one of my favorite takes on this subject is from This Soviet World by Anna Louise Strong:
Just as capitalist states are “authoritarian” against working class interests, socialist states are “authoritarian” against capitalist interests.
The state is a tool for one class to oppress another. The goal of (most) communists is to transition from capitalism — where the capitalist class is in power — to a stateless, classless communist society via socialism — where the working class is in power.
Public perception of which is more “authoritarian” therefore depends on which class is currently in power and is able to manufacture consent, and that is the capitalist class in the vast majority of the world right now since the USSR’s overthrow.
Wew lad but can you ever tell this is .ml.
So, thought experiment for you. What do you need to overthrow a government and oust a bunch of rich assholes from power? Well, you need power of your own, right? You need loyal comrades.
And say you actually manage it. Chances are it was tough. Some didn’t make it. But now you’re sitting on all this wealth and power. Are you just going to give it back? To who? What if someone abuses it?
You’re the one who did the work. You’re the one with a vision for the future. And now you have these loyal comrades and surely they deserve something for their sacrifices and hard work?
And so it goes.
Anyway, it’s less about Communism as a set of ideas and more about what power does to revolutionaries and how that mixes with the local culture.
Or the CIA made it all up because Mao and Stalin et al did nothing wrong. 🙄
Or the CIA made it all up because Mao and Stalin et al did nothing wrong. 🙄
They made mistakes. But overall their countries were a gazillion times better from their influence.
Because communism doesn’t work for large, heterogenous groups, so increasing amounts of coercion are used to keep the system running.
And new forms of government such as socialism are generally more succeptible to corruption as people find the new loopholes; as a government gets more corrupt, those who corrupted it seek to consolidate their power.
I think socialism can be made workable, as we examine and correct the problems with previous attempts. I don’t think communism works well for human societies, as it requires people to act better than we know they do.
I believe it’s inherent to the system. The whole point of a communist system is a centrally planned, and controlled, economy. This gives the state immense control and as inherent to every form of government, self preservation at any cost.
As discussed in “rules for rulers” by cgp grey, there is no such thing as a benevolent or kind dictator. All politicians and leaders will use any means available to themselves to further their own ambitions.
🤣
With the USSR overthrown, virtually all mainstream media now is capitalist propaganda. And the capitalist class obviously would not want the working class to prefer a system where workers are in power.
Being familiar with Bulgarian corruption, I’m going to confidently state that their percentages aren’t due to a rounding error.
I was in Hungary last year and the nostalgia for communism is high and a significant portion of the population still remembers all the bad parts - Orban has really destroyed the social safety nets there and it hurts to see.
Hungary was also the best part of the Soviet Bloc to live in for the people.
So it’s not just that modern Hungary is worse: communist Hungary is more miss-able than communist East Germany.
Nigel Swain’s two books on the subject are good:
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Collective Farms Which Work? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
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Hungary: The Rise and Fall of Feasible Socialism (London: New Left Books, 1992)
He’s writing from the perspective of a non-red English academic who’s like… “wait… this works?? how do we explain the anomaly?”
Hungary had full shelves, booming agriculture, available consumer goods.
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I’d also expect there’s more and more people propagandized by capitalist media in post-Soviet states as time has passed since capitalist bastards took it over. People who have not lived under socialism or experienced the massively decreased quality of life from the privatization forced on those countries.
Though fortunately it seems like the Russian capitalists have not managed to succeed in this, with more and more people identifying with the USSR than the capitalist Russian Federation in recent years.
Hard to do that at the heart of the revolution I guess. Maybe Russian communist parties could use that to become more revolutionary, specially with Russians able to see the stark difference between Russia under capitalism and China thriving under socialism. Doubt that’ll happen while Putin is in power though.
Historically, there have been more socialist and/or communist states associated with the USSR than not. Especially when measured by population.
I mean yeah, any successful socialist revolution will naturally seek good relations with the most powerful socialist state of all. Doesn’t really answer their question though.
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Not so much “hot” as it is nonsense.
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