.
How do you want to achieve this? Globally at once? Or bit by bit? Can you please Rosas work?
On the other other hand, choosing to stay in a capitalist system and expecting to be treated like a human being is less rational than expecting God even cared enough to want to help in the first place.
@Sarcasmo220 choosing a "transitional state" is literally choosing to stay in the capitalist system, so yes thank you for making my point for me.
Capitalism is a system where people who own capital exploit the working class to create more wealth for themselves. A system where the means of production are publicly owned and are used for the benefit of the workers is demonstrably not that. The fact that you don't even understand such basic things shows how woefully clueless you are.
@yogthos China is a place where people who own capital exploit the working class to create more wealth for themselves. The fact you're pretending otherwise makes you an anti-communist, an anti-materialist, or more likely both.
Yup, that makes sense. That's why China is pretty much the only place in the world where large amount of people are being lifted out of poverty, while the wealth of the rich is diminishing. You are very intelligent. You wouldn't recognize materialism if it hit you in the face kid.
@yogthos China is a place where some people are being lifted out of poverty BY CAPITALISM BECAUSE CAPITALISM IS THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM IN PLACE THERE. Also while it is a lot of people it's not as many as the official number because the poverty line itself is affected by factors other than people's living conditions.
Interesting theory. Let's see how it stands up in face of actual facts of the situation...
Household savings hit major highs across China https://www.chinadailyhk.com/hk/article/315229
90% of families in the country own their home, giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes/
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world's total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China%E2%80%99s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&locations=CN&start=2008
By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience