say what you want but i think it’s pretty cool that they made a “victims of communism” museum. it’s a building where you walk through a main door to get in and learn about people who were victimized by at least ostensibly communist regimes. it’s great because the main door works both ways: if you’re already inside, you can walk through the same door and step into the “victims of capitalism” museum.
Turns out lots of victims of communism are Nazis https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/government-should-remove-more-than-330-names-on-victims-of-communism-memorial-because-of-potential-nazi-or-fascist-links-report-recommends
They also count abortions in communist countries to pump up that “100 million” claim.
Who woulda thought that two polar opposites would hate each other? I’m shocked! /s
The Black Book of Communism is famous for counting Nazi deaths as “victims” as well.
and aborted fetuses, “non-births” from falling birth rates, people killed by the nazis in the invasion of the USSR…
Definitely, entire articles have been written about the nunerous problems with the Black Book.
Did they actually though?
There’s a communism museum in prague that i wanted to go see, since they actually experienced “communism” i think it would be pretty good. didnt get the chance when i last went though.
I can’t imagine that the VOC Museum in Washington would be as objective though.
I would imagine the communist museum in prague is something that the post-communist governing party had put up. Not saying it’s bad per se but it’s probably biased as well.
It’s super biased. Taken without context it have some nice items but the context is “communism bad”
So the people who have lived through communism think it’s bad?
No, the capitalist system which destroyed the socialism is legitimising itself.
No in 1991 there was a referendum in the USSR on whether to dissolve the workers state, some 75% voted against such a dissolution. They went ahead and did it anyway. Granted no such referendum was held in czechoslovakia, the fact that the public was not consulted before dissolving their nation speaks as to what say the public had in said dissolution.
Reminder that the 100 million number comes from the editor’s introduction to the Black Book of Communism, who “was ‘hunting’ for the highest possible number of victims”, and whose introduction was disavowed by three of the other authors.
Three of the book’s main contributors (Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin, and Nicolas Werth) publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois’ statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct. Margolin and Werth felt that Courtois was “obsessed” with arriving at a total of 100 million killed, which resulted in “sloppy and biased scholarship”, faulted him for exaggerating death tolls in specific countries, and rejected the comparison between Communism and Nazism. [citations in the Wikipedia article]
Also, a side note: The term they’re looking for is “corporatocracy” or “corporate capitalism”, or sometimes you’ll hear “crony capitalism” (as if these are distortions of capitalism and not inherent trends!). Corporatism is a whole other thing, a class-collaborationist ideology/system based on collective bargaining of groups. It has its own issues, but it’s a separate concept.
But the word “corporatism” is so misused that it’s hardly worth calling wrong anymore…
Literally this guy i knows EXACT argument every time we discuss this. Then I describe how capitalism inevitably becomes corporatism because of HOW IT WORKS.
And communism becomes Stalinism… that’s a bad faith argument, comrade
“Stalinism” largely refers to specific economic choices by Stalin during his time as general secretary, it isn’t a mode of production. Capitalism, on the other hand, naturally builds up monopolies that use the state in their own interests. The state isn’t distinct from the ruling class in society, it’s an extension, so as fierce competition gives way to monopolist syndicates, tech giants, and imperialism, this is a natural trajectory.
Stalinism only seems different because it’s named after the dude, maybe fascism is a more generic term. All the person your responding to is saying is that it’s as natural an argument to say that communism leads naturally to fascism (honestly in a really similar argument to yours by saying the state isn’t distinct from the ruling class and that power naturally condenses to the top in the system.)
I could make a million arguments getting into the nuance of it, as I’m sure you could too. That’s just what the person is saying.
“Stalinism” isn’t really a thing outside of specific policy positions in the early USSR, it isn’t an ideology. Marxism-Leninism was synthesized by Stalin, sure, but he didn’t divert from Marx or Lenin, merely outlined “Marxism-Leninism.” Fascism on the other hand is best characterized by its specific conditions, chiefly being arising from capitalism in decay. Liberalism is closer to the “positive” face of capitalism, and fascism is the “negative” face.
In socialism, power doesn’t consolidate in the top. The socialist state has more power than the capitalist state, but that’s because there isn’t such power in private hands. The working class has expanded power in socialism.
Yet you are well aware of what I mean by it: holodomor and mass imprisonments and killings of communists
You said “communism becomes stalinism”, one is a coherent political ideology the other just a scare-word capitalists made up. What this reads as is “any attempt at throwing off the capitalist shackles will lead to le ebil gommulism vuvuzela no iphone 100 gorillion ded”
Oh on the topic of the holodomor and mass imprisonments the very same channel has a wonderful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbKQwafzHfQ
LOL
The famine of the 1930s was caused by weather conditions and made worse by mismanagement particularly of the Ukrainian communists, who hid how bad the famine was getting from the politburo, delaying aid. Further, the overwhelming majority of those executed during the purges were convicted of crimes such as sexual assault, murder, or were Tsarists, former white army soldiers, Nazis, etc. Opportunists were expelled from the party but not really executed.
I wonder how famine in Kazakhstan was caused by Ukrainian communists as well.
Holodomor was high stake politburo mistake, most likely unintentional. It was a mistake of planning as the 1931’s yield was extrapolated to 32 and 33 years.
You can’t blame systematic problems like this on individuals in regions. If you are to defend Stalin’s regime, you’ll never learn from it.
The famine of the 1930s was caused by weather conditions
I opened directly with the cause of the famine, weather conditions and disaster. Mismanagement played a part everywhere, but management also alleviated issues. The Ukrainian comminists hiding how bad the famine was getting weren’t the only problems.
Just like you can’t blame widerange problems purely on individuals, you also can’t blame individuals for problems like the weather or for mismanagement at different levels, Stalin did not cause the famine. I defend socialism because socialism helped end food insecurity, outside of wartime the 1930s famine was the last major famine in soviet history thanks to the collectivization of agriculture.
can’t blame individuals for problems like the weather or for mismanagement at different levels
Well you can? Why have then
the 1930s famine was the last major famine in soviet history
If these very problems could be solved with proper management?
