this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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Support for communism. People somehow manage to wildly exaggerate both the evils of capitalism and the benefits of communism, even though we have plenty of contemporary and historical examples to refer to.
Communism is as much of a fairy tale as the Free Market.
For exactly the same reasons.
Almost like we better pick something ... in the middle, like heavily regulated capitalism and social democracy.
Full genocide now or no genocide? Those both seem pretty extreme, let's pick from the middle and genocide some people. I am an enlightened centrist.
There's a logical fallacy going on here that I don't know the name for, but basically: who says there needs to be any genocide? Why is genocide a constant present in all aspects of that spectrum?
The logical fallacy was committed by you when you equivocated with zero support, Communism and "The Free Market." The free market has never existed except as a thought experiment so that market economists can try to model what effects supply and demand would have on a frictionless market. It's equivalent to physics classes where you ignore air-resistance and friction. No one claims physics is a fairy-tale and it would be absurd to claim that market economics and physics are both fairy-tales for "exactly the same reason."
Communism on the other hand is a well-defined and studied economic system, and aspects of that economic system exist in every country on earth.
Well you're either claiming capitalism or communism has no history of genocide. I'm too tired to dig through your word salad to try and figure out which. Either way, you're hilariously wrong.
I didn't say anything about support anything, I was commenting on the fact that your comment has in it the inherit assumption that no matter what there's going to be genocide and that somehow the middle road was just a little genocide.
There are a lot of people on the same side when it comes to workers rights and freedom from capitalist oppression, but my short time on lemmy has shown me that a LOT of communists are hostile to everyone that isn't 100% on board with Mao which leaves you pushing away potential allies.
No, we have historical examples of various X forms of Socialism that were supposed to be the intermediate state between capitalism and communism. All of the turned out to be authoritarian nightmares, but none of them actually made it to the communism stage of development.
Essentially truly supporting communism is merely saying we could be living in a post-scarcity state. The oligarchs ain't gonna let that happen though and their captive governments aren't about to let that happen though.
I propose that human greed leads to the corruption of both capitalist and communist systems in actual practice. The difference is that in capitalism, greed is publically encouraged and publically rewarded, while in communism, greed is publically discouraged and privately rewarded. Inequality is present in both practices ostensibly (with few historical exceptions). Whatever economic systems are implemented by humanity, some people are winners and some are losers.
The question of what system is best cannot be settled by only historical anecdotes. Historical record is too biased towards its own context, though we can look at patterns that have emerged through recorded history to try and achieve a more objective understanding; we have to examine a system as it exists right now. We must accept that no system will be exempt from human greed and focus our efforts on policies that fight against it wherever possible. This is not an enlightened centrist position; this is the position of someone who wants to maximize the number of societal winner and minimize the number of losers.
We agree about greed being unavoidable. The difference between the two systems is how you go about satisfying your desire to get ahead - under capitalism you acquire mainly through trade, providing goods and services to others (and sometimes through theft), while under communism your ability to engage in trade is severely restricted, leaving only the other options.
That is a great way of putting it and totally compatible with my view as well. The boundaries of the system dictate the pathways in which greed flows.
I think they don't support the sample size, cause we have a lot of examples of both
I am personally not for Communism still for Socialism that follows ideals of communism but solves Problems of it but its still gonna be way better than Capitalism
And in my arguments for communism, I'm not gonna deny the history of authoritarians pulling tricks to take advantage of the grassroots movement.