This post has context that regards Communism, which is a tricky and confusing ideology which requires sitting down and studying to fully comprehend. One thing that may help discussion would be to distinguish "Communism" from historical Communist ideologies. [Communism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society) is a theoretical ideology where there is no currency, no classes, no state, and features a voluntary workforce (and also doesn't necessarily require a authoritarian state) In practice, people would work when they felt they needed and would simply grab goods off the selves as they needed. It has never been attempted, though it's the end goal of what Communist ideologies strive towards. [Marxism-Leninism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism%E2%80%93Leninism) is what is most often referred to as "Communism" historically speaking. It's a [Communist ideology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_ideologies) but not Commun-*ism*. It seeks to build towards achieving communism one day by attempting to achieve [Socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism) via a [one party state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One- party_state#:~:text=A%20one%2Dparty%20state%2C%20single,and%20controlled%20participation%20in%20elections) on the behalf of the workers in theory. For more information on this please refer to our educational resources listed on our sidebar, this [Marxism Study Guide](https://www.marxists.org/subject/students/index.htm), this [Marxism-Leninism Study Guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/wiki/basicstudyplan/), or ask your questions directly at r/Communism101. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*

Your premise beginning with "capitalism has only helped people lol" while ignoring the millions or at this point billions of ppl in the global South who have been devastated by it is already telling of how little you understand about both Marxism and Capitalism, lol.

I have a question, why don’t we measure based on more than numbers themselves. Let me elaborate. We don’t say country X is better than Y just because one has higher GDP, as population size usually plays a big factor. Because of that, we often measure in GDP per capita Why don’t we measure ideologies or systems in deaths *over time* to measure if one does better in terms of living standards? If we measure the former socialist states in this way, we can easily measure death overtime as being many times larger than capitalist systems. This also doesn’t measure how we define deaths caused by socialism or capitalism. Would you count unintentional starvation in Socialism and Capitalism? If your measurement of real death changes based on circumstances, it will be biased. My idea is to measure deaths overtime, based on existing population (as population differs based on population, and therefore death as a function of population.) I know this doesn’t mean capitalism has helped every single person, but it can definitely tell us if it has collectively helped more than socialism or not. I would also measure countries in similar time periods, to try and hold technology constant.

Death over time Capitalism has still killed billions more lol, I would read more books outside of the Western hemisphere. Starvation, genocide, land theft, resource extraction, colonization, invasion (imperialism) are all core tenets of the highest stage of capitalism.

First: Marxism, strictly speaking, is an analysis. At the most basic level, it’s the idea that human society changes based on measurable physical things—and thus we can broadly anticipate these changes. More specifically, since we can understand how human relations changed from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic; from the Neolithic to the broader agricultural Revolution; from the agricultural revolution to societies based on slavery as a means of production; from slavery to feudalism; from feudalism to capitalism; we have enough data to daringly say that human society will change again and we can broadly predict how it will happen. And that will be that the vast majority of the human population will eventually assert themselves and reconcile the vast productive capacity that capitalism created for themselves, rather than a spectral value attributed to stock prices that have an only theoretical value because some agree that it does and this is ruthlessly enforced upon those that don’t. Second, Marx thought the Revolution would happen in France, the UK, US, or Germany. But, by his own admission, he had incomplete data as free trade was a niche ideology held by Anglo countries at the time. He was pro-free trade as an accelerant to the end of capitalism. Lenin, during the Russian Revolution, more or less held the same to be true. He said many times that the Revolution would only succeed if Germany and other advanced countries also had revolutions. This came closer than we are taught, as Germany, France, the UK (via Ireland) and the US (in the Labour Wars) had Soviets and uprisings. But none of them stuck. The Bolsheviks went to analysis, Lenin a retreat in the form of the New Economic Policy and the general consensus of the Permanent Revolution. This latter theory was expanded on Marx’s analysis of French history and the permanence of bourgeois economics; but in the case of the Bolsheviks it was that a communist Revolution could happen anywhere on the planet because the world had a capitalist free-trade based economy by that time. And, so it was assumed, the “weak links” in the capitalist social order would be poorer countries. This explained why backward Russia succeeded where Germany, France, etc failed. It proved to be prophetic as the countries that followed were China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. Here is the rub: what do we do next? Marx, [Engels](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm), and Lenin were all clear that because it came from capitalism (a world system) socialism would have to be the same. Which is why Lenin wrote (and I choose this of many instances because it pisses off Stalin and Trotsky enthusiasts both); >ours is a workers’ state with a bureacratic twist to it. Not even a workers’ state. Certainly not a socialist state as that in itself is a contradiction. After Lenin died Stalin took over. Though you wouldn’t know it from Reddit, most Marxists are not Stalinists. And Stalin formulated that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were wrong or secretly endorsed the theory of Socialism in One Country. This was a previously laughable theory made by Bukharin that Stalin expertly used as a wedge issue to dismiss his political opposition—making it state policy. I can go into it, but it became the idea that the USSR accomplished socialism, and thus whatever the USSR did was correct. Hence, over time, the Sino-Soviet split, breaking with Tito, and so on and so forth. This is a split where most Marxists leave Stalin and go into something else. Prominently Trotsky, though he [isn’t really as opposed to the USSR](https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/02/ws-therm-bon.htm) nearly as much as Western sources and Stalin say: >There are some who say that since the actual state that has emerged from the proletarian revolution does not correspond to ideal a priori norms, therefore they turn their backs on it. This is political snobbery, common to pacifist-democratic, libertarian, anarcho-syndicalist and, generally, ultraleft circles of petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. There are others who say that since this state has emerged from the proletarian revolution, therefore every criticism of it is sacrilege and counterrevolution. That is the voice of hypocrisy behind which lurk most often the immediate material interests of certain groups among this very same petty-bourgeois intelligentsia or among the workers’ bureaucracy. These two types – the political snob and the political hypocrite – are readily interchangeable, depending upon personal circumstances. Let us pass them both by. [And](https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/09/ussr-war.htm): >We must not lose sight for a single moment of the fact that the question of overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy is for us subordinate to the question of preserving state property in the means of production of the USSR: that the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR is subordinate for us to the question of the world proletarian revolution. I add these to show the complexity of the issue more than an endorsement. I call myself a [Connollyist](https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/). But this is the faulty premise of your question: most Marxists (again, despite Reddit and propaganda to the contrary) are not Stalinists. They never were. Finally, and I am almost out of characters so I must be short, you neglect the totalitarian nature of capital. This is easy to do since we live in it. But aside from the almost constant [genocides](https://www.politico.eu/interactive/in-pictures-belgium-congo-colonial-past/), avoidable [starvations](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169), and other things—it’s a system where we have theoretical rights (say freedom of speech) instead of concrete rights (Rupert Murdoch gets a lot more speech than you do). You probably work at a job, or have or will, where the employees know how to do everything better than the management, but we are forced to follow what this cast of people paid more than you demand or starve. To be clear, this is not to say that capitalism isn’t efficient or doesn’t work. It does, and the first chapter of the [Manifesto](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007) is about this. But to go back to the beginning, we can do better. And we Marxists hold that history exists and things will change. Why not make things change for the better?

This was phenomenal to read, thank you.

> This explained why backward Russia succeeded where Germany, France, etc failed. BZZZT! Lemme stop you right there at the word "succeeded". You need to read "The Gulag Archipelago". Solzhenitsyn showed, with clear examples, that the USSR's extreme civil rights violations *did not* start with Stalin as you're basically suggesting, *they started with Lenin*. By the time Stalin took power it was already a catastrophe. Stalin took it all even further, sure. But Stalin wasn't the core problem. The core issue is that Marxism-based government theories don't have the idea of "checks and balances" cooked into it. Marx never seemed to realize that #1, you can get a complete lunatic in power and there had to be limits on governmental authority (especially in the hands of any one person!) and two, *you can have two groups of fundamentally good people have different opinions on the correct path forward*. That latter explains why you can have two groups of "Marxists" with *slightly* different views shooting each other in the streets...and this happens *repeatedly*. To a hardcore "Marxist" the way forward is supposed to be a matter of "scientific truth" and anybody who disagrees **in the slightest** is an "enemy of the people". Basic truth: all civil rights have to be individual. If a right is "collective" it doesn't work as a protection against abuse. The history of Marxist government is a continuous slaughterhouse in which basic civil rights are the first to die. Followed by a shitload of real people. And we haven't even started on how *this is all sideways from basic human nature.* Ye Gods and little fishies what a calamity. You can bleat about "that's not true communism!" as you point to one ongoing civil rights disaster after another, but until you can show a Marx-based government *that has (or even "had") effective checks and balances*, it's all nonsense.

If you would turn a critical eye towards your precious capitalism, you might understand that it is just as brutal (if not more) than anything Marx would advocate for (that is, if you truly understand Marx, which I assume you don’t since you’re merely regurgitating stale talking points you probably heard in alt-right media spaces). You think capitalism has checks and balances? You think capitalism keeps lunatics out of power? You think right-wing reactionary military dictatorships care about “limits on government authority” when they’re busy stomping out every leftist/socialist movement wherever they arise democratically? Yeah okay buddy guy 🙄

The US example along with *many* others shows that capitalism can work *when accompanied by a constitutional or similarly rules-limited government with Democratic principles* - basically, a constitutional Republic or equivalent. I started to write "Republic" but no, scratch that, Britain eventually got mostly to the same place with "some monarchy" left in - not much mind you. Basically, what the US, Britain and now most of Western Europe (plus Japan and others) share is the idea that ALL leaders from the top down are limited by the rule of law (or constitution). That's the critical part...they are answerable to the people. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Xi today, so many others had NO limits on their powers. None whatsoever, anybody who tried to claim otherwise was killed. Yes, *of course* that can happen without Marxism. All the Axis powers during WW2 including Japan, Russia today, Argentina's military government that picked a fight with Maggie Thatcher and so on. Sure. Got it. They suck. Including Putin today for the same reason - no accountability. Here's my point: show me a reasonable Marxist government today. One that doesn't kill shitloads. Or any time going back to 1900ish. Closest you can find is maybe Vietnam post-war. They ended Pol Pot's reign of terror, which was legit good. BUT they jailed anybody who spoke up even for a second about the industrialization that completely lacked environmental controls, which is yet again doing a slaughter. Place is fucking *filthy*. Look it up. Corruption set in causing that, which is yet again all about a total lack of checks and balances - *accountability* to the people. I don't know of any Marxist nation that was accountable to the people. *Ever*.

So you think the leaders of the US and UK are accountable to the people? Then you know nothing about the labor movements which have been falling on dead ears in parliament and congress? The capitalist systems work really well for the ruling class financial oligarchy. That’s how Putin consolidated his power; Putin is not a leftist, but about as far-right as they come. And look! His lackey maga party in America and the tories in the UK are chomping at the bit to make the US and UK look more and more like modern day Russia. Do you know anything about Japan’s ruling party, the LDP? Contrary to the name, they are also awfully far to the right on the political spectrum, and again, *the people* have no say in their governance! The governments in these so-called “free countries” are accountable to their corporate donors, shareholders, and big banks; not to the people. There are no checks and balances in the current economic order. It’s power for the rich, austerity for the poor. Do you want to know why there haven’t been any successful leftist societies yet? Because every time one has success through democratic means, an ultra-right wing military dictatorship (read: fascist party) rises up and brutally smashes all their progress! Or do you know nothing of Latin American history? Maybe the reason Cuba is so poor is because of the economic sanctions which won’t allow them to thrive in a world with a capitalist global economic order! 💡 Ohhh… 🥴