The famine, which you refuse to call holodomor, was a challenge that highlighted the price of a mistake in the Soviet union.
Yes, clap-clap, the famine was the last one, that was a huge achievement of the soviets.
It’s disingenious to say that USSR achieved communism in 5 years between it’s inception and Stalin taking over. Especially since no one at the time have claimed achieving even socialism. Stalin took over country that attempted to build socialist society and struggled economically, and then led it in very different direction.
Early USSR was ruled by communists, sure, but that’s far from it being communist country, and even further from the country achieving communism.
The USSR was still socialist under Stalin, and Stalin’s influence wasn’t absolute. You are correct that the USSR never made it to communism, but that’s also because you can’t really have communism in one country, only socialism.
I specifically spoke of the USSR before what could be construed as Stalinism, whatever that would mean. I’m also on a fence whenever direct state ownership of the capital could be fairly described as socialism, as it was the case under Stalin from what I understand, but I won’t pretend I know all too much about that part. From what I’ve gathered, that would stand against the idea that the capital is democratically controlled by the workers working it, as it would instead by controlled by the outside force not completly dissimilar to the capitalist investors (in this case, the state, directed individually by some administrators). That always stood out for me when it comes to describing USSR as socialist country.
Pre-Stalin, the New Economic Policy was in place (as well as War Communism, which was its own thing). The NEP had controlled bourgeois ownership, and was there to build up the productive forces, kinda like what the PRC is doing now. Under Stalin, the NEP was considered complete, and collectivization of the economy occured. The economy had expanded worker democracy compared to the NEP as a consequence.
Further, socialism is not simply “worker democracy.” Socialism is a mode of production by which collectivized production is the principle aspect of the economy, which absolutely applies to the USSR. The state is not its own class, but an extension of the ruling class, in the USSR’s case the proletariat. Marxism has always been about collectivizing property into the hands of the state until classes disappear and the state, itself more of an instrument of class oppression, dies out of itself over time. Capitalism functions entirely differently and is run directly for the profits of the few, while in the USSR the economy was run to satisfy the needs of the people as best as possible.
Here you just circumvent the rules of the language game.
No, it’s called using terms accurately instead of the propaganda that’s designed to mush it all into one un-discussable bogeyman.
Gotta love how basic logic is far beyond the comprehension of ancaps.
Tell me, who is going to enforce property rights in an anarchist setting? Whoever has the biggest guns?
So, you’re telling me that a person or group will use force and threaten violence against those that don’t play along? How is that anarchic?Yes. The ancap i know loves guns.
Still doesnt rise up against tyranny though but theyd love to take down a home invader. Thats all these idiots dream about.
Violence is forbidden 😭😭😭
All the free market players will pay to eliminate the violence 😭😭
Well that’s just what we have already
They fail at anarchy because capitalism is hierarchical, not because every social order is enforced by people with guns.
Fake ass anarchists telling me to read Kropotkin as if this is what he wrote
We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We called those barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die or hunger. The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets
But don’t like worry about the fundamental structure of society that allows for this to happen, that would be worrying about "ism"s! Just wank on wank off about individual responsibility!
Pyotr Kropotkin
This is dumb as snake would never even recognize people dying by anything but their own hand. Snake still an idiot
Honestly, I’d be tempted to grant the premise. Let’s work together to end corporations. See what happens. When every commercial entity is an employee-owned small business worth less than $5M, communism vs. socialism vs. capitalism becomes a very interesting discussion.
Communists do not want a myriad of petit bourgeois small business.
Having every company be petite bourgeois cooperatives doesn’t really get rid of the major problems with capitalism, plus there’s no actual way to get from here to there where socialism doesn’t make more sense. Communism is a post-socialist society, so it isn’t really something you do from the outset.
It would be a whole lot easier to convince on-the-ground reasonable people to be ok with “all companies are employee-owned” than to convince them that “socialism” doesn’t mean everything the GOP has told them it means for the past fifty years.
Historically, that’s not how social change happens. Even if you convince everyone that it’s better that way, society doesn’t magically morph around it. This question was answered already in the 1800s with the death of utopian socialism and the rise of scientific socialism.
Yeah, I’m not super thrilled with the historic way that social change happens, though. Historically, a lot of innocent people end up dying to get us there. It’d be nice if we could avoid that.
People die every day because we haven’t gone onto socialism. Imperialism is the biggest factor in the genocide of Palestine, for example.
Yeah, but there are entire schools of ethics built around who gets the blame for indirect systemic causes. If you’re the one who lights the fuse, though, the ambiguity is significantly reduced.
The ones facilitating genocide get the blame. The ones organizing a reign of terror get the blame. Who do you “blame” in past revolutions?
Mark Twain hit pretty hard about it:
“THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Employee ownership is literally socialism my friend.
The defining characteristic of capitalism is that anyone with money (capital) can own the means of making more money. If you remove that, it is no longer capitalism. Period. It would be something else.
In this case, with universal worker ownership of the means of production, it would be socialism.
This isn’t really accurate. Petite Bourgeois worker-owners in competing firms still exist within the framework of capitalism. Socialist ownership would be more collectivized than focused on cooperatives, though cooperatives can play a role in the developing stages of socialism (like they do in socialist states today).
Never in my life have i understood why the working class (me and every single person i know) DONT want workers to own the means of production. You DO THE WORK you should OWN IT. Its simple.
A lot of people do want socialism, but it’s not as simple as having society magically reflect the desires of the people.
I know that, and you know that, but people are a whole lot more likely to vote for it with that framing than if the “s-word” gets anywhere near it.
There are 2 problems with this.
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You cannot sinply put this to a vote and enact it, certainly not within capitalism. The system is designed to perpetuate its existence.
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Socialism is extremely popular among younger generations, and is increasingly popular overall over time. You’re adopting more of a tailist position by avoiding socialism outright.
