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The biggest danger to US democracy is not Donald Trump or the Project 2025 christofascists, it’s the crushing ignorance of the US population. The gutting of the public education system means that many if not most Americans don’t understand that, “fascist” isn’t just a name like, “poopie head” that you call someone. It has a definition and clearly defined policies/behaviours that closely align with Trump/Vance/Johnston and their enablers. Communist and Marxist are very clearly defined things. Harris/Walz are pro business which means they are definitely NOT communists or Marxists.
If the US population were better educated and more knowledgable they would dump these Retrumplican clowns and rebuild the Republican party from scratch.
It intentional semantic drift and has been happening for a very long time. They erode harsh terms with hyperbole and make normal positions seem extreme by stereotype and strawman. That’s why I prefer specifying that I’m Mutualist rather than explain how the terms socialist/capitalist have drifted out of dichotomy or how the term anarchist and libertarian have become parodies of themselves.
Modern Libertariansm is ridiculous. Libertarianism is far better aligned with socialism (where the people do the work and most of the the benefit stays with the people) than it is with either communism (where the people do the work and Kirsti of the benefit goes to the government/plutocrats) or capitalism (where the people do the work and most of the benefit goes to the wealthy/oligarchs.) Modern Libertarians are extremist right wing capitalist stooges.
Your definition of communism further proves the earlier point about semantic drift. All of these terms are problematic because of their histories in the past 200 years.
That is not a definition of communism. It is a reduction based on the definition. It is also perfectly representative of every modern communist regime.
It’s a reduction based on the history of regimes that call themselves communist… You don’t see a problem here? Maybe I’m just being pedantic but Marxian communism doesn’t have anything in common with any form of government in history. It’s more of an idealized state (state meaning condition, not polity). Nobody, apart from so-called primitive communist societies, can claim to be communist.
… I’m just being pedantic …
And trying to derail the conversation by distracting from my point which was that modern libertarians are extremist right wing capitalist stooges.
Republican and Democrat parties are Traitors to the Republic. Give Nancy and McConnel the Gallows.
I have a better idea than the gallows. Give them a minimum wage job that deals with customers.
A small one bedroom apartment thrown is as well, and no access to their money for a few years. just their minimum wage.
Capitalism (or at least the current form of it) and right-wing parties should be illegalized worldwide.
Imho the proletariat neess more class consciousness in order for this to be feasible.
Close y’all are almost as bad as Republicans but not quite. It’s still hella embarrassing to be associated with the democrats though.
And it doesn’t make communism sound scary at all, but rather mysterious, alluring, and worth checking out.
Unless you’ve lived in ex-USSR.
And after looking into it, we find that the Soviets never really achieved communism in anything but name. Once again, like the feudal state they rebelled against before, it was rule by dictatorship, and rations for the people. They just couldn’t give up the idea of a strongman. The people by no means ever owned the means of production in the USSR. Of course, we can never confirm that communism is inherently untenable from their example. The capitalist nations were no help at all, and forced the Soviets to waste resources on a strong military. But even despite their failings, communism was still the best thing to ever happen to Russia. Unfortunately, Russia was also the worst thing that ever happened to communism.
It was not a feudal state. It was roughly similar to post-slavery South in the USA.
Yes, I already wrote they didn’t “achieve communism”. It’s the point of my text that they were promising it in the future in exchange for loyalty to a weird system in the present.Sorry, wrong comment.
and forced the Soviets to waste resources on a strong military.
Oh, so it’s “the capitalist nations”, not the way Soviet system worked, made this so expensive?
But even despite their failings, communism was still the best thing to ever happen to Russia.
Stolypin and Witte are generally considered something much, much better. The closest it came to a normal society with civilization potential.
Unfortunately, Russia was also the worst thing that ever happened to communism.
One could argue Khmer Rouge were that, but IRL communists’ incredible ability to just pretend it didn’t happen makes USSR the most notable example.
People who love arguing socialist states fail love to ignore that the reasons are 95% economic interference and outright military intervention or coups from capitalist countries.
The guy who answered you is actually right.
Outright military interventions and coups are part of the package called the real world.
Anyway, I would replace “capitalist” with “bandit” here. Because “capitalism” is just as square-abstract as “communism”, while IRL just as vulnerable to those.
See, there’s an important thing called “feedback”. If there’s no feedback from you, your life doesn’t matter and you get stomped upon.
60s-70s USSR had very weak feedback mechanisms, but still surprisingly better than today’s Russia. Some things that people just accept today would cause real protests there. Half the ministries would be paralyzed by people saying that following such a policy is against their conscience. I really believe that, yes.
But then, due to its slow collapse and decay, those feedbacks becoming stronger started pushing for change that would deprive the ruling class - KGB and similar or related people, bureaucrats and relatives, anyway, the real structures usually don’t have names, - of power. That’s when that class hijacked the popular movement from the likes of Sakharov or Starovoitova and created modern post-Soviet states.
Which means that it had blind zones with no feedbacks said class used. And the more centralist-bureaucratic and non-transparent a state is, the more blind zones it has.