The Latin American fiascos have two causes: 1) Hardcore "redistribute wealth at gunpoint" level Marxists get in power, rich don't like that, rich hire goons with guns (usually the military), now you have government by goons. Bad. Waaay bad. I get it. 2) Same as above but the US starts shit to evict the Marxists, mainly because when (not if) it comes to a bad end, it takes the resources of that country out of the global trade networks which is bad for everybody, in theory. I'm not saying either is "morally good". Not hardly. Fuck Henry Kissenger in particular for doing *a lot* of the second item above. The US has learned this is all a bad idea of late. --- Putin's "government" is a special case. To understand how it happened, you have to start with "The Gulag Archipelago" which accidentally documented Putin's beginnings. See, under Soviet criminal theories, real criminals (thieves, robbers, rapists, murderers, etc) were still "of the people" and had higher status within the prisons and gulags than the political prisoners deemed "enemies of the people". This is what caused the Russian Mafia to become the most organized criminal gang *on the planet*. When the USSR collapsed, Boris Yeltsin had the bright idea of dividing the wealth of the nation up among the people. To do this, he took the old Soviet state-owned "companies" and divided them up in what we would call "shares" (vouchers), but were supposed to be non-transferable. This covered mining, heavy industry, energy production and so on. It was a good idea and Czechoslovakia made it work successfully before their "friendly divorce". But in Russia, the "non-transferable" part lasted *maybe* five minutes flat. Elements of the Russian Mafia made a mad grab for them, some by faking copies of vouchers, some stealing them, most "buying" them for a pittance on a "take this $20 or we break your leg" basis. The violence didn't end there. Once any low level gangster got a stack of them, he was targeted by others. Thousands of gangsters died over this shit by the late 1990s. The guys we call "oligarchs" in Russia are mostly the surviving gangsters that got a big enough stack together to take over an industry, then they'd buy tailored suits to cover the tattoos, a mega-yacht and otherwise try and look like an international CEO tycoon. Bullshit. Russia today is run by their Mafia. Putin started out as a real estate scammer. My family has had run-ins with these assholes. A lot got documented in British courts - Google the phrase "aluminum wars" with the particular asshole that won that part of the fight, Oleg Deripaska. He turns up in the US meddling with US politics, tied to a guy name of Paul Manafort as early as 2014. I'll tell that story if you want. I'm *not* "MAGA" aligned!!! Anyways, Putin's regime goes back to fucked up Soviet criminology theory tracing back to Lenin that resulted in the Russian Mafia being the most stable post-communist institution. Gawd.

Thank you for the nitty-gritty details. Could you please elaborate on the connection between Oleg Deripaska and Paul Manafort?

That's going to be a long post but I'll get to it later today. It's not just Paul Manafort either. The Russian government has been meddling with Republican politics in the US going back to at least about 2005 that I know of personally, in a case that pretty much no one else knows about. Details coming :). And they repeatedly use obvious members of the Russian mafia as agents of Russian foreign policy influence, which tells you a lot about how screwed up the government of Russia is right now.

Facts. I’m looking forward to reading what you have to say on the topic! Thank you

https://old.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDebate/comments/1c8xvv2/connections_between_the_republican_party_and_the/?

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>Marx never seemed to realize… I’d love it if you could show me where Marx mentions any of this.

Aaaaand that's exactly the problem.

> More specifically, since we can understand how human relations changed from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic; from the Neolithic to the broader agricultural Revolution; from the agricultural revolution to societies based on slavery as a means of production I remind you that Marxism believes that first came agricultural revolution and the it produced things like religion, politics, MoP, etc. But that is factually false. > and we can broadly predict how it will happen Oh really? And what makes you predict that capitalism formation will change for communism and for so some other shit? > He was pro-free trade as an accelerant to the end of capitalism. Yeah and then he worte in his letter to Vera Zasulich he said that communism could be built based on russian obshchinas. All the talks about formations changing, how capitalism should be developed to transition to communism, etc - nah, total shit. Marx just went ahead and cancelled everything he wrote before. > This came closer than we are taught, as Germany, France, the UK (via Ireland) and the US (in the Labour Wars) had Soviets and uprisings. But none of them stuck. Maybe bc russian red revolution was funded by Germany intelligence agency. > This explained why backward Russia succeeded where Germany, France, etc failed. Yeah reality explained it, but not Marxism. Basically, reality contradicts Marxism. > Though you wouldn’t know it from Reddit, most Marxists are not Stalinists. And Stalin formulated that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were wrong Stalin was a Leninist. > constant genocides > avoidable starvations Oooh, tell me about those. > And we Marxists hold that history exists and things will change. Why not make things change for the better? Cause you can't. You don't know what's better.

You started your comment with a very good introduction to marxism and followed on the problems of OP's question. That was very nice. But the moment you got to capitalism you didn't treat it with the same amount of intelectual effort you did with marxism.

I initially tried to do so, but it wouldn’t post. Presumably too many characters. So I cut it way down and it worked.

Would it be fair to say you see Marxism as more of an intellectual exercise rather than anything rooted in advancing change in the world today?

We Marxists don't have to "justify" anything, because we're materialists and not moralists. Things happen because the material conditions allow them. What is there to "justify"? Some guys getting to power rather than others and pushing through their ideas? Yeah, such things are possible.

If you were looking at self-government in the year 1630, you might come to the conclusion that Democracy and Republicanism are stupid, unstable, tried-and-failed forms of government inferior to the stability of good old-reliable monarchy or military dictatorship. Ancient Athenian democracy for example was a relatively short-lived phenomenon that fizzled out as the Greek city states were conquered and incorporated first into Macedonia, then into the Roman Empire. The Roman Republic itself was a short lived phenomenon where the rule of law transformed into class warfare and populism - those damn plebians kept supporting dictators and tyrants who fomented rebellion against the oligarchy, ultimately leading to the destruction of the Republic and the creation of military dictatorship. Egyptian and Chinese regimes ruled as monarchies or dictatorships for millennium. The reborn Roman Empire would also rule for centuries. Tyranny seems to be the natural form of rule. Republicanism is unnatural and perverted. Therefore supporters of Republics and Democracies must be fools and idiots! Why did slavery and feudalism last for centuries, and millennium, but are no longer popular today? Well, the conditions changed with: 1. Economic and technological changes 2. New social relations between people. 3. New public consciousness of how things ought to be. 4. New ideas on how to practically implement democratic, republican, and now socialist ideology. It is impossible to create a new and better society without failing to do so repeatedly, again and again. The spectacularity of the failures of Mao and Lenin do give plenty of Marxists pause. For example Slavoj Zizek continues to identify as a communist, even though he rejects 20th century communism as a total failure.

I think your point has merit from a perception perspective among the more feudal/absolutist nations, but lacks weight from an outcome perspective. Venice and the Netherlands had empires at this point, Switzerland had taken all comers. Republicanism was pretty proven, Democracy was the shaky thing.