You cannot sinply put this to a vote and enact it, certainly not within capitalism.
Why not? The Nordic countries did. Yes, the system is designed to perpetuate its existence, and so nothing will happen on its own; but the GOP and the DNC wouldn’t be so dead-set against Zohran Mamdani if his victory wouldn’t present a serious blow to their soft power.
You’re adopting more of a tailist position by avoiding socialism outright.
If it avoids a bloody revolution I don’t care what they call me.
No, the Nordic countries did not vote away capitalism. They still have capitalism and a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, what happens is the imperialist bourgeoisie bribes the national proletariat with some of the spoils of imperialism. They also are largely petro-states and depend on nationalized oil industries to fund some of these safety nets, which are expected to continue withering with the adoption of cheaper renewables like solar over time. Additionally, it was proximity to the USSR that brought a lot of these gains in the first place, as a way to stay against revolution.
As for you being a tailist, it isn’t so much a pejorative as it is a descriptor of the ineffectiveness of your position and why it’s unlikely to gain ground. The working class is more radical than you are, increasingly so every day, so you will struggle to find mass support anyways. It won’t avoid revolution, even if it did work it would still depend on imperialism unless we move onto a socialist economy and remove the profit motive from the dominating aspect of society.
No, the Nordic countries did not vote away capitalism.
My original post was about taking steps toward a better life for everyone and a repudiation of late stage capitalism, not specifically going straight to socialism. I think we on the left tend to let the perfect be the enemy of the good (though, in fairness, there’s not a lot of good to ally ourselves with).
They also are largely petro-states and depend on nationalized oil industries to fund some of these safety nets, which are expected to continue withering with the adoption of cheaper renewables like solar over time.
Yeah, but economies always change over time. There aren’t any states whose trade balance and makeup is exactly the same as it’s always been. The current industry just needs to last them long enough to get to the next one; which isn’t a guarantee by any means, but countries have been doing it successfully for centuries.
The working class is more radical than you are, increasingly so every day, so you will struggle to find mass support anyways.
I live in a blue dot city in a red state. The working class here is less radical than George W. Bush. I’m willing to admit that that colors my expectations significantly.
The Nordic countries don’t take steps towards a better life for everyone. They took steps to make life better for themselves while cementing their reliance on imperialism. Some leftists do let perfect be the enemy of good, but social democracy in the global north perpetuates imperialism and thus cannot be considered truly good.
Yes, the Nordic countries are changing. They are decaying, and safety nets are being eroded. It is only through socialism and a turn towards production over imperialism that they can actually repair their economies.
As for being in a blue city in a red state, you’d be surprised by just how radical the actual working class is.
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Source/explanation for why capitalism kills 100 million people every 5 years please?
Here’s a list of US atrocities, just a few of those equals that tally.
Also there’s this report from results on child poverty, which estimates about 10 million preventable child deaths per year, which means capitalism kills 100M every decade.
Also the PRC has lifted more than 800M people out of poverty in the last few decades, more than the entire population of latin america. If you remove the PRC from poverty indexes, than world poverty is actually increasing.
What’s the basis for your final claim that accounting for China shows poverty increasing? I couldn’t find supporting numbers and don’t have time to crunch the raw data.
ourworldindata.org/poverty seems to show trends improving in most nations over the same span
If you ignore China, world poverty is increasing or stagnant: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
Thanks for sharing that. Rates looking stagnant and the total number climbing would line up with what I saw as well.
No probs.
ok this is probably gonna get censored because this is lemmy.ml after all, but less than 1 million people had been violently killed by the US worldwide since the end of the cold war, both directly and indirectly.
you can’t really blame starving children in africa on american capitalism, because if they were to interfere, there’d be claims of it being interference in another country’s internal affairs and “neocolonialism” or sth like that
China has done good, alright, i give you that. :)
The US war on Iraq alone killed ~1 million people.
Some random other examples:
- In 1965, The CIA overthrew the democratically elected Indonesian leader Sukarno with a military coup. The CIA had been trying to eliminate Sukarno since 1957, using everything from attempted assassination to sexual intrigue, for nothing more than his declaring neutrality in the Cold War. His successor, General Suharto, aided by the CIA, massacred between 500,000 to 1 million civilians accused of being communist, in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66. The US continued to support Suharto throughout the 70s, supplying weapons and planes.
- Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 source to 3.8 million.source Some 240,000–300,000 Cambodians,source23 20,000–62,000 Laotians,4 and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, with a further 1,626 missing in action. Unexploded bomb continue to kill civilians for years afterward. 1
- In 1969, The US initiated a secret carpet bombing campaign in eastern Cambodia, called, Operation Menu, and Operation Freedom Deal in 1970. An estimated 40,000 - 150,000 civilians were killed. Nixon lied about this campaign, but was later exposed, and one of the things that lead to his impeachment. 1
- In Smedley Butler’s (A former US general and medal of honor recipient) 1935 pamphlet, War is a Racket, he recounted his experience as being an agent of American Imperialism: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”1
- From 1961 onward, The US School of Americas, a US Department of Defense institute in Fort Benning, Georgia, was assigned the specific goal of teaching “anti-communist counterinsurgency training,” to CIA-supported right wing paramilitaries. It trained more than 19,000 students from 36 countries in the western hemisphere, including several Latin American dictators, and, during the 1980s, included torture in its curriculum. 1
thanks for such a list, i have long been looking for one :D
you can’t really blame starving children in africa on american capitalism, because if they were to interfere, there’d be claims of it being interference in another country’s internal affairs and “neocolonialism” or sth like that
not sure of the number but preventable deaths from medical conditions, poverty, etc. certainly add up
is ukraine and gaza not evidence enough?
or venezuela, or iraq, or iran, etc.?
is that 100 million?
latin america alone surpasses that.
First two are from fascism not capitalism smfh.
Fascism is capitalism in decay, when it needs to violently assert itself to maintain existing property rights. It isn’t a button you press.
