Tbh it probably does suck to live somewhere like Cuba whose economy has been strangled by blockades, but it's a "stop hitting yourself" sort of logic to blame it on communism.
/> be me, cuban
/> live in state supplied apartment rent free
/> stable job, good hours
/> free health care
Man, my life does suck
You don't get 125,000 people risking their lives to cross shark-infested waters on shitty overcrowded dinghies to leave just for funsies. One must consider the material conditions
https://altcensored.com/watch?v=cg-OZl5G8o8
Also I forgot about the last line of this video "your family may have suffered under communism, my job is to make sure you suffer under communism"
Thanks! What is this altcensored page? Is it for videos censored by YouTube?
Edit: That last line is epic 😂
No idea haha, I'm assuming it's pretty much that. I just googled it. I believe BRG deleted all his old videos a couple years back.
Everyone please, stop scratching the liberals. We can't handle any more fascists
Whispering in ear
Wait, really?
Whispering in ear
The whole time?
I think state instruments of power will make mistakes and cause undue harm if they exist, and yet we need them to exist to fight a literal war with the most powerful military force in human history, by several orders of magnitude. I think there are genuine issues that arise there. I just don’t think the vast majority of people raising concerns about the harms of communism are worried about the specific errors that have actually occurred and were unforced. They’re too busy repeating talking points about how cruel Castro was to the slave owners.
The solution is clearly to have a first revolution which establishes a socialist state and then a second revolution after the capitalist states have all been defeated. (I am only half-joking)
while i personally despise trotsky because his adventurism regarding his views on permanent revolution endangered the soviet union and communism as a whole, the concept itself is valid. the tree of liberty needs to be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants from time to time after all, even if that quote specifically was made by a chud the sentiment is real. without the occasional violence in society to shake up the class structure, hereditary power and corruption will entrench itself into an utopian classless system given enough time and that endangers the project of communism as a whole, so we need purges, not reeducation, murder, the death penalty carried out on reactionaries basically until the end of time to maintain communism. communism is not pacifism, humans are innately violent and a utopian system would require it.
This is a ridiculous take. A classless system does not endanger communism, it is communism. Reactionaries are not timeless, they are explicitly contextual. Humans are not innately violent, physics is. Violence is useful in accumulation due to scarcity and social structures. Getting to classlessness and moving beyond scarcity will create incentive conditions that make violence less and less viable as a means to accumulation until ultimately everyone will be fully enmeshed in interests that align with peace over war.
tell me, do you think we can get rid of religion? like maybe we can abolish the church or have some sort of state sponsored atheism, but some people will gravitate towards religion, they will form cults, no amount of education will change some peoples minds, if anything education will just make them more reactionary. i dont know where reactionary thought comes from, maybe its from birth, maybe its from environment, probably a little of both. either way it just seems like something that will always come about in humanity, some people are just naturally contrarian. we already dont understand where sexual orientation comes from, ive heard that it comes from birth, or that it comes from environment, or that its a bit of both. it would be absurd to think we can just get rid of gay people through better education nor should we since being gay is not a character flaw unlike reactionary political leanings. not to say sexual orientation and politics are one in the same but they both seem to not be by choice, and rather an innate part of someone. i did not choose to be a communist, communism chose me. i did not choose to be asexual, again, that's sort of innate. and you know, beliefs change over time, my sexual orientation has changed over time, but what im really just trying to say here, beliefs isnt really a choice. you either gravitate towards one set of beliefs or the other. i have a rather fatalistic view on these things.
The USSR tried to forcefully abolish religion. It was a terrible move. That doesn't mean that people will form reactionary cults for all time. Religion as you know it emerges from material conditions. When we change material conditions, religion as we know it will cease being maintained by material conditions. Religious reaction emerges from this as reactionaries attempt to change material conditions to maintain the religion as it was. All we need to do is prevent that regression and the reactionary aspect of religion will whither over several generations.
Reactionary thought is not innate. That's ridiculous. There is no such thing as contentless reactionary thought, that's idealism. Reaction is context-specific and it does exist in the absence of specific changes.