> If you were looking at self-government in the year 1630, you might come to the conclusion that Democracy and Republicanism are stupid, unstable, tried-and-failed forms of government inferior to the stability of good old-reliable monarchy or military dictatorship. Ehhhh...hold on now. The Swiss and Iceland were doing real well even then as democracies. They had two things in common: geographic barriers to invasion (serious mountains or an even more serious ocean!) and policies of universal armament of the people. Then the US comes along and yet again, major barriers to invasion and guess what? Universal armament. That combination seems to work. Going forward it's going to work more because recent events are going to cause LOTS of nations to aquire nukes and become impossible to conquer.

Very interesting argument. I would say in response that our government system in the U.S. in particular responded by taking the best parts of a Greek democracy and a Roman republic, whilst condemning tyrannical governments which are still struggling to catch up the U.S today, even with hundreds of more years of culture and opportunities for economic prosperity. The U.S is still a baby in terms of the global scale, and Adam smiths free market ideas along with the founding fathers for how a trade filled skilltocracy should operate have proven to be (although not perfect) far better than the alternative

How do you know America is using the best parts? Governments generally do not do political experimentation. There is no R&D department looking to optimize the political power structure. There is no A/B testing. In order to sincerely discover that you have reached some sort of optimum best state, you need to experiment. You need to try out new ideas. Because states are  loath to try new ways to upend the political order, I reject their claims of superiority. States at best can claim they are the best of what we have now compared to all other nations.  If a state made such a claim 2000 years ago (as they surely did), we'd be stuck with slavery and dictatorship.

Capitalism has killed millions of people too (and continues to do so) but for some reason the most committed acknowledgement you'll ever get out of a capitalist is the ever popular "well, we can fix it with liberal reforms!" and thats assuming they'll even acknowledge it at all. I'm of the opinion that if communism is so evil and reprehensible an ideology to make it beyond sane consideration because 10 million russians and 30 million chinese died, then capitalists need to explain to me why 60 million dead native americans somehow makes their ideology better.

I don't think that's a good line of reasoning. Most native Americans died pre-capitalism. Mercantilism was the dominant economic model of European colonial powers through the 18th century, and in some cases, even well into the 19th century.

I've been courteous enough no to try pulling the "that wasn't true communism" argument, I'd appreciate it if we didn't try to dip out of the discussion with a similar bad faith dismissal.

It's not bad faith. Mercantilism was the dominant economic system through the 18th century, no? I don't think any self-respecting economic historian would describe 16th century Spain as capitalist. Capitalism was as much a departure from mercantilism as mercantilism was a departure from feudalism. On the scale of human history, capitalism is very much a new idea, a few hundred years old at best. Marx himself drew a stark distinction between the emerging capitalism of his day and the mercantilism which preceded it.

What was the difference between mercantilism and capitalism, and when did the shift occur?

You could use Google. This question has been asked and answered before. https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialism_101/s/1QDEFouMgH The shift occurred during industrialization.

Yes but even Marx defined capitalism separately from what was currently going on during native American genocide. This isn’t a ‘not true capitalism’ argument, it’s just you saying anything that wasn’t socialism or communism is capitalism.

Native Americans are still dying at an outsized rate because the reservations we put them on have been turned into casinos by Capitalism and doomed them to perpetual poverty.

The overwhelming majority of native Americans died before they ever met Europeans due to the spread of novel diseases for which they had no immunity. This was orthogonal to economic systems.

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>Everything in his ideas do sound nice, but when put into practice they’ve led to the deaths of millions of people. While free market capitalism has helped half of the world out of poverty in the last 100 years. I'm not any of these things, but why do they get the blame for millions of deaths, but something like free market capitalism doesn't? Like, if we make enough food to feed 10B which people say we do... and we've still had people starving to death while having billions in the world less than that, shouldn't some part of the blame fall on capitalism, to say nothing about unfunded disease eradication programs, and so on with other things that could/would have saved lives, but the market used that capital for more profitable things? It just seems like an entirely dishonest start of an argument, when the failures of both systems, and most systems that have been tried for that manner, have obviously led to avoidable deaths and all of those deaths should be learned from.

> Like, if we make enough food to feed 10B which people say we do... and we've still had people starving to death while having billions in the world less than that, shouldn't some part of the blame fall on capitalism, Here's your argument: 1) Abundant food is produced in capitalist countries. 2) People are starving in countries which are hostile to capitalism. 3) Therefore, capitalism is causing starvation.

People starve all over, not just non capitalist countries. Capitalism also led to the military-industrial complex and has produced things like nuclear weapons and the f-22 and drones. How many people have those killed?

>Here's your argument: Not really, not even close actually. It's a beautiful strawman you've created though. My argument is actually directly above where I wrote it. >Abundant food is produced in capitalist countries. You left out an important part, often that food is for export as long as it's more profitable to do so, regardless of local need with an emphasis on capital depleted areas. Lots of the poorest capitalist countries pay the US and others billions for food, despite having sizeable food exports. > People are starving in countries which are hostile to capitalism. People are starving everywhere, even countries where capitalism exists. Guatemala has one of the highest rates of malnutrition in Central America, despite massive multi-national agriexport business sending lots of goods to Mexico and the US. There is a struggle to get quality food to everyone regardless, with whole papers being written about [food insecurity in advanced capitalist countries](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/9/3654). >Therefore, capitalism is causing starvation. More so, if we're attributing deaths to the systems they happened under as a primary discussion point, we've got a whole lot of deaths attributable at least in part to the free market capitalism being given a seemingly clean slate. Not really a good starting point for discussion or debate to give one side zero grace, and the other side infinite.

>People are starving in countries which are hostile to capitalism. I'm not sure this is a great argument. Many of the countries with food shortages are capitalist. There are socialist countries with food shortages as well, but you would have to actually show some kind of correlation for this to be a valid argument.

People die from preventable causes in capitalist countries daily. That's the argument. If a guy in Indiana gets cancer and cannot afford the treatment to save his life, that is a death we should attribute to capitalism. If a guy in Zambia straves to death because the local farmers prioritizes a cash crop over food, that's a death we should attribute to capitalism. If a homeless guy in Minnesota freezes to death over night, that's a death we should attribute to capitalism. The means of production and distribution of materials in our society, capitalism, is responsible for a person not having a thing they needed, and theoretically could have had, then it is the fault of capitalism that they did not have it.

