They are radically different but authoritarians have corrupted both to be the same brute force regime. Communism shouldn’t have any specific single leader. It should be a conference of lots of little communities that participate together to make a state work. Sadly authoritarian ideals corrupt politics and make people want to rule that should never be leaders in the first place. Those leaders install their own friends who run the government into the ground - and it’s the government model that is to blame?
I know it was the haunt of scammers when it was a free domain, but the government of Mali have reassigned management now so hopefully it will be less problematic as time goes on.
afaih, one of the reasons that lemmy.ml chose their domain suffix actually was for this reason, though I am unsure how much weight it had on their decision.
@moosetwin I know that’s the rumour but I suspect they were picking out of a very small pool of free domains and the free part had a lot more to do with it.
Saying the Mali suffix “means” Marxist Leninism is a bit like saying your .com stands for Capitalism Only Mate. I mean sure it does but only in your own mind, not irl.
You are spot on on just about everything. The only thing I take issue with is saying that both werr corrupted by authoritarians. Fascism doesn’t exist without authoritarians. It’s just a shame that in America, especially as well as plenty of other places in the west, we are miseducated if we are educated at all on the subject.
I think there is a model of fascism that, when a dictator is removed from the scenario, looks like a corporate autocracy. Late stage capitalism, like a corporate Cyberpunk dystopia, is what happens when power isn’t seized by a megalomaniac. Unfortunately corporations are documented to gather the psychotically inclined within its upper echelons so any and all rulings are definitely going to be corrupted. At least communism allows voting for leaders and not private decisions without review like private enterprise.
That still ends up with local dictators and oligarchs. Yes, you’re not likely to end up with one global dictator etc. but ultimately would not be all that different in the long run. It’s exactly what they want a return to. Feudalism.
I think fascism, actual theoretical fascism (like untainted communism), removed from the realities of human psychology, would be a conglomeration of corporate states. The decision making is behind closed doors and leadership is decided by those on the inside of the corp, so still keeping the multilayered rights structure of fascism, but distinct in that those running the business would be able to also run the state without corporate influence.
Again, theoretical fascism is never going to happen because a business leader will steer the country to align their corporate interests instead of any public interest, but the idea is there. Fascism, uncorrupted by selfishness and greed, is a corporate state run by people who only answer to internal justice structures that are separate from public policy. But fascism is almost purpose built to give those who are least capable of thinking of others the ability to run those others’ lives so harmful people will always run things.
Communism at least has a chance at public discourse, like democracy but more open to compromise. It’s that compromise that is diametrically opposed to the unilateral decision making (without any public input) of fascism and authoritarians.
Yes, because it leaves itself so prone to authoritarian takeover. As I’ve said before, this is a feature of communism, not a bug. A single, one-party “transitional” government is intended. You might as well just put up a sign that says “Dictator Wanted.” This is why there isn’t a single instance of communism on a nation-state scale that hasn’t quickly devolved into an authoritarian state. It’s not hard to understand this. Your government model has to account for the reality that people are going to disagree on things and faction out. Your model has to be able to manage that process. Communism insists everyone adhere to the same ideology, and those that don’t just get “re-educated.” It’s a horrible ideology, a horrible government model; naïve utopian fantasy at best, cynical authoritarian scheme at worst.
If the model realized at scale repeatedly results in the same or similar effects, maybe there is something wrong with the model.
(Be those inherent mechanical flaws, flaws of ignoring parts of human nature, flaws of a model designed to work in a vacuum, or flaws of intricate and fragile necessary rules)
Communism scales horribly and practically begs for intolerant authoritarians to take over because the structure promotes compromise and compromising with intolerance ends up with intolerance. It works well when a small group voluntarily creates a small commune and everyone is on the same page. Everyone being able to see the overall community is pretty important for them to see how they fit in.
Capitalism also scales terribly, but when approached as a competition that requires regulation at least it can scale better because everyone can be watchful of bad actors. It still scales poorly because large companies can gain undo influence over government, but at least that influence tends to be about business and profit and not ethnic cleansing of the ‘wrong people’ that tends to be inherent to large scale communism. Yeah, that can also happen for profit with capitalism too, but again the acknowledgement of necessary regulations can mitigate that for the most part.
Everything tends to fall apart at a large enough scale though.
I completely understand where you are coming from, but you got to realize that that concept of communism has been warped by western propaganda and selective education.