You are making an argument from human nature, something you, as a communist, should know is completely unfounded.
I cannot believe you are comparing being a reactionary to being queer.
all im saying is even if you got rid of the money, the reactionary institutions, did as much education as possible, and most importantly abolished private property. there will always be people who will threaten progress with their beliefs. sure we can certainly reduce their numbers through nonviolent means, but just given enough time, reactionary outbursts are going to happen, and that is when the use of force is necessary, and it would be best to use it proactively before they can. and thats why i think nonviolence is incompatible with communism. we are always gonna need a guillotine on standby.
I know what you're saying, you don't have to repeat yourself.
You clearly don't understand what reactionary means nor what causes reaction. You're using "reactionary" as a stand in for "evil" and positing a moral realism wherein there are good "progressives" and evil "reactionaries". This is idealist.
Non-violence is incompatible with physics, let alone communism. But not because we're constantly going to be fighting against would be warlords. Warlordism will become untenable as a strategy for accumulation under communism. That is one of the ways we know that we have achieved sustainable communism, when it is more effective for anyone to collaborate for resources than it is to compete for resources. So long as we have scarcity we will have the risk of warlordism and therefore we will have the state and therefore we will not have achieved communism yet.
But all of that is based on a material analysis of the system. It does not need appeals to human nature, it has a historically materialist analysis of reaction and reactionaries, and it does not rely on utopianism nor idealism.
Your position is not merely a difference of opinion, it is uninformed.
Maybe your family should have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and choose not to suffer under communism then.
No my family should be allowed to own serfs, plantations and call on the police to disappear any local who looks at the pater familia wrong
You're describing imperfective aspect Russian verbs. Russian bot identified! How's the weather in Moscow, Vlad?
This isn’t very accurate. Plenty of people suffer under communism, or at least nominally communist governments. I mean, are we gonna pretend post-Stalin leadership was good? Or citizen sin AES that have to allow free market policies in their countries to survive are 100% happy?
That's kind of a loaded statement, since China is currently booming due to its adoption of capitalism, and participation in the global economy.
The US is currently experiencing late stage capitalism, while China is currently enjoying its golden years, though it did just experience a pretty bad housing market crash I hear.
China allows anyone to start a business and many large firms within China are privately owned. While China does have many state-owned enterprises, provides a UBI, and has many socialist mechanisms in place, it does also implement capitalism.
Sure. If we are taking about "Has China capitalist elements?" The answer is without a doubt yes. But this doesn't make China capitalist. They are squarely in the transitional stage between capitalism and socialism and show elements of both (as was already described by Lenin). With the overall trajectory of the country clearly steering towards socialism so I personally don't think it's fair to call China capitalist. Adding to that, China's current wealth isn't build upon the blood of the third world which also makes them quite different to America or Europe.
This only works if you say capitalism is the existence of private businesses, rather than a qualitative distinction of how resources and political representation are distributed. I'm kind of on the side that for a socialist country to re-adopt capitalism would require a total dissolution or rearrangement of its former state, and nothing like that happened in China. The socialist infrastructure and mechanics are still there.
You might have less pushback if you said it more like "China has adopted market liberalization and is involved within the global capitalist economy" which is more undeniable. I'd be with you on that one. To say China is capitalist would be making a very distinct claim about how those privately owned businesses you mentioned have state representation and how much political authority they wield. Those business owners you mentioned don't possess the same sort of unilateral authority in the same way as in a capitalist economy, the Chinese state is not designed to primarily protect the capitalist class, and that's a major distinction.
Oh, ok. Read your other comments. You mean to say China has capitalist elements, which I'd more likely call economic liberalization
Half the time the "suffering" is just being demoted from being a landlord to being normal and having to get a job.
I love how a fate worse than death for most reactionaries is just becoming a Joe/Jane Shmoe
I don't think anyone really considers pol pot a communist mate. And who was it that ended the Khmer Rouge hmm? Communists.