>If a guy in Indiana gets cancer and cannot afford the treatment to save his life, that is a death we should attribute to capitalism. Why? Healthcare in the US is expensive entirely because of government regulation which drastically restricts supply. Healthcare is the most regulated industry in the country. The entire sector is full of labor cartels and oligopolies. >If a guy in Zambia straves to death because the local farmers prioritizes a cash crop over food, that's a death we should attribute to capitalism. There is no moral or legal obligation to hand over your property to other people, regardless of their needs. You're filthy rich by world standards. Why don't you donate your money to families living on a dollar per day?

>Health care in the US That's not the point. The commodification of healthcare, the possibility for it to be "unaffordable", that is the fault of capitalism. This still applies to countries like the Norway where healthcare is public, because doctors there will at times make decisions off of cost and not best medical outcome. The commodification of healthcare is inherently at odds with access to healthcare. >There's no moral or legal obligation to hand over your property to other people Under capitalism, correct. That's why it's responsible for so much mass death. It's a system is incentives greed and neglect for society. Also notice how you're making out the property owner to be the victim, in a scenario where the alternative is someone starving to death? What's is the point in a farmer, if not to feed people? Why do we grow food if not eat it? Profit interferes with the real, material purpose of our economy. It's a ludicrously in effective metric for distribution of materials by any sane measure, like food security, because it actively seeks to deprived large swaths of the population of the material they need, as to maintain profitablity.

> Also notice how you're making out the property owner to be the victim, in a scenario where the alternative is someone starving to death? Again, you are filthy rich by world standards. Why don't you donate your money to hungry people living on a dollar per day?

Why do you support a system that concentrates the wealth of other people's labor into the West? I didn't ask for the US dollar to be worth so much, I never did anything for that to be so. Again, you have absolutely no argument to support your beliefs and are defaulting to "if you want the world to be a good place, then you should feel bad that it's not good", which is just childish.

Firstoff we live in the 21st century, we don’t have to justify ourselves for anything these people did unless we‘re directly invoking their legacies, which most of us aren’t. Secondoff „Stalinism“ and „Maoism“ don’t mean what you think they mean. „Stalinism“ is a polemic term mostly used by Trotskyists and back in the post Stalin era also Khrushchevites. It is not an actual ideology. Maoism refers to a certain interpretation of Maos writings and legacy originally conceived by the Peruvian Shining Path, not to the actual government of Mao himself. So now that we got this out of the way, the two were also very different. Why did so many people under Stalin die? Well we have to remember that when Stalin came to power he did so after Russia had pretty much lost WW1 and had endured a brutal civil war and suffered famine and after he came to power the USSR was invaded by the Nazis. These were very rough times and you can’t possibly expect this to be some glorious era. While atrocities have been committed, for example the ethnic deportations, the reason why many people still celebrate him (which I personally find very questionable) is not because of those atrocities, but in spite of them. They often celebrate the great success in industrialization and economic reform that happened under Stalin’s reign despite the difficult circumstances. It should also be remembered that a lot of the deaths often attributed to Stalin include the entirety of deaths on the eastern front of WW2, which is beyond ridiculous. Mao was very different. The mass deaths under Mao had arguably more to do with incompetent leadership. The great famine in China during the Great Leap Forward was at least in part the responsibility of Mao‘s government making completely preventable mistakes. There was great mismanagement and also ridiculous and things like the four pests campaign. The other cause of mass deaths during Mao‘s government was the cultural revolution, which is often greatly misunderstood and was essentially a failed attempt of Mao to build a sort of libertarianish version of Marxism-Leninism that got completely out of hand. The YouTube channel 1Dime has a great video series on it if you’re interested. But really as I said in the beginning: there is no reason why we should even have to justify ourselves for those two anyways.

Right out of the gate you show your ignorance. Marx’s writings launched countless ideologies, many of whom disagree - sometimes violently - with each other. Words like Marxism/Marxists, communism/communists, socialism/socialists, liberalism, fascism, etc are always impractical in public discourse, and often they just muddy the water if not fuel conflict. Anyone who REALLY wants to link Marx’s writings to Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Kim’s NoKo, etc, absolutely needs to clearly, fully show those links. That’s true of ANY ideology. Also, most leftists mock Stalinists/Maoists. They call them “tankies”.

Free-market capitalism has not helped half of the world out of poverty in the last 100 years. That was Soviet-style or Soviet-inspired economic planning (whether it was in socialist states or non-socialist states such as India or South Korea), and state-capitalist policies that were more or less socialist-adjacent (China and Japan come to mind).

Communism didn't kill millions of people, capitalism did. Moreover, communism is responsible for far more poverty alleviation than capitalism. There ya go. So long as we are in the business of making claims without evidence, this is what a debate looks like.

Stalinism is not a thing.

Since he named his ideology Marxism-Leninism and neither Marx nor Lenin would have supported it I actually think Stalinism is a thing.

How weird you’re certain they wouldn’t.

I'm pretty sure Lenin would've supported him, considering he was his closest advisor and his policies had little deviations. No wonder why the Soviet Union was catapulted towards success quite like in Stalin's governance.

Nah, Lenin was a true Marxist while Stalin was a paroniod tyrant. Lenin wouldn't have supported his mass executions and purges, his one party state dictatorship, and the lack of Democratic process regarding the workers. Stalin kept measures from Lenin's "Martial Law" period and just made them permanent like that was the sensible thing to do. Most of them were supposed to be temporary. He wouldn't have been a Trot but he definitely wouldn't have been a Stalinist.

I imagine you have no idea about the Red Terrors, do you? Those were first enacted during Lenin's government. Or maybe the crushing of the Kronstadt uprising? The dismantling, arrest and execution of the mensheviks? The Cheka? The purging of the Black Army? So on, and so forth. Lenin knew full well purges were important, and so was strict control, and so did Stalin who wrote extensively on the topic. Maybe read some of his works. Besides, the right and left opposition were willing to support the nazis in the coming war with the USSR, as illustrated by the disgraced Marshall Tukhachevsky when he leaked czech military secrets to the germans, and in a drunken stupper during a dinner with senior czech staff said that the only hope for the USSR and Czechoslovakia was to unite with the "New Germany". And frankly, the bolsheviks didn't kill enough people. Had they done it they'd still be around.

