Lemmy, the social network, started off as a leftist hangout spot.
From the perspective of "Open Source developers who are anti-Reddit pro-Fediverse", it makes a lot of sense for Leftist/Communist and anti-corporation leaning people to hang out.
After all, the more extreme the viewpoint, the more driven to action (ie: write tens-of-thousands of lines of code and release for free) people get. In some regards, its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology. IE: Free Software is driven by ideology, not by money. So you get ideological people, especially when the software is small and niche.
The July 2023 Reddit Blackout was a big challenge for Lemmy's old community and the new community, as the new community basically "invaded" a large scale leftist hangout spot. But hopefully we all learn to work together and the nature of our neighbors moving forward.
I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion. Which is enough of an alliance to keep us together, for now.
It does mean that we'll have to keep up with the far-left old-timers on this network who wish to push their viewpoints. But they are the legacy and the start of Lemmy in some respects, even as the hypergrowth (starting in July 2023) has moderated the community pretty severely.
I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion.
I don't particularly have any problem with Reddit beyond the fact that (a) I don't like their "new" Web UI and (b) the fact that one of the moves that they made to monetize their service was to ban third-party clients, which is a tradeoff that I'm not willing to make.
I mean, I was expecting that at some point, Reddit was going to have to have to shift from growth to monetization. I just didn't agree with the particular tradeoff that they chose to make.
Yeah, the problem is that you have instances like Hexbear and Lemmy.ml that tread more into tankie territory, where if you argue anything less than the complete annihilation of the West and hail China, you're likely to get harassed. I think rational people can agree that there's a pretty gap between "The current system is corrupt" and "anyone who thinks differently than me should die,' but I've seen plenty of irrational leftists.
Came here to make this point.
The CCP's version of "communism" is almost a textbook example to me of how an interesting system that can work beautifully on the local level can be completely betrayed and turned in to something much more like an oligarchy.
I don't understand how someone of reasonable knowledge and judgement could possibly be a tankie in 2024.
Even if you adopt hardline Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as an ideology, the modern state of China has applied so much pro-capitalist revisionism to it that it's a shell of its former self. Today, Maoist parties are suppressed in China.
I'm not a Maoist by a long shot, but I can at least appreciate the fact that the ones shouting "revisionism!" the most are the ones who have most bastardized their own texts.
And from my reading, its former self was little more than a dictatorship with 'communist trappings,' anyway. Mao was a monster, and nobody to be emulated from what I've learned.
Eh, if by tankie you only mean literal communist tankies, that's just a single aspect of human nature.
There's absolutists, extremists, and (frankly) sociopaths in every political/ideological grouping. The more you get towards an extreme, the more you run into militant examples of the group. Tankies are just the communist bloc of the crazies.
But, there's folks like me that are all for revolution, but draw the line at unlimited killing to achieve it, or the eradication of groups in the name of the cause. I'm an extremist by most peoples' standards, but they've never been exposed to the real crazies of any extremist bloc.
You run into the bonkers adherents of communism, anarchism, nationalism, or religious extremists, and they're essentially the same mentality because it's a human failing that some of us are willing to kill indiscriminately for a belief. We're just lucky that that degree of extremism is split up, keeping them from being a serious, constant threat rather than the intermittent threat that they are.
Seriously, if you ever spend time around people that are working towards a goal like a change towards socialist thought, you'll run into the batshit ones on the edges. You hang around the wrong places, you'll run into right wing militants as well. They, none of them, are avoid knowledge, judgement, or reason. They're zealots, and they'd be the same no matter what ism infected them because it's about the fire, the anger, not the actual thing they're using as their obsession.
Fuck, I've met a couple of people involved in pacifist movements seriously express the idea that "we" should just rise up and kill until all the warmongers are gone. People, humans, are always going to have zealots like that, no matter what.
I don't agree with that crowd at all politically, but I don't agree with everyone on all Web forums out there, all subreddits, all Usenet groups, or such either. We can share an Internet without it being a problem, I think. Just means that I tend to avoid a couple of instances and communities.
l'd be more worried about influence attempts, astroturfing, than people who openly take a position. Having a hexbear or lemmygrad home instance is being pretty open about one's positions.
Those places are basically just The_Donald for people who think they’re more clever than to fall for the typical bullshit that was found in The_Donald.
Just to point out, Lemmy.ml isn't really like that, with a few exceptions. Before the big influx of Reddit refugees, it used to be the default Lemmy instance, and so has quite a few non-political communities.