People hungry for power will use what ever ideology appeals to the people to gain power. Look at Donald Trump. He was historically a Democrat from New York uninterested in politics. He ran as a Democrat the first time but made no headlines. He switched parties and started talking pro-christian rhetoric. He is very obvious no Christian.
You see it with “Protect the children” anti-abortion groups. Who have no interest in actually protecting children. Groups that target trans people with the same stance have no interest in actually protecting children. Groups who are say they want to stamp out pedophilia use it to target privacy laws.
And you have groups like Nazis and Lenist who used socialism and communism as a means to an end. Those groups used those movements to consolidate power and wealth to the 1%, and used violence against others as a way to ensure their continued control, they were neither communist or socialist in practice, only in their speech.
Communism is always dictated by a few and causes harm to many. In order for communism to work you need to stop the flow of information as education makes people want to pursue there own goals at the expense of everyone else.
You talk of corrupting power but I’ve never heard of google wanting to kill.
Communism is literally not dictated by the few. Communism is anarchist in that there are literal no leaders. What you are thinking of is leninism, where a group of few used the ideas of socialism and communism to hoard power and money, spread misinformation, and destroy education. Because educated people don’t like authoritarian leadership.
Like how in the USA, education has been villianized by the right in their propaganda. They cut funding to public education. They remove what books can be found in libraries. They can keep people ignorant of ideas they find threatening to their power structures. Such as socialist and communism ideals. Any book that talks of breaking down the hierarchy is considered a threat.
Well they’re considered just as fringe group by pretty much everyone else except for the people subscribing to it. Ofcourse they’ll soon rush to tell you how their idea of communism is different and will actually lead to utopia but just imagine a neo-nazi trying that same argument.
![[META] Never change, lemmy.ml](https://i.imgur.com/1pxAyiq.jpg){kind=link}
I’ve always found it odd why we don’t treat communism in the same vein as Nazism.
They’re both horrific ideologies that have led to the deaths of millions, but one is considered trendy.
They are radically different but authoritarians have corrupted both to be the same brute force regime. Communism shouldn’t have any specific single leader. It should be a conference of lots of little communities that participate together to make a state work. Sadly authoritarian ideals corrupt politics and make people want to rule that should never be leaders in the first place. Those leaders install their own friends who run the government into the ground - and it’s the government model that is to blame?
communism has somehow become synonymous with marxism-leninism, it’s very sad
“Marxism” 😀
“-Leninism” 😬
The .ml suffix isn’t helping
.ml = Mali.
I know it was the haunt of scammers when it was a free domain, but the government of Mali have reassigned management now so hopefully it will be less problematic as time goes on.
afaih, one of the reasons that lemmy.ml chose their domain suffix actually was for this reason, though I am unsure how much weight it had on their decision.
Edit: As @livus@kbin.social mentioned, this is mostly apocryphal.
@moosetwin I know that’s the rumour but I suspect they were picking out of a very small pool of free domains and the free part had a lot more to do with it.
Saying the Mali suffix “means” Marxist Leninism is a bit like saying your .com stands for Capitalism Only Mate. I mean sure it does but only in your own mind, not irl.
Understood, thank you for your response.
well, .com was already taken so 🤷.
You are spot on on just about everything. The only thing I take issue with is saying that both werr corrupted by authoritarians. Fascism doesn’t exist without authoritarians. It’s just a shame that in America, especially as well as plenty of other places in the west, we are miseducated if we are educated at all on the subject.
I think there is a model of fascism that, when a dictator is removed from the scenario, looks like a corporate autocracy. Late stage capitalism, like a corporate Cyberpunk dystopia, is what happens when power isn’t seized by a megalomaniac. Unfortunately corporations are documented to gather the psychotically inclined within its upper echelons so any and all rulings are definitely going to be corrupted. At least communism allows voting for leaders and not private decisions without review like private enterprise.
That still ends up with local dictators and oligarchs. Yes, you’re not likely to end up with one global dictator etc. but ultimately would not be all that different in the long run. It’s exactly what they want a return to. Feudalism.
I think fascism, actual theoretical fascism (like untainted communism), removed from the realities of human psychology, would be a conglomeration of corporate states. The decision making is behind closed doors and leadership is decided by those on the inside of the corp, so still keeping the multilayered rights structure of fascism, but distinct in that those running the business would be able to also run the state without corporate influence.