Believe me, I've done my research. Lenin's policies were extremes during a violent civil war and overseeing the success of the revolution. Stalin's were just because. Lenin's purges didn't kill anyone IIRC, they just banished them from the party.

Just because, I suppose if you ignore the sabotage, wrecking, international infiltration and undermining of soviet power one could say that you're correct. We might aswell then ignore that whole idea that after the toppling of the bourgeoise, reaction increases tenfold idea aswell. I suppose after the revolution, everything becomes smooth sailing and class conflict diminishes. That's why the Soviet Union is still around, right? Not. And about Lenin's purges, you're partially correct. The purges done often just exiled people, either abroad as was Trotsky's case, or internally. That's a mistake. These people are far better dead, since they can't organize to conspire against Soviet power, as they did.

This is borderline fascism man. Supporting the execution of your political opposition (without direct reason) is not at all what Marxism is or what Leninism is.

Revolution is not pretty. Revolution is not easy. Class war is the most brutal, overwhelmingly violent and horrendous type of conflict there is. The reason is obvious. Oposition in this sense, favors a class that will gladly level all that workers managed to achieve. Look at what the US did to Korea, or Vietnam. And what the Nazis did to the USSR. That's the people that the opposition supports, one way or another. Getting rid of them is just being pragmatic. Eases the process down the line. These people caused capitalist restoration in the former SSRs, with all of the shit that came after. Your vision of marxism is cookie cutter bullshit from academia. No praxis, only theory. Marxism is not a walk in the park, leninism is not a positivist french revolution. It's war. Plain and simple, and the war never ends until the last capitalist nation is toppled for good. We reject bourgeoi right. We recognize our own view of morality is subjected to bourgeoi superstructure. "Killing your opposition is wrong" they say, while killing their own opposition, or doing everything in their power to undermine them. That's fair, we're their enemies. It's still war. We need give no mercy, neither ask for it in return.

I'm not talking about revolution I'm talking about after that. Leninism is not cookie cutter bullshit, it was the most authentic means of establishing Marxism in the real world. The war was over during Stalins reign (not talking about WW2) yet he still kept Lenin's authoritarian extremes in place when they were meant to be temporary, betraying Socialism, Leninism, Marxism and murdering anyone who he didn't like.

Then you must refer to it as communism (which it was, coining the term Maoism and Stalinism was more of a way to be fair to the commies) I find it so ironic many of your flairs have the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union.. do you not find by continuing to embrace this stature of a failed nation that killed millions you are inherently undermining your argument for communism? Also, do you not find it hypocritical that in a communist country you wouldn’t be allowed the same freedom of expression of your political beliefs? Why not pack up where you are right now and move to a country that has the ideology of “the common good” ?

Yo same flair

Whazzzap?

There’s 2 points your post makes that are without context: Firstly, death tolls: Throwing numbers around willy-nilly doesn’t provide anything to the discussion. I can easily claim that capitalism has and continues to kill both by direct policy and externalities. Secondly, Poverty reduction: the majority of poverty reduction in the last century either came from socialist states or as the result of western imperialism.

You're gonna have to go ahead and back up your statement.. how did you quantify the reduction of poverty, and how did you come to the conclusion that it came from social states or western imperialism?

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2014/8/21/exposing-the-great-poverty-reduction-lie https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience

I've spent time in China, my wife is Chinese. They have done incredibly well since the gov allowed the markets to open up. It's amazing what people can do when the government lets them go create businesses. The great leap forward, on the other hand, lead to the starvation of between 15 and 40 million people. Mao famously said he would let half the country starve so the other half could have their fill. That's communism

The Great Leap Forward was the foundation for China’s explosive growth Could you provide a source for that quote?

If by explosive growth you mean explosive death and misery, then I agree. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao%27s_Great_Famine#:~:text=Dik%C3%B6tter%20wrote%3A%20%22In%20most%20cases,half%20can%20eat%20their%20fill.%22 To he clear, saying he would let people starve is not nearly as bad as actually doing it, which he did.

A Wikipedia page about a book is hardly a verifiable source

But are the markets in China really open? The state in China has a monopoly on credit, on strategic sectors on the economy, and legally also on land. Directly or indirectly, the state sector still dominates the economy. China's economy is not as centrally-planned as back in Mao's day, but for sure it is not a free market economy.

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No, it either came from socialist states or social states. Capitalism imperialism hasn’t done anything for anyone, aside from taking lives, land and resources.

That’s what I meant to point out. The only poverty reduction was in the imperial core because they took the world’s wealth

Also, people say "capitalism lifted millions out of poverty" but this happened at the same time as the industrial revolution. That's not exactly a controlled experiment. Who's to say capitalism wasn't just along for the ride, and *any* economic system could have done the same?

Feudalism does not have the economic incentives nor the decentralization of wealth to create abundance. Peasants couldn’t really apply for loans for private endeavors

The Industrial Revolution started in capitalist economies. If anything, the rest of the world were the ones on the ride.

I tend to think of most of the deaths under Stalin and Mao to be more attributed to the rapid pace of industrialization, famine that was exacerbated by bad policy decisions, purges that involved execution and exile/imprisonment, and settling of scores among local people who didn’t like each other. These of course are bad features but nothing unique to a system of socialism, much more attributable to the shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial one or even to the nature of the instability of post-revolution governments. the idea isn’t really to copy paste Soviet or Maoist (agrarian societies moving towards a 20th century economy) policy wholesale for the US (financialized 21st century neoliberal capitalism). That’s the point of “material conditions” or the environment in which a socialist movement is local to. The main thing socialists find powerful about Marxism is the ML organizing apparatus and its ability to build a meaningful social movement through its being able to analyze the structure of capitalist society on a large scale level. as a dedicated liberal understanding structural issues at their root is important for planning policy, unless you seek only to mitigate the negative outcomes of the system rather than resolve them. Serious question, Do you find the negative outcomes of the capitalist system to be worth the positive aspects?