Fascism and capitalism are one and the same. For some reason (probably a heavy propaganda campaign) everyone thinks fascist when they mean authoritarian or dictator. Fascism is things like Citizens United allowing corporations to flood politicians with donations, essentially marrying corporation and government.
Fascism and capitalism are two separate things one is an economic system the other is a political ideology and fascism is authoritarian by nature.
How is capitalism not authoritarian by nature? Explain.
Is Sweden authoritarian?
Yes. All states are authoritarian, as they are all representatives of a given ruling class by which the rest are oppressed. You can’t get rid of authoritarianisn without abolishing class, so socialist states are better in the interim.
Let’s flip that around: Is Sweden libertarian? No.
Our definitions of authoritarianism clearly differ. Traditional definitions are limited in scope - political democracy does not inherently eliminate or override economically authoritarian mechanisms.
So to answer your question: Is Sweden authoritarian?
Sweden is a capitalist state that operates with soft authoritarian features, or at the very least, leans authoritarian - all embedded within a democratic political framework (including socialist elements).
Authoritarianism isn’t black or white; it’s a spectrum. Capitalism does not exist in a vacuum - it requires authoritarian structures to enforce itself, either through state power protecting capital, or private violence used to assert and maintain ownership.
Ultimately, capitalism is economic authoritarianism, even under the best-case, most-idealized form of political democracy regulating it.
The british and US empires were and are far more effective than their fascist successors at killing innocent people.
And fascism is just a specific form of capitalist imperialism that burned out by the 1940s and regressed to the far more stable form of government for (neo)colonialism - bourgeois parliamentarism.
The us and British imperialist nations didn’t cause an estimated 70,000,000 deaths in a mere 6 year time frame, fascism did.
And fascism is just a specific form of capitalist imperialism that burned out by the 1940s and regressed to the far more stable form of government for (neo)colonialism - bourgeois parliamentarism.
Mind specifying?
ww1 had more deaths than ww2, and it was inter-capitalist rivalry fighting over who would get control over the colonies. Took place before fascism as a term was even coined.
British imperialism killed millions in India, africa, asia. US imperialists genocided an entire continent, and the nazis explicitly took it as their model: trying and failing to acheive in eastern europe, what the US’s capitalist democracy already carried out in North america.
You should really do an online search before you post, WW1 had a death count of roughly 20,000,000 vs WW2’s 70,000,000
fascism and capitalism are 2 sides of the same coin where history has proven that capitalism always devolves into fascism eventually.
You could say the same thing about socialism, as socialist societies seem to consistently turn fascist
No, they don’t. They stay socialist, or dissolve like the USSR did. Fascism doesn’t mean “scary,” it’s capitalism in decay when it needs to violently assert itself to perpetuate its existence.
What did the USSR dissolve into politically? What ever it was, it’s closer to fascism now.
The PRC wealth inequality has gotten steadily worse to the point where many (not all) democratic countries have better redistribution of resources
The USSR dissolved into capitalism. It had a nationalist movement in the aftermath of shock therapy, and socialism is rising in popularity. The KPRF had 63,000 new members over the last few years and is the second largest political party. To begin with, fascism is capitalism in decay, it isn’t removable from that context.
As for the PRC, it is democratic, moreso than liberal democracy. Further, inequality is decreasing in the 2020s, and morever socialism is not defined purely by the scale of disparity, but by the mode of production.
what makes you think that?
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Your comment was removed for ableism, it’s a good thing to remove bigoted comments.
Cause I called them lunatics? Come on, not even you believe that. At least be honest. lol are you serious?? 😂
Yes, using mental illness as an insult is ableist. Ableism gets removed from Lemmy.ml, even if it’s from Marxists.
I mean, also why slander the moon?
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Why do you attack Marxists with ableism?
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None of that answers my question, though. You were ableist, full-stop, and the mods removing ableism is fully acceptable just like removing other forms of bigotry like racism and homophobia. That isn’t “fascist” in the slightest.
Secondly, you can hate both socialism and capitalism equally. You’d be deeply incorrect for doing so, and this kind of fence-sitting just cedes all agency to those in favor of the status quo, ie capitalism, but you can be wrong. It’s your choice.
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How on earth am I being racist or a colonizer for being a communist and pointing out that using mental illness as an insult is ableism?
Discussions about political philosophy and ideology aren’t limited to an individual’s personal experiences and traumas associated with an implementation of that ideology.
If every discussion about capitalism became about specific US atrocities it would also cease to be a philosophical discussion about capitalist ideology.
Go ahead and relate your personal experiences to the specific tenets and ideas of communism to make your point.
Otherwise any discussion about politics in Western liberal nations can also be sabotaged by pointing to an unhoused person.
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The world’s largest economy by PPP is run by Marxists, and there are other socialist countries around the world. Communism is far from dead.
…There’s this interesting minor character in a TV show called Pantheon. Spoilers, but basically the protagonists are fresh off opposing “Steve Jobs but extra fascist.” They meet these Chinese intelligence agents in VR going after this superintelligence holy grail like everyone is. They come off as patriotic and almost deliberately stereotypical.
Anyway, later, these intelligence agents end up temporarily stuck with “Indian Hyper-Capitalist Hitler” in VR (it’s complicated, okay?), and one of them sits down to play a board game:
https://pantheon-amc.fandom.com/wiki/Han_Ping
I’ll just transcribe what Han Ping, who it turns out, is an mind-uploaded old man, said:
‘’’ I was never one for board games myself… Too much to do, my work, my studies. But I came to see their value after I was sent to prison. Laughs a little. In captivity, one must keep one’s mind active, but not too active.
(Speaking of his intelligence friend nursing the wounded). The party never sent her to prison, so, she never had to learn that lesson.
One game. Indulge me?
…
(Indian Capitalist Hitler): You were a political prisoner? Hm? A democracy activist then? Challenged the Party’s authority?