It's Lemmygrad.ml that's the super tanky echo chamber.
I mean, I'm currently getting a ton of downvotes in .ml for suggesting the radical idea of voting for local leftist politicians over destabilizing all of Western civilization.
I'm even outwardly for the destabilization of all civilization, but apparently "actually trying to enact meaningful change" isn't what they're interested in, unless it involves someone else dying in their revolution.
You can't just say "in .ml", is my point. Which specific community?
If you're talking about like say, [email protected], then I totally understand, but my point is that if we are talking about instances as a whole, then Lemmy.ml is quite mild in its "tankiness".
I mean, I don't have much problem with people disagreeing with me. But I'm pretty openly pro-capitalist, though I'm not a dumbass libertarian.
I recognize the need for the "capitalist edge cases" (externalities, monopolies, etc. etc.) that must be regulated and fixed for the system to work. I also recognize that we've failed to regulate externalities (ex: CO2 emissions), and failed to regulate monopolies / anticompetitive behavior (see Google).
So I'm a "capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work" kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today's society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
Overall, I accept that the commies / tankies were here first, and the history of Lemmy makes it clear why that happened.
So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
Right there with you.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
We also HAVE to teach the kids how to protect it better than people did 100 years ago. Most of our problems today stem from people voting to remove "useless red tape" (that was put there for damn good reasons).
My problem with communist views is they're unproven and have only lead to authoritarian governments when put into play.
Capitalism has regularly gone off the rails ... but not to the degree communism has. Capitalism has been defending democracy for the last few centuries, not communism.
These are the nations that identify as communist:
China (PRC)
Cuba
Laos
North Korea (DPRK)
Vietnam
These countries were previously communist and (of that has that) have pretty much only improved since transitioning to democracy with capitalist economic systems:
Afghanistan
Albania
Angola
Benin
Bulgaria
Congo
Czechoslovakia
Ethiopia
Germany (GDR)
Grenada
Hungary
Kampuchea
Mongolia
Mozambique
Poland
Romania
Somalia
Soviet Union
Tuva
Yemen (PDRY)
Yugoslavia
That's not to say that capitalism doesn't have its problems, people here aren't angry with it over nothing. However, if you really look at the problems it's had, they all come down to voter manipulation and/or apathy "things are going good, why do I need to worry about politics?".
We didn't just wake up with weakened labor unions, weakened voter rights, weakened infrastructure, etc; we got their because of generations of apathy and frankly electing the wrong people. People that cut taxes, asked "are you better off today than you were four years ago?" (short term gain), allowed our unions to be broken up, allowed jobs to be exported over seas to communist China (which is now one of the greatest international threats), bought the cheapest products (from mom and dad at the store to the executives running major corporations) without asking why they're cheap, etc.
The "common people" cast the votes that ultimately lead to corporations being people. The "middle class" cost votes that ultimately lead to the middle class shrinking.
I think it's naive that communism somehow automatically makes those problems go away/means we'll never end up with similar problems. Especially when communist countries are consistently doing worse/falling into authoritarian rule.
We need to expand our social programs, reign in our billionaires, and reign in our corporations and we'd be a lot better off. Capitalism works so long as you don't let anyone or anything get "too big to fail." Capitalism doesn't have to be capitalism without limits. The reigns of power will always be challenged no matter what system we find ourselves under, only an educated vigilant population can stop that.
Capitalism "going off the rails" completely understates it. The history of the last 500 years is soaked in the blood of the capitalism. Voter apathy has nothing to do with it. Enthusiastic voters gave us genocide of indigenous peoples of North America, the nuclear bombing of Japan, and currently a 75 year genocide of Palestinians. Not to mention things that voters do not have even the semblance of a choice, such as CIA activities in the 20th century which led to bloody coups in Indonesia, Chile, and Iran, just to name 3.
You need to incorporate class analysis or else nothing makes sense. Why do American voters get shitty choices that reduce their power to the advantage of the wealthy oligarch class? Why are there oligarchs if capitalism doesn't tend to monopoly? Does voting actually do anything? Why does the electoral college still exist? Why did Americans support the Iraq War? What role did the media serve?
I think it’s naive that communism somehow automatically makes those problems go away/means we’ll never end up with similar problems. Especially when communist countries are consistently doing worse/falling into authoritarian rule.