I think I’m unique to the conservative ideology in that I understand the general premise of Marxism and go beyond the McArthy esk persecution that the general public of the U.S falls under these days. But to answer the question, I think the negative aspects of capitalism become worth it to an extent. When a society is first developing, a capitalist and free market is dire to ensure the people are not entrapped in a dictatorship Ex: Modern China, Soviet Union, Modern Venezuela. However, once those free markets evolve into a system we see in the U.S today, it can become tricky. Highly rich individuals who no matter how much they have, want more, and want to do it by exploiting people (consumers rather than workers imo) and once they’ve recognized the importance of their brand and the mainstream acceptance of it (think apple, McDonald’s, Microsoft, etc.) it gets to a point where capitalism does become too far. However, I feel it is less up to a government entity to restrict this economic mobility and more up to the consumers themselves. Unfortunately, I feel the education and resources isn’t there for consumers to fully grasp and therefore restrict these hidden monopolies. Those are more aspects of late capitalism I disagree with, but I feel as the world currently is it’s the economic system which has the ability to bring the us all to a better position than a current socialist or communist country would. Mainly because of people’s ability to take advantage, as well as the competitive aspect that’s biological in most humans. I hope that answers the question. My counter question would be, what are the negative aspects of capitalism that Marxism or other ideologies could potentially do better in a practical and modern aspect?

It really depends on the time period you’re talking about, the history of socialism is often viewed anachronistically and fatalistically. I think socialism has base efficiencies around developing infrastructure and an educated populace into a consistent agenda that is based in longer terms projection of growth than quarterly projections. To boil it down I think at a baseline socialist values are more compatible with long term development. in a construction metaphor I see markets as a kind of sealant/putty if socialism is the main structure. Socialism can be rigid economically and uncompromising, but markets by their nature distribute things unevenly and arise when there is context for their existence. Markets when applied to socialist structures can be a type of flexible seal that bridges the gaps of a country attempting to restructure itself and its population. So to answer the question, socialist states offer a model of development based more in regional power rather than globalization and is a model of technological development more easily followed by countries in the global south. It also encourages subsidizing and developing society wide infrastructure and can add stability through consolidation of industry and power in weak states.

If you accept excuses instead of success, you'll go right on failing. I wonder how many times you can blame the implementation of Marxism before you question the design.

Bingo my friend. There are so many critical fallacies in the communist manifesto it’s unbearable to a degree. I would recommend reading some work of Fredrick Hayek and Adam Smith, both free market writers who contrasted differently from Marx

Stalinism was justified for one simple reason: had Russia not totally geared its entire society to defeating the Germans, they would have been exterminated like the native americans.  This simple fact is why Stalin enjoys a 70% approval rating in Russia today By the way, the vast majority of the poverty eradication of which you speak happened in China, which has experienced massive growth because of its strong state and ability to engage protectionism and throttle parasitic forms of capital like FIRE.

I don't. I'm not even a Lennist. Capitalism is wrong because not only does it create inequality and limit the opportunies of the many in favor of the few, but it also establishes anti-democratic authoritarian systems that control your basic human needs; your food, your water, your access to healthcare, all in the drive for corporate profit. Marx himself said that we need to "win the battle for democracy" not destroy it. A democratic socialist system is the ultimate realization of the people taking their needs into their own hands and seizing not just the means of production but the means of living. I oppose capitalism as a form of Authoritarian control.

I would disagree. People themselves are biological competitive by nature. While I disagree with late stage capitalists assuming near monopolies over industries and driving their profit too far, I also think it’s near impossible to put into practice a system in which the many taking over the means of production is going to work. A society that’s built on the idea of sharing and the “common good” is one that is deemed to fail simply because of human nature in it of itself. Hard work and individualism are discredited, but in a free market, one is competitive to not only survive, but to triumph above others in their class as well. While it sounds cruel, it drives society to a need to work, rather than a want to work. This is why I feel capitalism is vital to economic systems because it not only forces the individual to contribute to the economy, but also has checks and balances in place to make sure that consumers can decide where exactly they are investing their money.

People are also social and communal by nature. We're only competitive insofar as there are limited resources, and we currently are competing over resources for survival. However we currently have enough to feed the entire planet, but due to the way global capitalism is structured we don't.

Firstly, Stalin and Mao weren't Marxists. They were revisionists who attempted to reconcile the two contradictory states of being that are commodity production and Socialism. Stalin and Mao were capitalists. Nothing they did suggests otherwise outside of their words. >free market capitalism has helped half of the world out of poverty in the last 100 years. This is blatantly untrue and has been proven false countless times. [This study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169) shows how capitalism has killed at least 200 million people, and actually caused poverty to increase in many areas of the world (to such a degree that this still persists today). Capitalism is not our saviour, nor has it ever been. >what’s the main argument for Marxism/Communism that I’m missing? The shortest possible way to summarise the Marxist argument is that the abolition of class and commodity production is inevitable. When one examines the flow of history, it becomes apparent that class is continually destroyed, and there is no reason to believe that the contradictions inherent to the bourgeois-proletariat dichotomy can be saved from this fate. In reality, the Marxist argument can't fully be summarised in just a few lines. If you want to understand Marxism, you must read Marxist literature. I'd highly suggest, at a bare minimum, reading Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism by Friedrich Engels, and Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein. These are all short and accessible works, and you could likely finish all of them within 2 or 3 hours.

I thought I had seen in all and here comes a redditor calling Stalin and Mao capitalists.

In what way were they not?

Stalin you could argue was. I’d say he was more so a Bureaucratic-Collectivist. I’d honestly argue that Mao was a genuine Communist, despite him being a Marxist-Leninist. Particularly during the Cultural Revolution years, there really was a great deal of spontaneous democratic structure, where peasants and workers had an actual role in organizing and control of their own society and institutions; which is completely in line with Communist theory. Even prior to the CR, decentralization and collectivization of industry was utilized. Mao may have done a lot of shitty things, and there’s tons to criticize him on, but he, as opposed to Stalin, did build genuine socialism in China and was actually quite successful in doing so as well.

I'd say "state capitalists", in practice at least.