(Han Ping, after laughing amusedly): This is what everyone outside of China thinks. The only reason to oppose the PRC with something as decadent as western democracy… I spoke out against the Party precisely because they have strayed from the path of democratic centralism. They have become capitalists, no better than the West.
(Hitler): Why, then, would you serve the Party by being uploaded?
(Ha Ping): I do not serve the Party. I serve China. Uploaded Intelligence has the potential to become this century’s greatest leap forward, a revolutionary innovation of which neither Marx nor Mao could have dreamed. All obstacles for the proletariat victory, the riddle of scarcity, dilemmas or distribution and disparity, these are all finally resolved when we remove the material imperative. The dialectical struggle of history has always, essentially, been a question of how to apply justice to matter. Take away matter, and what remains, is justice… Your move.
‘’’
That stuck with me.
The whole show is largely about governments and their corrupted ideals falling apart when challenged with really disruptive tech, along with those of the characters it followed.
Here on Lemmy, when I poke around communities, I kind of hope to see that ‘purist’ and anti government sentiment. But when push comes to shove, it seems like folks always fall back to party lines instead, not necessarily the PRC’s but wherever they’re from.
So yeah, when I see this meme, I just see two people about to yell at each other over whatever atrocities the other is in denial over. There’s no growth of self awareness, just hostility. “The Don’t tread on me” ignorant jerk meme may be too true, but it could easily be extended a few panels to portray red shirt guy as a jerk too.
nah, i’m sorry but US capitalist imperialism has no comparison in the planet or history.
there’s no “both sides” to this story today, as much as US-centric movies like to imply there is.
What a meaningless comparison
The problem isn’t an ism. These arguments are so tiring. Greed is a problem endemic to our species. It’s much larger than an economic system can solve. Although… communism is a power structure and capitalism is a monetary system. People conflating the two are always doing so out of ignorance or bad faith.
The problem isn’t an ism.
The problem is, in fact, capitalism. This has been known for a long while.
Greed is a problem endemic to our species.
Capitalism is a much better predictor for these issues than ‘greed’, so your attempt to claim that there are no solutions to this without investigating the topic is extremely weak.
It’s much larger than an economic system can solve.
And yet, economic systems other than capitalism have been able to solve these issues.
capitalism is a monetary system.
Hahaha.
How is capitalism, the system where one class owns and the other works, not a power structure??!
Because capitalism is monetary policy. The power structure is separate. In America, we have (had?) a democratic power structure. After years of the GOP attacking regulation, we have an oligarchy. Socialism is an economic system that can be compared/contrasted to capitalism. Communism implies socialism as its monetary policy but with a centralized power structure. How are the elites/leaders chosen in communism?
Capitalism isn’t monetary policy you dumb fuck, christ, between you and the other nerd in this thread who tried to pretend to know things im not sure who is more grievously showing their ass ignorant here
I’m losing my mind at “capitalism is a monetary policy”. They’ve heard these words used by people they perceive to be smart so using them in the same sentence surely means they have a profound point.
I checked out when i quoted Kropotkin at the loser who told me to read Kropotkin and they accused me of googling it and cherry picking and “misleading” people. He literally compares wage labor under capitalism to feudal serf relations, makes the point that it’s actually worse, and then states essentially “and this is why all of our production goes in the wrong direction ignoring the needs of the community”
Like reading that and taking it to be “misleading” people into thinking Kropotkin criticized capitalism is some real fucking “don’t believe your lying eyes” shit.
Then the fucking moron goes off saying they “don’t support capitalism” but guess what, arguing that capitalism isn’t the problem is supporting capitalism! ahhhhhhhhh
My friend the fact that there are only a few that own the means of production and the rest have to labor at their command is a power structure. Their ownership of the stuff required to make society function gives them power and they structured society in a way to enshrine their power.
How are the elites/leaders chosen in communism?
Democratically. People vote on their representatives, who in turn vote for the overall leadership.
You’re swimming in circles, buddy. Oligarchy is what you describe. How’s your free press doing in whatever communist country you’re holding up on a pedestal? I don’t want any of the systems currently in place, but arguing for communism is… idk, current GOP bot strategy?
Yes I’m just an LLM being fed prompts by a gop staffer to spread communist propaganda on lemmy. Beep boop how was i found out??
Read some theory like “wage labour and capital” or something please…
How is capitalism a monetary policy? I haven’t seen any definition claim that before, can you please explain?
For a standard typical counterexample, Wikipedia’s introduction:
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit.
The power structure is necessary to enforce said private property (not to be confused with personal property!!) and extract profit. It’s not some wild coincidence, it’s the foundation which capitalism is built on.
After years of the GOP attacking regulation, we have an oligarchy.
While the GOP attacking regulation is absolutely a phenomenon, it’s not useful to frame oligarchy as a result of the GOP.
Firstly, we know that oligarchy is not a US-specific problem. Other Western countries are run by oligarchs too, look at who owns their media companies and who has captured the bulk of their politicians. Every time, it’s their own mega-millionaires and billionaires, who capitalism has pushed to operate their profitable businesses for more profit until they become an elite olígos capable of ruling. The only difference in those countries is that workers have usually struggled more successfully against them and lessened their power, but the ruling class are clearly still calling the shots. And of course, we see oligarchy arising outside of the West too, like the obvious case of the Russian Federation.
Another issue is that the Democratic Party in the US haven’t significantly countered them, they’re not innocent of this, they’re simply not as aggressive as the GOP. Capitalist ideology is a shared feature of both parties, and they’re both propped up by rich donors who can lobby and provide high-paying positions to politicians once they retire. I am not saying both parties are the same or equal, but we must understand that they’re both an active part of this situation, and neither has any desire or capability to solve oligarchy.
The power structure is necessary to enforce said private property
Other than pure forms of anarchism, don’t all systems require a power structure for enforcement?
Also, I’d argue that a system requiring enforcement is not the same thing as it being a system of enforcement. But that’s mostly semantics… I don’t mind much what you wanna call them.
(not to be confused with personal property!!)