Communism doesn't automatically make anything go away. The point is that the ruling class of capitalists are an obstacle to making things go away. I'm not sure what is your criteria for authoritarian rule. Capitalist countries are authoritarian too, it's basically a meaningless signifier coming out of cold war propaganda that said communism = dictatorship and capitalism = muh freedom. The democratic processes in China and Cuba of example are lightyears ahead of what you can find in the US or European parliamentary so-called democracies.
The history of the last 500 years is soaked in the blood of the capitalism.
That's a pretty hot take to blame all the conflict that's happened in the last 500 years on capitalism. I think it's likely a significant oversimplification at best. For instance, you can argue many things caused (just) WW2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II
Voter apathy has nothing to do with it. Enthusiastic voters gave us genocide of indigenous peoples of North America, the nuclear bombing of Japan, and currently a 75 year genocide of Palestinians.
That's provably wrong. The voter turn out as a percentage of population is abysmal historically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_presidential_elections#/media/File:USA_Presidential_Elections_Turnout_by_Share_of_Population.png
I also find some of your examples, e.g., the Native Americans similarly a red herring. The plight of the Native American peoples is far more complicated than "blame capitalism."
Not to mention things that voters do not have even the semblance of a choice, such as CIA activities in the 20th century which led to bloody coups in Indonesia, Chile, and Iran, just to name 3.
Voters control who is elected. Those that are elected control whether or not the CIA exists. The CIA would disappear tomorrow if only folks that believed the CIA shouldn't exist were in congress.
You need to incorporate class analysis or else nothing makes sense.
No you don't, it makes plenty of sense without "class analysis."
Why do American voters get shitty choices that reduce their power to the advantage of the wealthy oligarch class?
Because of the people who vote a fraction of them bother with primaries and because it's hard to find good people to run for office that want to do the job (for a myriad of reasons)?
Why are there oligarchs if capitalism doesn’t tend to monopoly?
It's not an objective thing that "there are oligarchs."
Does voting actually do anything?
Yes, voting matters. See policies under Trump vs policies under Biden. See Net Neutrality. See Climate Change Policy. See EPA Policy.
It's frankly anti-intellectual to claim that "voting doesn't do anything" or even imply as much.
Why does the electoral college still exist?
Because people vote for representatives that don't want to get rid of it?
Why did Americans support the Iraq War?
Because people vote for representatives that supported it? Because the general population was not adequately educated and engaged in politics to understand the facts of the situation and was mislead?
What role did the media serve?
What role didn't the media serve? What role should it have served?
You're asking leading questions to argue your point similar to a flat-earth or giant-ism conspiracy theorist. Like, these questions do have answers and those answers go far beyond people's economic classes and dive into a number of cultural, period, regional, and global factors. There isn't one answer, and the one answer certainly isn't "because the rich people made us do it."
I’m not sure what is your criteria for authoritarian rule.
No, they are not. Some may be, but the vast majority of western capitalistic societies are nowhere near authoritarian rule. The US is creeping towards it and (as elections do matter) may creep closer this year; time will tell.
it’s basically a meaningless signifier coming out of cold war propaganda that said communism = dictatorship and capitalism = muh freedom
That is provably false. Look at the governance models of the countries above. They were not "communism = dictatorship" they were "communism and authoritarianism." For some reason people can't explain away, those two things go hand and hand.
My personal take is that when you take away ownership, ownership doesn't disappear, it just means the state is the owner. So you go from "the rich people and the government officials own the means of production" to "the government officials (that are the rich people) own the means of production" (which is exactly what happened in China).
The democratic processes in China and Cuba of example are lightyears ahead of what you can find in the US or European parliamentary so-called democracies.
That's straight up bull shit. A mono-party rule is not under any circumstance democratic.
But yes, I can (for China), I can explain the important part ... which is that the CCP required to rubber stamp any nomination to run for office. There is no democracy when your rule can not be meaningfully challenged.
This is furthered by the infringement of rights that is the great firewall.
EDIT: For anyone who actually is reading this and wants a source instead of "he (I) said, the other person said" here's some information fairly well compiled: https://decodingchina.eu/democracy/
What are you on about? "its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology"? Aside from your first sentence, this is just baseless word salad.
Because there's nothing wrong with being communist, and yet most of western civilization publicly demonizes communism and anyone who espouses communist views. Given the freedom to share an idea without fearing ad hominem attacks, ideas are judged on their merits alone.