Again, theoretical fascism is never going to happen because a business leader will steer the country to align their corporate interests instead of any public interest, but the idea is there. Fascism, uncorrupted by selfishness and greed, is a corporate state run by people who only answer to internal justice structures that are separate from public policy. But fascism is almost purpose built to give those who are least capable of thinking of others the ability to run those others’ lives so harmful people will always run things.
Communism at least has a chance at public discourse, like democracy but more open to compromise. It’s that compromise that is diametrically opposed to the unilateral decision making (without any public input) of fascism and authoritarians.
Yes, because it leaves itself so prone to authoritarian takeover. As I’ve said before, this is a feature of communism, not a bug. A single, one-party “transitional” government is intended. You might as well just put up a sign that says “Dictator Wanted.” This is why there isn’t a single instance of communism on a nation-state scale that hasn’t quickly devolved into an authoritarian state. It’s not hard to understand this. Your government model has to account for the reality that people are going to disagree on things and faction out. Your model has to be able to manage that process. Communism insists everyone adhere to the same ideology, and those that don’t just get “re-educated.” It’s a horrible ideology, a horrible government model; naïve utopian fantasy at best, cynical authoritarian scheme at worst.
If the model realized at scale repeatedly results in the same or similar effects, maybe there is something wrong with the model.
(Be those inherent mechanical flaws, flaws of ignoring parts of human nature, flaws of a model designed to work in a vacuum, or flaws of intricate and fragile necessary rules)
Communism scales horribly and practically begs for intolerant authoritarians to take over because the structure promotes compromise and compromising with intolerance ends up with intolerance. It works well when a small group voluntarily creates a small commune and everyone is on the same page. Everyone being able to see the overall community is pretty important for them to see how they fit in.
Capitalism also scales terribly, but when approached as a competition that requires regulation at least it can scale better because everyone can be watchful of bad actors. It still scales poorly because large companies can gain undo influence over government, but at least that influence tends to be about business and profit and not ethnic cleansing of the ‘wrong people’ that tends to be inherent to large scale communism. Yeah, that can also happen for profit with capitalism too, but again the acknowledgement of necessary regulations can mitigate that for the most part.
Everything tends to fall apart at a large enough scale though.
I think you’re talking about democracy there, not capitalism?
If we look at a country with capitalism and not democracy (e.g UAE) I don’t think it has any protective effect on transparency.
There’s no difference between them. That’s the thing. Two words for the same pile of shit.
I completely understand where you are coming from, but you got to realize that that concept of communism has been warped by western propaganda and selective education.
People hungry for power will use what ever ideology appeals to the people to gain power. Look at Donald Trump. He was historically a Democrat from New York uninterested in politics. He ran as a Democrat the first time but made no headlines. He switched parties and started talking pro-christian rhetoric. He is very obvious no Christian.
You see it with “Protect the children” anti-abortion groups. Who have no interest in actually protecting children. Groups that target trans people with the same stance have no interest in actually protecting children. Groups who are say they want to stamp out pedophilia use it to target privacy laws.
And you have groups like Nazis and Lenist who used socialism and communism as a means to an end. Those groups used those movements to consolidate power and wealth to the 1%, and used violence against others as a way to ensure their continued control, they were neither communist or socialist in practice, only in their speech.
Communism is always dictated by a few and causes harm to many. In order for communism to work you need to stop the flow of information as education makes people want to pursue there own goals at the expense of everyone else.
You talk of corrupting power but I’ve never heard of google wanting to kill.
Communism is literally not dictated by the few. Communism is anarchist in that there are literal no leaders. What you are thinking of is leninism, where a group of few used the ideas of socialism and communism to hoard power and money, spread misinformation, and destroy education. Because educated people don’t like authoritarian leadership.
Like how in the USA, education has been villianized by the right in their propaganda. They cut funding to public education. They remove what books can be found in libraries. They can keep people ignorant of ideas they find threatening to their power structures. Such as socialist and communism ideals. Any book that talks of breaking down the hierarchy is considered a threat.
Because one of them promoted racial superiority in its main book, while the other equally hated everyone? Do your research!
Well they’re considered just as fringe group by pretty much everyone else except for the people subscribing to it. Ofcourse they’ll soon rush to tell you how their idea of communism is different and will actually lead to utopia but just imagine a neo-nazi trying that same argument.