If Mamdani is a communist, he’s clearly the least ambitious communist that I’ve ever heard of. What he’s asking for is just basic services of a city to work and be affordable.
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echodot@feddit.uk 2 days ago
A persons inability to differentiate between slightly progressive policies and communism, is a gigantic blood red flag indicating that they are a trash person and not worth talking to.
The most fair but unfavourable (according to them) interpretation of his policies would be socialist, to be a communist he would have to have been a dictator who seized power with force rather than democratically elected. But honestly it’s debatable about whether or not the policies he is proposing go far enough to really be in the realm of socialist. It’s basically just left wing progressive.
If it weren’t for the fact that he was American no one would be batting an eye. Come to Europe and say those things and everyone would be “well yeah, obviously”.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Don_alForno@feddit.org 1 day ago
Communism and dictatorship have nothing to do with each other.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The one thing that communism and dictatorship have in common is that the one pretty much requires a revolution and the other often appears after a revolution.
They have similar origin stories.
The problem with revolutions is that revolutions need a strong man to rally around who can quickly make decisions without compromise and who is in close to complete power. A democratic revolution would not happen, since it’s not fast and decisive enough. But when the revolution is done and that same strongman is still in power, and he gets to decide how the new government is run, only very few of them are capable of handing the power over to a democratic government. And if you run a government like a revolution we tend to call that dictatorship.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Communism is revolutionary, Socialism can be reformative.
In the context of the United States, Democratic Socialism is perfectly compatible with the constitution and the ideals of freedom and democracy; Communism, on the other hand, requires overthrowing the existing institutions which make it incompatible.
Most historical “Communist” movements are vanguardist, and vanguardism doesn’t end well, they end up being authoritarian.
Bgugi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s just one of life’s funny little coincidences…
causepix@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
I wouldn’t call it a coincidence that western capitalist states, especially the US, would do some pretty heavy lifting to convince all of their people that any actually existing socialist state is, or would invariably become, a dictatorship and horrible to live under. Socialism and capitalism are fundamentally opposed to one another and pretty much every aspect of US governance is fully controlled by, rabidly anti-communist, capitalists. They made absolutely sure of that in the red scare.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Except that every communist country is and was a dictatorship.