Do you not need power to enforce personal property? What happens if someone takes and hoards the personal property of others?
I feel every change in the status of property (even if what you want is to abolish some form of property) requires some level of enforcement, and then in order to maintain that established status (or abolishment) you’d need at least some form of agreement with the community to enforce it, disagreement will end up causing disruption.
Also, I’d argue that a system requiring enforcement is not the same thing as it being a system of enforcement.
You’re correct. I don’t agree with the original claim that capitalism (itself) is a power structure, nor do I think that power and power structures are inherently bad. But like you said, it’s mostly semantics - my position is that capitalism can’t exist without a power structure of class domination, where the private-property owning class subjugate the rest of society.
As for power structures, these can be surprising flexible. To be clear, I’m not disagreeing with your claim, just exploring assumptions about power structures, like if they’re necessarily hierarchical (anarchists often specify that their objection is to hierarchy, rather than institutions themselves). Consider cases where a militia of citizens, rather than a dominant police force, is used for law enforcement, such as Cherán after they kicked out their corrupt police and cartels. Like jurors in a jury - they have lots of authority and therefore power, but they aren’t a distinct, dominant class.
Do you not need power to enforce personal property?
Absolutely, and further than that, I think it will be necessary for a society with a socialist mode of production* to use power to prevent anyone from forcefully turning public property into private property.
* Unfortunately “a socialist society” is too vague, so enjoy that mouthful.
there is a cure for political illiteracy.
STOP YOUR WRONGTHINK NOW!
You are making things too complicated. We just need a different ism bro. Just one more isn bro I promise.
Things are so simple and you are ruining the vibes with your critical thinking.
You think greed is a problem and we need to address social problems before we can fix things? Sounds like some liberal nonsense.
Read Einstein bro, he knows everything because he’s basically like Rick from Rick and Morty but real and the best author of communism there is.
If you don’t just meme the meme then you are capitalism you dipshit dumfuck.
/s
Just a TLDR of the replies you are going to get here (but far less GIFs).
Ah yes, when people actually point out how a defense of capitalism is not supported by facts, it’s nothing more than a ‘wrongthink’ accusation. /s
Also, spoken by a supposed ‘anarchist’, which is hilarious.
Imagine proclaiming to be an anarchist and saying shit like this like yeah you fucking nerd let’s just go back to feudalism since the problem isn’t “an ism,” yeah the entire system of property ownership underpinning all economic and political authority within our society has no effect on it whatsoever hahaha
god you’re so fucking smugly ignorant Im honestly thinking you’re just existing to bait hostility so whatever lame ass liberal shit hole instance you’re on will ban whoever dares argue with your ignorant ass as they’ll inevitably tell you that you’re an absolute fucking moron
You told me to read kropotkin as if I haven’t already and as if one of his most famous quotes weren’t literally about how capitalism forces more barbarous and essentially feudal relations on workers under the guise of free will lol yeah kropotkin definitely would agree with you (that’s a fucking joke)
We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We called those barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die or hunger. The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets
But don’t like worry about the fundamental structure of society that allows for this to happen, that would be worrying about "ism"s! Just wank on wank off about individual responsibility!
Pyotr Kropotkin
Oh sorry looks like you were right there at the end he agreed with you im so sorry
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you are so fucking stupid and despite like what half a dozen others telling you the same you think it’s MY ego as you react to, again, probably the most famous quote from Kropotkin’s most widely read work, like a fuckin westworld android
Removed by mod
im SO owned
Political ideologies don’t kill people. Individuals kill people.
Capitalism happens to reward this kind of behaviour but it doesn’t “cause” it.
Edit: ML users don’t seem to have a concept of nuanced political discussion. Should we just forgive these crimes against humanity on the individual level and blame an ideology instead? Is it true that communism inherently involves the death of millions of people? Or were those bad actors doing bad things because they are bad people?
Edit 2: Capitalism is a symptom not the cause. Until we address what led us to capitalism we will never see a better world.
Political ideologies don’t kill people. Individuals kill people.
You are pretending that systemic issues are actually just individual issues, and are trying to suggest that systemic issues are solved with individual solutions instead of with systemic solutions.
Needless to say, your perception is off the mark.Capitalism is a symptom not the cause.
It is, in fact, ‘the’ cause of many issues.
20·3 days agoUntil we address what led us to capitalism we will never see a better world.
Time? Reality? Science? Humans? Feudalism? Like wtf are you going to address?
The industrial revolution
Edit: ML users don’t seem to have a concept of nuanced political discussion
They just know more than you and you’re too fucking stupid to realize it. Oh, remember when I AD HOMMINAMMED YOU with the grievous insult of “you’re huffing your own farts” yeah you’re still doing it
Individuals don’t exist in a vacuum though. Ideologies and systems shape behavior by setting the rules of the game and defining what gets rewarded or punished. Under capitalism, exploitation, profit-over-people, and competition are incentivized, so it does cause patterns of harm — not just isolated bad actors. That’s why we see consistent violence, poverty, and dispossession under capitalism across the globe. It’s not random individuals — it’s a system rewarding destructive behavior.
You are just restating what I said.
My criticism is that blaming “capitalism” for the actions taken by individuals or collective actions taken by the group moves the blame away from the individuals committing those actions. Which is not helpful.
People do bad stuff because they are bad. I live in a capitalist county but choose not to bad things to people because I’m not a bad person.
FWIW I am anarchist so INB4 “supporting capitalism”.
Also, that’s not what downvotes are for but whatever.
Okay, let’s place the blame on the individuals. Now what? We imprison them in a neverending cycle while ignoring the conditions that created them? That would be like mopping up the blood forever from a hospital floor while doing nothing to suture any wounds. The problem with a myopic moralistic view is that it is incapable of actually changing anything, or even understanding how things come to be. All it tells us how to do is sit in judgement of individual ripples, not examine undercurrents.
