this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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To be fair, some of the rhetoric you all use makes your political compass difficult to navigate.
As I said, the question is welcome no matter how tedious I might personally find it, just like any question asked in good faith.
Complete aside: polcomp is a bad way of attempting to understand politics. It has no way of understanding Marxism.
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That video could have easily been 5 minutes. Phweew.
Say something bad about communism.
off-topic
About "communism" itself? What is the scope here? Token criticism is meaningless but I will humor you: I dislike the Khmer Rouge.I don't care to hear you say something bad about neoliberalism because it's the most prized action by anarcho-bidenists to say "NATO bad" and then agree with NATO about most of its enemies.
Everyone should be able to point out flaws in a system, as no system is perfect. Not even communism. So, point out the flaws in communism, in plain English.
Sure, heres some intro-level crit.
Marx was completely off base with his prediction revolution would arise from urban proleitaritized factory workers and intelligentsia in "developed" nations.
Historically, the majority of revolutions have come from rural agricultural workers in the most exploited colonial holdings.
Luckily, communist political theory didn't end with Marx.
What country has been a good example of communism working?
Edit: TLDR; China, Cuba, Vietnam. None of which I’d consider great places to live, or particularly in line with Socialism.
What I did learn is, hexbears like to team up for the kill, but trip all over themselves and land on their own… claws? Hilarity.
For the record, I’m a socialist, just not a troll.
In almost every single country it has been deployed in socialism provides a better physical quality of life when compared with capitalism at the same level of development.
And the names are? List form is preferred if you don’t mind.
List within the study and the classifications:
If this image doesn't display for you(because of the attacks) let me know and I'll find some other way to share it.
Here's an image of how the comparison shakes up:
Well, your article was from 1986, and this image lists the USSR… please, 2023 successful communist countries. List, text.
I am 100% certain that if you compared socialist countries today you would get the same result.
This is extremely obvious when you consider that despite obviously lower levels of development in countries like China, Cuba and Vietnam have higher life expectancy than America.
Not to mention that 21% of america is illiterate whereas literacy in socialist countries is consistently the highest in the world.
Any person doing even the most limited of critical thought about healthcare access, education and life expectancy can understand that socialist countries today would come out on top when compared to their capitalist counterparts that sit at the same level of development.
The fact that you just dismiss it with the USSR present in the data is odd. You are aware that rent in the USSR was 5% of your total income correct? I think your perspective and understanding of how people lived is not in line with reality, your confusion about this data is because you have fully bought into propaganda instead of getting a proper and measured idea about things. You are not immune to propaganda.
Life expectancy is your way to determine successful?
I’m not sure i’d really consider any of those places a good place to live. China is pretty crazy and jails people for talking about Winnie the Pooh. Is that your idea of government?
Cuba and Vietnam also have lower life expectancy than the US.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
Look at Hong Kong kicking ass at #1 though. (Not exactly communist with all that love for the free market)
I think your info might be a bit out of date at this point.
But thanks for the chat.
Using wikipedia is dogshit, stop using it.
The World Bank data is here, which is the same data used in the study: https://datatopics.worldbank.org
The actual current data is:
USA: 77.28
Cuba: 77.57
Vietnam: 75.38
China: 78.08
Hong Kong is not a country, it is a city in China. Individual cities are not good examples of life expectancy when life expectancy of cities typically outperforms life expectancy of rural regions due to quicker access to life-saving medical facilities afforded by density. This is why you really shouldn't rely on Wikipedia for your understanding of anything. You should go to primary sources yourself instead of allowing editors to curate and present information for you.
Irony?
Worldbank.org
I don’t get the irony. Your data is either not found or decades old. Then you shut down Wikipedia, which has sources cited.
I can make an image to display whatever info I want. Your sources are poor, or biased.
Bro it's the world bank. If you can't access it that's a problem on your fucking side not the most reliable data source used in academia for nations on the fucking planet.
Holy fucking shit is this your first time even hearing about them? Do they teach anything in your schools at all?
Complete BS. Here's an exhibit on "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" in Shanghai Disneyland. It’s absurd that this is the only nonsense you can muster to justify China’s higher life expectancy (even given semi-colonial subjugation).
Cuba is a tiny country that has been massively sanctioned by the largest imperialist nation on earth (the US) for 60 years (after they defeated the U.S.-backed dictator Batista and stopped being a sugar colony of America). It seems that according to the World Bank (super unbiased lmao, and yes this is the same organization sourced in your Wiki article), Cuba's life expectancy is ~73 while the U.S. is ~76. Personally, given the huge gap in development compared to the two countries, and that Cuba has not engaged in imperialism once whilst the U.S. is known for such things, this small difference is relatively impressive for Cuba and makes you look like a brainworm-infested child for implying a level playing field.
I didn’t think I’d have to explain Vietnam’s history of colonial subjugation by the French and imperialist plunder by the French, U.S., and U.K., of which millions of Vietnamese were killed through bombing/being burned alive. History does not matter of course, so let us analyze their life expectancy: ~74 years, whereas the U.S. life expectancy is ~76. With all this in mind, a two year gap somehow justifies the inherent “superiority” of the U.S. system!
I’ve looked, and @Awoo@hexbear.net already gave an excellent response to this (which of course you ignore in your reply). Don't act snarky unless you've earned it, and you haven't earned it.
"Socialism Always Fails"
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Anyone that uses this to navigate politics is themselves politically illiterate.
Ahhh yes, someone who cannot read between the lines to understand the true meaning. Thank you for this wonderful example.
"I'm scared of having my political illiteracy exposed and dunked on so I only ever write intentionally vague responses."
I felt it was pretty understandable. We can have a nice conversation, or we can stop. Up to you.
Say something that isn't vague and useless then.
Kill the rich.
Which ones? There are plenty of rich working class people that I consider comrades. The issue we socialists have isn't income, the issue is class, which is quite different.
Your class is determined not by your income but by how you receive your income. A working class person makes their income by selling their labour to a member of the bourgeoisie (capital-owner), whereas a member of the bourgeoisie makes their income by stealing the surplus labour from a member of the working class.
There are working class people that can make quite a bit of money. Athletes and actors for example. Although in many cases once people make that kind of money they also become members of the bourgeoisie by investing it in passive income such as landlording or stocks, that is not true of all of them and is very much something that should not be assumed.
As for killing the bourgeoisie, I am in favour of simply phasing them out. Although I am not naive enough to think that they will just allow that to happen without trying to kill every last one of us first to prevent it, and believe in the need for us to be prepared for violent action when they do turn to that option. It is not an act that I think should be advocated for by itself, other than with some hefty layers of irony as a means of generally promoting militancy.
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Its really not complicated.
Just communist/anarchist/far more left than normal western discourse with a large amount of cynicism.