The issue that every "communist" when pushed will take position on atrocities committed by various communists regimes... they gonna do that thing that "fascists" do: "well he really did not do it but if he did, they clearly deserved it"
Tell that to east Asians or Europeans to their face... everyone is deff hard online tho.
I find that liberals are much more dismissive of US atrocities. Most communists I speak to know a wealth of details about the failings of mao and stalin.
Ask a US conservative about our 20th and 21st century atrocities - torture, massacres, coups, support for genocidal regimes and ecocidal companies, etc. - and they'll proudly defend our brutality. Ask a liberal and they'll hedge, deny and justify like an internet tankie who's never opened a history book.
every “communist” when pushed will take position on atrocities committed by various communists regimes… they gonna do that thing that “fascists” do: “well he really did not do it but if he did, they clearly deserved it”
I have never encountered that argument. Is that something Tankies say?
What I have seen is the often mocked argument, that these regimes were not communist in the first place.
Actual communism has never existed and probably never will.
There are however plenty of communists that will openly denounce stalinism. That is the entire premise of Animal Farm, btw.
There's nothing wrong with communism or being communist, correct. But what we know for fact is that the human species is incompatible with communism, moreso as the population is increased. There is, by nature, traits within that are antagonistic with communism. Communism has failed every time. Our best efforts so far are embracing some communist ideals whilst pandering around with others.
Will we get there? Probably.
Within this era? Hell no. We've only just started evolving an adaption to a shrinking planet and working with neighbours. However, as you know we're still very divided, tribalistic, and prone to taking whatever advantages we can get. This is, after all, how we got to be number 1 and millions of years of evolution can't be stifled or changed in mere generations.
This is the realisation most people have during year 3 or 4 of the college communist phase. You accept the reality of Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm, that human nature is why we can't have nice things...yet. I reckon around 2100–2150, after we've been through some more shit together and wanked another world war out of our system.
But what we know for fact is that the human species is incompatible with communism
Sorry what? How on earth would such a thing even be established as fact? This is a very bold claim.
Communism has failed every time.
I'm always really interested in what people mean when they say this. Is it that no organisation that has tried has managed to realise the utopia Marx predicted? Is it that they tend to lose wars with the USA? Is it that great suffering has occurred?
What is a system that has not failed? Like it's pretty apparent whatever we're doing now isn't working. We're in a mass extinction, the climate is destabilising, homelessness and sickness exist alongside people that personally own jet aircraft.
Genuinely I would love to know what specifically you mean because I see this a lot and it confuses the hell out of me.
Must be the lizard people then, huh? I mean, if human nature has had nothing to do with the outcome of Marxism's lack of uptake in global societies and cultures- Oh wait, I'm doing it again. Just because that "feels true" is might not be so. I'm learning...
So, since that's all a lie and I'm clearly unaware that Maxism is actually wildly successful across the globe, please, recommend a book so I can keep riding the Revelation Train.
I would like to know why people keep bringing up Karl on a comment about communism. Maybe he has works you know about which explains how they are synonymous. Any literature with that would help since everything I've read clearly disassociated and outlines the two, including Karl's own writings.
States that had communist governments in red, states that the Soviet Union believed at one point to be moving toward socialism in orange and other socialist states in yellow. Not all of the bright red states remained Soviet allies.
These aren't Maxist states. Those that do have Marxist traits are (mostly) Stalin's Maxism-Leninism which obviously has some very different views to Marxism, especially on social matters and rejection of the left.
You're even commecting the Soviets in, so I can only assume you're referring to the Stalinisation and De-Stalinisation periods, which this map seems to be just that.
That doesn't mean anything to the point I'm raising. But it is correct and why it has hybridised with other ideologies. It is another part of human nature to pick and choose what suits best. Also why capitalism is as bad as it is.
Be careful where you tread here. You must be careful to separate "communists" (people who believe in economic reorganization away from the power of capital) and "tankies" (those who support corrupt regimes that project the illusion of communism).
There are indeed quite a few communists and various other alt-camp political spectrum believers on here. They do have quite liberal beliefs but don't typically cause much of a fuss, because rational people can coexist with differing beliefs... and i dont mind them one bit. But the tankes, like lemmygrad, hexbear, etc, do stir up an anti-west "commie propaganda"fuss every chance they get, without being related to actual communism, especially if one mentions a hot button like Israel or Ukraine. And if you get into an argument with a tankie, they will just sling mud on you and call you a Nazi.