My criticism is that blaming “capitalism” for the actions taken by individuals or collective actions taken by the group moves the blame away from the individuals committing those actions. Which is not helpful.
capitalism is a system that gives an individual the potential authority to literally own an entire fucking city, can you please like eat shit
Idk who you think you are arguing with but it’s clearly not me haha.
I think I’m arguing with an actual child who is incapable of understanding things in terms larger than individual interactions, who literally cannot conceive of the incredible political authority afforded to the capitalist class which, consequently, affords their “individual” actions (which tend to have extreme class solidarity, lol) an inordinate amount of influence over our society, to the point where your mention of “individual responsibility” really comes off as an ignorant fucking child wanking off and thinking they’re smart and special
you’re a liberal despite your anarcho-jacketing so I know you worship authority figures, so here’s albert einstein with Baby’s First Theory explaining how capitalism is inherently authoritarian:
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
Albert Einstein, Why Socialism
anyway go off about how individual responsibility matters more than an economic system which allows a single individual to literally own your entire fucking state! hope you read a fucking book in your entire life that isn’t harry potter
The projection here is palpable.
I won’t engage in your straw man argument but to be absolutely clear, I am not defending capitalism in any way shape or form. There is not a single cell in my body that endorses this shit.
That being said, I’m not content with blaming a political system. I want to hold individuals accountable for their actions. I want bad actors eliminated from society regardless of their purported political beliefs.
Bad actors exist in every form of social and political structures. It is absolutely critical that these anti-social individuals are ousted from the group.
You are oversimplifying things because it’s easier than understanding the big picture. It’s easy to think that political ideologies can fix things. They can’t without a deeper understanding of human/animal group behaviour.
Einstein had some interesting things to say but I would suggest reading Kropotkin if you want to understand more about the true nature of social structures and the relationship between the individual and the group.
bad actors eliminated from society
How exactly are you proposing we do this? If re-education or some similar imprisonment system works successfully, then it would be our current system (capitalisms) fault for their anti-social behavior. If on the other hand you mean they should be killed, isn’t that exactly the anti-social behavior your complaining about?
I generally agree, but I need to ring the alarm bell for anyone who might listen
Consulting companies like McKinsey are the conspiracy selling indirect mass murder. The reading on them is endless… They’re insanely evil
Have you ever heard of the term social murder? Where someone dies an unnatural death as a result of societal conditions, but can’t be blamed on any single individual?
I would argue that it’s possible to murder someone through inaction.
I don’t think every unnatural death can be traced to a single individual but it can almost always be traced to the group that individual is part of. The collective individual actions of that group lead to the death of the individual.
For example someone sleeping on the street who dies of exposure. The cold killed them but the inaction of the group who was able to prevent that death can be held to blame.
My point though is that capitalism didn’t kill them. They could have survived within capitalism if the group had chosen to extend aid to that individual.
To be clear, I’m not saying we should place blame on capitalism, but we can’t stop there. We have to understand the root cause of the problem which is social more than political IMO.
Ok, but once you understand a social problem, sometimes the solution is political. Like, what if we as a group choose to extend aid by charging landlords a massive fee for letting homes go empty and unused. Or if we used the law to end housing as an investment vehicle.
I agree, my argument is just that we need to understand and address the core social problems in order to better understand how to construct political solutions than actually work.
You are talking to people who have done that
That’s what Marxism-Leninism does. The term “scientific socialism” that came about with Marx and Engels was based on analysis of history and existing conditions, they explicitly rejected the “utopian” model that believed they just needed to find the right recipe.
Capitalism happens to reward this kind of behaviour but it doesn’t “cause” it.
Capitalism absolutely pushes people into these behaviors in the same way that being born and raised in Israel pushes people into becoming genocidal nazis. People are products of their environment, and the core feature of capitalism is that it must continue expanding until it controls every aspect of the environment.
Edit: ML users don’t seem to have a concept of nuanced political discussion.
“Nuance” is not a code word for “you people just don’t understand that I’m right”
it causes it too tho. even down on a smaller scale. gang killings for example are a product of capitalism. those count toward the death toll.
We might be getting caught up in the semantics of the word “cause”.
Capitalism sets up a system that puts people in these situations undoubtedly. It also encourages and rewards violent behaviour.
I would like to believe that in a better society, gang violence would significantly decrease. It seems to be driven and encouraged by socioeconomic factors outside of the control of the gang members.
For every person growing up in poor socioeconomic conditions who makes the conscious choice to become a gang member, there are many more who don’t and instead decide to lift their communities.
We can’t use living under capitalism as an excuse to act anti-socially. We must hold individuals accountable for their individual actions. We must practice mutual aid RIGHT NOW if we have any hope of a future. Political / economic system aside.
No idea has ever forced someone’s hand to pull a trigger or evict a single mother. Every single bad thing that is done comes down to an individual making a decision to harm another. It’s always possible to choose not to harm.
Capitalism is a mind virus that leads to very real harm, but it in and of itself does not directly cause that harm. Capitalism encourages but does not force people to be bad. In this same way socialism encourages but does not force someone to be good.
It’s simply not possible to make a logical argument that capitalism “causes” suffering without admitting that political ideology can in and of itself be a cause for anything. To admit that capitalism “causes” suffering all on its own is to admit that socialism can also “cause” suffering as well. I’m not willing to admit that there is any inherent death toll associated with building a better world for our children (aside of course from the bloody reality of revolution itself).
That being said, even in a society where everyone’s core needs are met we still see bad actors.
Bees are a communal insect. A macro-organism that practices mutual aid. Even in a hive where the bees have everything they could possibly want, there are still some bees that don’t share, who don’t practice mutual aid. They choose instead to steal from their own hive or other hives. These bees are swiftly kicked out of the group or often killed.
We have seen that the ideals of communism and socialism, Marxist thought in general, can be used to shield bad actors from their truly anti-social actions. We cannot allow or condone this.
When we put so much faith in a political system, we often lose sight of the fact that we must hold individuals accountable for their choices regardless of their purported political ideologies. We lose sight of the fact that mutual aid is the only way forward as a species and that saying the right words can not replace taking the right action.