Anything that takes the power from being distributed between separate people and assembles it into one Moloch, calling it “power of the people”, controlled by hell knows whom, means that those people who actually have principles will get stomped.
As we can see, though, same things happen in countries very far from being “communist” or “socialist”.
So, it doesn’t work?
Edit: Lol angry tankies incoming.
So i can come deflate your tires every night and tell everybody you’re a loser who doesn’t even know how to fill a tire then?
If you knew how to take care of your car the tires wouldn’t be flat every morning. 🤷♂️
The result is that either you deal with the problem successfully, or you’ll be having flat tires every morning.
Is that so hard to understand?
Amazing…
Not arguing anything with you stranger. I know what we’re told in the states, but I don’t think things are quite what we’re told they are.
Just want to share this declassified documents straight from cia’s website. The first little blurb says Stalin wasn’t really a dictator. Do with that what you will. ✌️
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
Also the USSR was a socialisy state, not communist. Communism is a stateless society by definition. The word socialist is literally one of the s’s in USSR.
Fucking commies, taking our tea and throwing it overboard just because they didn’t want to pay taxes. We should send an armada to put them all in jail.
Look, when Britain taxed our tea, we got frisky…Imagine what’ll happen when they try to tax our whiskey!
Communists just think you are a little bit thick and/or uneducated. Maybe a little bit cute. Like a child who doesn’t know what words mean.
I promise the republican party doesn’t care and just says whatever is most offensive in their eyes.
Is it forbidden in English to use commas?
Too close to the word commi
Commas are somewhat discouraged… or at least discretion with commas is encouraged. We have a rule about commas. “If in doubt, don’t.”
We should only use commas for certain prescribed circumstances or if the comma is necessary for clarity.
That said I will defend the Oxford comma to my last breath.
The irony being that now people use ellipses to mark a sentence pause, which isn’t really how an ellipsis is meant to be used. They were supposed to be for removing unnecessary but implied language from quotes. Agreed on the oxford comma though.
Yeah I like the … despite knowing it’s really for something like a trailing list. Its use seems regional even within the US. Our business partners in Chicago didn’t like it when we included the dots in emails.
That being said every comma they did use was also wrong.
Oh good point. When you nest something into commas like that the sentence is supposed to still make sense when you remove the bit between the commas.
Democrats: “let’s pass some reasonable reforms to temper the ill effects of deregulated capitalism”
Republicans: “that’s socialism and you’re a Marxist!”
Youth: “we want reform so I guess we like socialism!”
Republicans: “the radical left is indoctrinating our kids!”
Democrats: “let’s pass some reasonable reforms to temper the ill effects of deregulated capitalism”
Which democrats? The fuck?
Followed by :
Democrats: “Fine we’ll do whatever you want! Just don’t call us commies!”
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Name one Marxist policy that has ever existed in the US.
Wow, Republicans are Marxists 🤔
That’s an incoherent question.
I guess the closest actual answer would be the Black Panthers and their activities
8 hour work day. 5 day week. (still too long but an improvement). OSHA… The list is literally endless.
OSHA, as much as I love it is not even close to Socialism, its enabling act requries it to consider the effects of profit before any rule comes into place. The citiations are far too low to mean anything, and almost always the too low fines are negotiated down, or vacated intirely.
OSHA is a worker protection but it exests as part of capitalism
ACA
Me looking for Kamala Harris’s “radical Marxist policies”
Love it! 😅😅
I’ve got a set of microscopes I could lend you.
You’re going to need an overactive imagination too. Possibly a collection of cognitive impairments.
More cognitive impairments equals more human, right?
Surelly lots and lots of psychadelic drugs would achieve a similar effect!?
The five dollar milkshake.
You don’t put bourbon in it or nothin’?
Or… just start pushing actual socialist policy; since everything gets called socialism anyway, we may as well enjoy it.
Corporate donors disapprove.
But which socialism? The economic socialism that those on the right hate, or the true social Socialism of which so many enjoy the fruits?
When are we going to start PUBLICLY calling out those on the right who accepted COVID stimulus checks from the government? This was a blatantly socialist program, bigger than the “Obamaphones” even (before you go off on me for citing Obamaphones, keep in mind that I believe a smartphone with service is a human right.) we’ve got all these people walking around from the right to talk about how much they hate socialism but that 3,200 seemed to come in pretty handy for most of them.
I’m more of a practical American socialist than a radical communist (since that’s unlikely to happen here) but it offends me because republicans are just so ignorant. The average Republican essentially has no idea what socialism, communism or fascism actually are, and conservatives have been using this as a scary label for my entire life.
Both parties agree on the standard indoctrination. They only disagree about the purpose/topics of the brainwashing. Neither party wants it to include an honest discussion about socialism, fascism, etc. It’s a self-perpetuating problem where the indoctrinators don’t even understand what this stuff means.
In order not to be confounded with economic socialists, who the right accuses of wanting everything for free at the expense of others, I always inform people that I am a Nathan J. Robinson socialist.
God I wish Harris was a radical Marxist
I promise you, the Republican party doesn’t care who they offend as long as it’s an out-group.