The cool part is, you can filter a lot of the chaff by just blocking the ugly instances from your user settings page (since Lemmy supports that now), blocking frequent flyers, and trimming/moving your subscribed community list to other, often smaller instances. A minimal amount of effort VASTLY increases the quality of content you'll see on lemmy.
Global news communities in instances like beehaw or lemmy.world seem to have predominantly communist and leftist posters. The nazbols congregate on their own famous three instances.
Sure. That's a phrase which also works. And when English isn't everyone's first, or even second, language, either way is fine as long as the intended message is interpreted somewhat
I'd definitely describe myself as a communist, but I do realize we never had a proper communist state on this planet, just authoritarian states that acted like communists to win over the workers. Capitalism needs to be regulated as fuck to create a fair society, so for now, I strive for socialism, because I understand going straight to communism probably won't work.
Sorry if this was uncalled for, I just wanted to show there are sensible communists who don't excuse Russia and China for the shit they're pulling. But neither do I excuse the west for a lot of shit we are pulling.
Capitalism needs to be regulated as fuck to create a fair society, so for now, I strive for socialism, because I understand going straight to communism probably won’t work.
Isn't this the exact reasoning behind China's market reforms, beginning under Deng Xiaoping?
If we take this poster at their word, then their disagreement with modern China is not ideological in nature!
Does that mean their disagreement is about the practical implementation? Of course not! That would contradict a key piece of evidence: This World Bank report!
According to the report, 800 million Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty - accounting for three quarters of worldwide poverty reduction! No reasonable person could called that a failed implementation!
If this poster really supports a transitional phase of regulated markets, then why would they be condemning China for successfully implementing the very approach they advocate for?
It might have worked in that regard but at what cost? An authoritarian state that commits genocide inside it's own borders, so yes it clearly failed in the regard that it does not treat everyone equally, a core principle of real communism.
Look man, whether its a genocide or not doesn't matter. The human rights abuse is well documented and agreed upon by many independent parties. The point is, there is no equality there. So it can't be actual communism, despite them claiming that it is.
Who cares what the exact number is? Of course China says they're just trying to help people, why would they say anything else? But you don't need watchtowers to help people get educated right?
And that AMA thing... It's an information war. Even the US wouldn't be stupid enough to use the real name of someone for that. I feel like it's more likely someone was trying to discredit the genocide claims with that.. Just throwing the name into aechive.org is too easy.
It's certainly difficult to tell what's really going on from here. But usually there is more abuse going on than one would like to think, no matter where you look.
This is the position you get when you understand capitalism is fucked but you still believe capitalist states' propaganda about socialist revolutions that have actually managed to successfully overthrow the capitalist class, which gets worse the more those states have managed to rival and threaten capitalist rule globally.
My guess is that it’s because the average age of lemmy is somewhere around 15-17. It’s the only thing that makes sense. People are into that shit in their mid-late teens. Then they grow out of it.
Sorry, I should've been clearer, the myth you spouted isn't just baseless, it's actually been disproved. Different generations change their political leaning in different ways as they age.
Some can be very annoying. If you haven't blocked hexbear, I highly recommend it. They got exiled from reddit years ago and have been stewing in a tankie echo chamber ever since.
It's weird rather that some people are such bootlickers that they complain about people being socialists/communists after leaving a platform because of capitalism
Not when I tried it. When shw federated, I tried for about 2 days to talk about stuff. But they kept defending Russia in it's invasion of Ukraine with super brain dead arguments and holding up North Korea as a shinning example of communism. Plus at the ends of threads, they often just respond with poop emojis. Or even at the beginning of threads. That's just annoying.
Edit: oh and defending or denying China's treatment of the Uyghur was also common.
Frankly I just blocked sub by sub and user by user because otherwise you might lose out on non political content.
Basically every time you see a sub that's full of political content you block the sub and if you see a political post of a sub that is mostly ok you just block the OP
Afaik there are specific instances where most of these users gather but I didn't go that route because I wanted to avoid blocking legitimate stuff as much as possible
Especially people who never lived in a communist state
That’s a rather impossible requirement, considering that all “communist states” to date have been oligarchic autocracies that were just as much about communism as they were democratic.
Real communism is market ownership by the people, and not some elite cabal of politicians or capitalists. And a top-down planned economy is pretty much anti-communism, as it violates the very fundamentals of communism as being worker-driven.
Considering how America is moving towards that same state, with it’s Republicans?
No, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Oligarchic autocracies can occur under any circumstances where a power-hungry elite manage to wrest control by using the masses as “useful idiots”. The Conservative leadership, in general, have learned this trick very well.
Part of the problem is capitalist regimes keep sending assassins to murder leaders of communist movements, such as FBI killing the Black Panther leaders.
Law enforcement in the US is harassing mutual aid organizations. Maybe they're afraid we'll repair the park fences and deny some business a choice government contract?
While you're not wrong, it's important to retain a global perspective. There are "communist" leaders that were total pieces of shit and while they did have help, that help wasn't always capitalist. Stalin is an example here.
And then there's pieces of shit who were supported by external forces, but not by capitalist regimes seeking to undermine them. I'm not 100% confident in this history, and there's no way I'm going to spell his name right, but, the Romanian piece if shit, Caucescu (???) came to power riding a wave of support from the Nazis. Hitler didn't do it to destabilize Romania, but because he was like, "there's some good old fashioned fascist genociders down there, let's give them more guns." And those fascist genociders were technically communists.
What I'm getting at is that the enemies of a worker-ruled communist state are many, and many of those enemies are within their own systems. Communism, like every other system, suffers from the fact that there are humans involved. Just because a communism exists doesn't mean it's going to be utopia.
But that also doesn't mean that communism can't be good, or at least better.
As a note, fascism is a tool of industrialist plutocrats to extend the life of their power as worker class quality of life deteriorates. While Hoover was in power during the Great Depression, US industrialists were looking to Hitler and Mussolini while laborers were looking to the Soviet Union.
As per the Christian nationalist movement / transnational white power movement in the US, our dependence on capitalism has driven us to the verge of civil war, and a push by the Republican party to single-party autocracy and purges of undesirable demographics, including the impoverished and homeless.
I can't speak to Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu except to say autocracy always tends to go badly, with power consolidated until abuse and corruption is inevitable.
The whole idea behind communism is to imagine what a functional public serving state would look like, and then how to get there from here. Marx speculates on steps that might work to get to a starting point, but much like the framers of the Constitution of the United States, he didn't know everything and couldn't predict how it all plays out in given circumstances.
(US constitutional framers never did democracy before. They favored landowners. They assumed common homesteaders would be driven to understand and vote for their own best interests. And they got broadsided by the industrial revolution. Also, FPTP elections and two-party systems suck.)
We know civil wars tend to lead to serial dictatorships and foreign influencers looking to exploit economic vulnerability. We also grassroots mutual aid movements take generations and are prone to disruption by time and circumstances, particularly raiders and police forces. So we're still trying to chart the geography between here and utopia.
You should go into your alt history time machine and realize how shitty it is living under communism. Why do you think every country bordering Russia hates them so much?
why not? if you'd like a more capitalist experience you can always go to reddit. don't forget to download their shitty app that no longer has competitors.
Lol you just provided the simplest counter to the most common capitalist argument.
"You don't understand capitalism, bro. The problem isn't capitalism, it's the regulation on capitalism. Under a true capitalist system, there can't be monopolies because capitalism rewards competition."
Ok so what happened to all the reddit apps
Edit: I really like the reddit app example because it's simple: no regulation or anti-capitalist force made them to that, it was literally just a capitalist decision.
But regulatory capture is an important part of capitalism, and no matter how many ancap bullshit artists say otherwise, government is absolutely part of the capitalist plan. Giving the workers a "say" (or the illusion of one) keeps them a bit quieter, but more importantly, having a government outsources a lot of crap they would otherwise have to pay for, like infrastructure, which would be a huge strain on profits.
In fact, the ancap bullshit idea that unregulated markets would improve things is an artificial limitation on capitalist power. Total lack of regulation is a restriction on capitalism.
Socialism — the dictatorship of the working-class — is the transitional mode of production between capitalism — the dictatorship of the capitalist class — and the stateless, classless mode of production that is communism. You can't really separate the two.
Thats the communist definition of socialism. Socialism originally just referred to the leftist movement as a whole (including anarchists and dem-socs, which i guess he refers to). And is also used to refer to the concept of workers owning the means of production
The first line in Wikipedia "Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems[1] characterised by social ownership of the means of production".
To be clear, this definition goes back to 1832, where the original inventor of the word used to define a society "based on the shared ownership of resources". So it is not just "the communist definition" it really is the definition, it did not "originally" refer to anything else.