A killer is a killer and a thief is a thief. Anti-social behaviour is the core problem and until we address that, any attempt at a better wold with surely fail.
i understand your point of view but i just disagree. those individual decisions are all made in the context of capitalism and the conditions it creates. thats what fuels those decisions. just because two people come from the same socioeconomic background make different life choices it doesnt mean capitalism isnt to be blamed at the end of the day for the one who becomes involved in gang activity. it also overlooks that while their socioeconomic background may be similar nobody comes from the same exact circumstances
when i was a teenager my family was homeless for a few years. in and out of hotels, even living in a mosque at a time. nobody would give me a job. when i tell them i have no permanent phone number, no address, nobody would hire me. to make money i stole shit from walmart and sold it on craigslist. this eventually lead to my arrest. people can look at that in a vacuum and say i made my choices, and im not saying i didnt, but its not the choice i wanted to be making. it was the last choice i could make and i dont know how much of a choice i really had otherwise. you need money. no one will hire you. what do you do? i deeply sympathize with the people who end up living the gang life. while they may put out an image that says they’re tough and this and that, those are people who live with a lot of pain and suffering and they were pushed to that point by their conditions
im also not sure how saying capitalism causes suffering must necessarily mean socialism can cause suffering. that makes no sense to me. the basic premise of capitalism is exploitation. this is not the case for socialism.
suffering for capitalists? they deserve to suffer and their suffering under socialism is only a product of their entitlement so fuck em lol
Political ideologies don’t kill people. Individuals kill people.
and when you have an entire political and economic system that just kills people as a side effect of how it functions, that’s just nothing to you, i guess? good job being a fucking liberal, dipshit!
You should read some theory before you go around calling people liberals who are clearly more educated on leftist thought than you are.
This is seriously some 4chan levels of cringe. Should have read your meme lord user name before engaging in this discussion.
lol
The lengths some people will go to to retain their sense of psychological safety…
You do realize I’m posting from an anarchist instance and that I’m an anarchist right?
Being realistic and placing the blame on the individual is not supporting capitalism in any way.
Anarchism is when there is no society, only individuals
Being realistic and placing the blame on the individual
you are huffing your own farts so hard I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the degree of brain damage
Brilliant and well thought out rebuttal. You almost got a whole thought out without ad hominem attacks or insulting disabled people. Keep trying and maybe someday you will be the able to make it the rest of the way.
ad hominem attacks
lmao you don’t even know what that even means
l m f a o x 1000, christRead a fucking book comrade.
Got any recommendations, lib?
comrade
become one first, dipshit
also an “ad hominem attack” would be me saying “your argument is dogishit because you are a moron,” calling you a moron (much less accusing you of huffing farts) isn’t an ad hominem attack. read a fucking essay or something, clearly books are beyond you
Because the individual exists outside any social context, which in no way influences how they think or act. /s
They both kill people, the first causes the second to happen and justify itself because of it.
Personally, looking at the state of western societies, I’m all up for both: personal re-education (yes, if you don’t show empathy towards others you’re going to prison) but before that, systemic change. If you don’t change society first, there is no place for “bad” people to be reintegrated in without falling for the same influences. A sick society produces (mostly) sick people.
I think I agree. It doesn’t seem like we can have any nuanced discussion amongst the hive mind meme lords here though.
I don’t support capitalism in any way shape or form. It only can lead to the situation were in now.
But it seems we are expected to believe in communism as some kind of holy untouchable grail that will solve all of societies woes. It’s heresy to be critical of anyone who dangles the communism carrot in front of us. We must blindly consume the promises of charlatans.
Anyone one who thinks critically is a “dumbass” “liberal” who hasn’t… checks notes read Einstein.
Eh… I do believe communism in perfect uncorrupted version solves most of the problems. Is it applicable right away? No. We have a sick society and first we need to heal and understand. Should we not aim for communism? No, we should, it’s good to have a final goal, a vision to inspire people. Getting there is the hard part.
I can see why you triggered a lot of people saying capitalism doesn’t “cause” it, because unfortunately it does.
It seems you are all getting caught in a false dichotomy of thinking that it’s not possible to oppose capitalism and also hold individuals liable for their actions. I don’t understand this.
To me this is the equivalent of saying that Nazis were just following orders. That they had no choice in that matter.
Nazism didn’t “cause” the holocaust. Hitler and the people of Germany did. Nazism was a product of a social illness which has still not been cured. We defeated the Nazis but we didn’t cure the social illness that led to it so look what we have again (Nazis).
Maybe a better word is “force”. As in capitalism does not “force” harm.
Implying that capitalism forces harm excuses the individuals who are truly causing the harm.
You mention “perfect, uncorrupted” communism and this is what I want but I don’t see a reality in which we obtain that without first accepting that “perfect, uncorrupted” communism is NEVER what we get without first curing social issues.
Would I rather have a fucked up communism than fucked up capitalism? Yeah but I believe fascism can accompany either and I would prefer to deal with that first and foremost.
I too want to live in an ideal communist society but I won’t lie to myself and pretend we can get there without social change. That change starts with holding individuals accountable for their crimes against humanity.
Capitalism literally does force harm in so many fucking ways, god i wish you weren’t so grievously ignorant
Should we just forgive these crimes against humanity on the individual level and blame an ideology instead?
We can do both, though. Hold individuals accountable, and still recognize how they’re enabled and emboldened by the systems they operate in. Focusing on either the individual or the system while disregarding the other when trying to assign blame or find a better solution is not going to help
Yes exactly. We can and should do both.
But it seems most people here would prefer the false dichotomy that implies we can only do one.
People want communism to be a panacea and it’s simply not. Until we understand that as a group, we will never see lasting change.
Well your initial comment very much reads like you’re falling into the same dichotomy except flipped the other way. “We don’t need to change the system as long as we stop the bad people from doing bad things” was the vibe I’m getting from it