He was brainwormed from the start, lacked a lot of theory that we usually consider essential, and seriously was deeply reactionary. He was communist when he wanted China's support(announced in 1977), and then in 1981 he disbanded the communist party when he wanted capitalist support. The man was a monster and an opportunist that did whatever he had to.
But don't believe me, here's quite an important quote:
"We are not communists ... we are revolutionaries" who do not 'belong to the commonly accepted grouping of communist Indochina."
-- Leng Sary, 1977 Former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Cambodia
Declaring Pol Pot's actions the fault of communism when the Khmer Rouge were only publicly declared ""communist"" for the 4 years of 1977-1981 when the Khmer rouge existed in total between 1951 and 1999 is utterly absurd and is only the kind of thing that people who don't know the history do.
If anything they had a hardline anticommunists stance from the moment they were thrown out by the actual communist vietnamese in 1979, and they found support among capitalists, notably Thailand who used them as a buffer against communism spreading to Thailand.
Wikipedia puts the name change at 1971. In what way was the Khmer Rouge not a Communist party? They were literally forcing the entire population onto agricultural communes. One quote from a foreign minister doesn't move the goalpost.
Vietnam didn't ride in to heroically liberate Cambodia from "pretend communists", it was literally in response to military aggression ordered by Pol Pot.
Wikipedia puts the name change at 1971. In what way was the Khmer Rouge not a Communist party?
They only declared their politics to be communist publicly when Mao asked them to, presumably because he was suspicious that they were not and felt that publicly stating it made it politically easier on him to offer the (mistaken) support to them that he did.
Vietnam didn't ride in to heroically liberate Cambodia from "pretend communists", it was literally in response to military aggression ordered by Pol Pot.
And yet that is what happened. They did heroically liberate Cambodia, and they were absolutely revisionists at best. I don't see how this is difficult for you to understand, the fact that they dissolved and ceased being ""communist"" as soon as it was politically beneficial to do so should be enough to you to show you their commitment to communism as an ideology was paper thin at best. And that's completely ignoring the fact that all of their actions were out of line with communist theory.
Wikipedia puts the name change at 1971. In what way was the Khmer Rouge not a Communist party?
In what way was the Khmer Rouge not a Communist party?
In literally every way that matters. A name is just a name, a political party can call themselves anything they want, and none of their politics were communist in any way.
Granted, you're probably one of those dipshits who thinks the Nazis were socialist, given your fixation on names.
Yikes bud, no need to attack someone who gives zero value to your opinion. Save if for someone who cares.
They were literally forcing the entire population onto agricultural communes
Ah yes the official and only definition of communism 🤡
I don’t know a single communist who defends Pol Pot. Dude was a genocidal revisionist who coopted socialist language to justify a fundamentally anti-socialist project, killing millions in the process.
You’re going to be so hard-pressed to find someone who supports and/or defends pol pot around here
Agreed, but reading this meme with the backdrop of the Khmer Rouge led genocide makes it laughably inaccurate.
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were supported by the US as the legitimate holder of Cambodias UN seat(in opposition to actually communist government that came to power after he was deposed by the actually communist Vietnamese) until 1993
I know this is basically a meme, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Pol Pot had connections to the CIA.
The United States (U.S.) voted for the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Rouge-dominated Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) to retain Cambodia's United Nations (UN) seat until as late as 1993
Even NATOpedia admits it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge
After he was overthrown, the United States continued to recognize Pol Pot as the legitimate leader of Cambodia at the United Nations.[3] Between 1980 and 1986, Pol Pot's exiled forces received $85 million in funding from the United States and their operations were run by 50 CIA agents in Thailand. U.S. national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski also encouraged China to support Pol Pot. In August 1990, a former member of the U.S. special forces disclosed that he had been ordered to destroy documents showing that the U.S. was supplying Pol Pot with munitions from Thailand.[1]
I can’t find the document, but I remember something about US intelligence funding Pol Pot, but funneling the money through China because they couldn’t fund them openly.