Comment on Yep, you did.

• Awesomo85@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  “We’ve never seen REAL Communism!!”

  That line is older and more tired than my 92 year old uncle.

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  • Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    It’s also true though. We’ve seen people try. We’ve seen how authoritarians coop it and do horrible shit. But we’ve never actually seen communism.

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    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      It’s also true though

      We’ve had plenty of instances of “Real Communism” being tried at various stages of social and industrial development. And we’ve had a wide range of results, from the abysmal failures in Romania and Israel to the marginal victories in South Africa and Vietnam to the genuine economic miracles in China and Yugoslavia.

      What we haven’t seen is an ideal Star Trek style global utopia. As a result, countries with large capitalist run media tend to suffocate any kind of domestic progressive dialogue with “Um, aktuly…” critiques while their own leadership does Nazi salutes at Presidential inaugurations and sells the munitions used to flatten whole townships in Gaza neighborhoods.

      At some level, you can’t take this critique seriously because its purely reactionary. The folks who insist efforts at socialist reform should never have been tried are the same ones that want us to get back to a Bourbon Dynasty ruling the world.

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  • Urfgurgle@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    That’s not what I said, nor is it something I ever would say. We have, in fact, seen “real communism,” and we see it still today. The largest-scale example in history is the Ukrainian Free Territory, which functioned through a decentralized system of direct democracy at the community level. It lasted about four years during the Russian Civil War and was ultimately destroyed by Soviet invasion. For centuries, examples of communities functioning through mutual aid and other left anarchist principles have existed and continue to exist. I have personally visited several such communities and cooperatives, briefly living with one of them. Just because there is no “communist country” (which is an oxymoronic phrase) does not mean “real communism” has never existed.

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    • Awesomo85@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Ok, I misspoke.

      Sure, Communism can work at small scales where there is a culturally homogeneous population. Which is why cities and municipalities have the freedom to adopt communist ideals.

      The USA in total is far too large and diverse to make it work country wide. We are, by design, neither culturally, politically, or geographically homogeneous.

      It would take an all powerful small ruling class forcing compliance in order to make it work on such a large scale. Now we are back to Totalitarianism operating under the guise of “the good of the people!!”

      Even at the small scale, we have examples of this not working. CHAZ/CHOP were taken over by opportunists that wanted to benefit themselves at the expense of all others in the community. There is simply too much diversity of thought in the USA to make it work.

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      • masquenox@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Which is why cities and municipalities have the freedom to adopt communist ideals.

        They do? Since when?

        The USA in total is far too large and diverse to make it work country wide.

        Where is your proof of this?

        neither culturally, politically, or geographically homogeneous.

        You sound no different than the right-wingers pretending that “cultural (ie, racial, since right-wingers don’t actually have the foggiest clue what culture is) homogeneity” is what makes countries successful.

        It would take an all powerful small ruling class forcing compliance in order to make it work on such a large scale.

        Lol! Says who? You?

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  • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    What is the point of this comment?

    The world is worse off for having spent time reading this

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    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      It’s the click-whir response of someone who has been programmed to hear an argument that only reactionaries are making.

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  • Rookwood@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    The truth often gets repeated.

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• BothsidesistFraud@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Here’s where you point out credible alternatives at national scale, where the powerful machinery of state which even Lenin requires doesn’t get taken over by dictatorial narcissist psychos

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  • Sturgist@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Isn’t it possible that all of the options we’ve thought of are incompatible with the basic nature of a few sociopaths seizing everything and grinding decent folk under their boot?

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    • BothsidesistFraud@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      That’s exactly my belief. Stationary bandit theory is very strong. So the best you can do is a democracy where at least you can kick out bad guys every so often.

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    • ZMoney@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      There are some exceptions of egalitarian societies here and there over the past 6000 years but more or less yes.

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  • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    The point was this was about totalitarianism, not about communism. Stalinism was the particular flavour of totalitarianism that is the backdrop of the story, but that’s not the important part, because totalitarianism comes in many flavors along the left/right political spectrum. he had to choose one, and this was an easy one, given the time period.

    As we’re currently witnessing, it doesn’t seem like any system is immune from takeover by a cabal of powerful narcissists.

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• Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I’m not saying Orwell is only about communism, I’m actually agreeing that Orwell’s book was something rather specific that doesn’t apply 100% to today.

  Today’s situation is shaping to be more like the Wild West where anything goes as long as your rich enough instead of a single omnipresent entity having full control.

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  • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Except that the oligarchs are now using the legal system to create an oppressive regime for the working class. In the meantime they’ll get to stabbing at each other. In the end, monarchy will remain.

    Monarchism is the only end for capitalism (according to Marx’ Das Kapital …and the steady march of history has been consistent so far with this). So for those who disparage capitalism, they’re choosing the despotic totalitarian situation that Washington fought against during the origin of the US.

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    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Oh I 100% agree that feudalism is the end goal of capitalism, I actually think the US is getting too unstable for that. Imo civil war is closer than full on dictatorship, or at least I hope so.

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  • Urfgurgle@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Fair enough, I agree with you. Orwell lacked imagination and was waaay too focused on Stalinism to see what horror was already shaping in the West.

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• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Orwell was a leftist

  Orwell spent five years from 1922 to 1927 as a police officer in the Indian Imperial Police force in Burma (now Myanmar). The British had gradually annexed Burma in stages, and it was not until 1885, when they captured the royal capital of Mandalay, that Burma as a whole could be declared part of the British Empire. Migrant workers from India and China supplemented the native Burmese population. Although Burma was the wealthiest country in Southeast Asia under British rule, much of the wealth was in the hands of Europeans. As colony it was seen very much as a backwater. Under the British administration, the people of Burma were at the bottom of social hierarchy, with Europeans at the top, Indians, Chinese, and Christianised minorities in the middle, and Buddhist Burmese at the bottom

  He was a liberal who operated as an agent of an oppressive fascist government and developed pangs of remorse, which he then translated into his writings.

  Also, not to be totally essentialist, but…

  Image

  Come on. The dude even looks like Hitler.

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