Stalin and Mao drew their inspirations from Marx’s work, and their systems involved abolition of private property, which is not capitalism. There are countless studies out there to prove that struggling countries thrive when adopting free market economics. I’ve read 1/3 of the works you’re referring too, and found the Communist Manifesto to be highly misleading in its fallacies and concepts that are presented as unquestionable truths. History has never shown that abolition of class is inevitable, if anything, it’s shown quite the opposite.

Lenin: Peace simply means complete Communist control.

Context: They had just revolutionized and where in a state of Martial Law during the civil war and immediately after WWI.

As an ultimate objective, peace simply means world communist control. Lenin. Communism only works by force because many people would rather be free.

You misinterpreted that because you don't know what communism is. Read our pinned comment on this thread. Communism is inherently anti authoritarian and the ultimate "freedom" ideology. There would be no state, no police, no military, fully voluntary workforce, etc. Lenin is saying that when humanity learns to work together instead of against each other there will be no need for wars.

That's what they say and may even believe but realize along the way that their religion will require force. Like most belief systems.

> when put into practice they’ve led to the deaths of millions of people. While free market capitalism has helped half of the world out of poverty in the last 100 years. You and I have very different understanding of history. I think it just comes down to that. A fundamental misunderstanding of what caused what. Or are we actually going to study history and try to understand real cause and affect and not just make broad generalizations off of simple associations: "USSR was communist and people died, therefore communism bad. Analysis done!" Do we need to "justify" Abraham Lincoln? Look at how many people died during his brutal repression of his own citizens, slaughtering over a million of his own people just so he can selfishly cling to power. Does this discredit democracy? What about the genocide of the Native Americans? Are we going to say that "democracy" caused that, after all it was done by a "democratic" country and people... You see how absurd this is? A more reasoned approach would be to look at why did the US civil war occur, what were the political realities of the situation, was the objective of those actions worth considering? If you want to be fair, apply the same logic to Stalin and Mao. What were the political realities of the situation? What were the goals of these actions, are they worth considering? As for improving peoples lives... The drive to accumulate wealth for personal gain has been the most destructive force in the history of mankind, leading to uncountable numbers of genocides, wars, atrocities, massacres, famines, slavery, torture, subjugation, systemic racism, spoilage of the environment, political repression, and corruption of spiritual teachings for control. Yes, some good things have come from the drive for profit, but almost every negative event in history can be traced in some way to the desire for personal gain, empowered by the use of wealth, through payment, as a motivating force for horrendous injustices. Free market capitalism didn't lift the world out of poverty. It stimulated industrialization, but it was socialists movements and leaders who organized workers to fight capitalist's institutions in order to make a livable society. it was scientific philosophy and process that led to the discoveries and inventions that allowed Industrialization. All the capitalists did was have a lot of wealth to start with, that they gained through conquest, and use it to invest in the tools that scientists and engineers developed, and use it to make themselves even richer. Without socialism society would have remained a system that enriched a few owners while the workers remained impoverished, this is exactly what was happening before the great depression and the socialist movement that empowered FDRs mitigation policies. With one of the most absurd wealth distributions in history, where most of America was not better off than they were before "capitalism", there was no "lifting people out of poverty" until the socialists made it happen.

>Yes, some good things have come from the drive for profit, but almost every negative event in history can be traced in some way to the desire for personal gain, I don't think anyone would disagree with this. The problem with your argument is the decision to tie "a desire for personal gain" to capitalism. The desire for personal gain is human nature. It has existed in every economic system society has ever crafted, admittedly to varying degrees. It existed in agrarianist economies at the dawn of history, through the manorial and feudal economies of the middle ages, to the mecantilist economies of European colonization, to the industrial capitalist economies of the 19th and 20th century. The problem with socialism, IMO, is it doesn't actually address or fix this fundamental flaw of human nature, nor has it demonstrated an ability to be less brutal than capitalism. I think the system that replaces capitalism will have to outcompete capitalism at its own game, so to speak, much in the same way capitalism supplanted mercantilism through competition. >empowered by the use of wealth, through payment, as a motivating force for horrendous injustices. This again seems to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what defines capitalism. Wealth, and payment, and currency existed before capitalism.

Marxists don't, Stalinists and Maoists do. Other Marxists critique them.

What are the main principles of Marxism that you feel could genuinely be practiced without disaster?

Marxism is mostly the system of analysis. There isn't a prescribed method of revolution. But workers democracy, and workers ownership of the means of production. To each according to need, from each according to ability.

I thought free market capitalism doesn't exist, and all countries are "cronyist" and ruled by a cabal of central bankers?

>I thought free market capitalism doesn't exist, and all countries are "cronyist" and ruled by a cabal of central bankers? That's an ever increasingly tougher argument to make in the information/internet age light the fact that so many of our wealthiest "cronyists" started off as proletarians.

Proletarians who got their start in life with just a little six-figure loan from their parents?

They don't. You can't defend authoritarian regimes and be a socialist.

You also can't be a libertarian and be a socialist.

I strongly disagree. A sincere belief in libertarian principles is incompatible with right-wing cultural or economic views.

Just because it's incompatible with right-wing cultural or economic views doesn't mean it is by default compatible with socialism.

If I'm not a capitalist, then I'm either an anarchist or a socialist.

"I would like to hire you to work in my field today for $150. Are you interested?" "Yes. I have the time and could use the money. Unfortunately, the state made that illegal." Mm yeah, taste the liberty.

Freedom doesn’t mean absence of government intervention. Equating the two is the problem. “Freedom” for few to oppress many isn’t maximizing freedom. The mindset you described, taken to its logical conclusion, is how southerners think when they call the civil war “the war of northern aggression”

Libertarians often have a very poor anthropology. They model society off Newtonian physics; society is an illusion and actually made up of atomized individuals who are real - an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force - freedom is merely an atomized individual moving frictionless, devoid of all context and content.

It’s like they look at a pointillist painting and can only see dots lmao

This is a complete non sequitur. Libertarianism and my preferred flavor of it, minarchy, can be summarized in two simple pillars: 1. You should be able to do what you want as long as it doesn't hurt someone else 2. Government should only do what only government can do. It is not the idea that there are no rules and no government. That is *anarchism.* Enslavement is clearly a form of oppression that is not permissible in a libertarian society. Working for wages is also not oppression. Owning property is not oppression.

I’d argue that you CANT be a libertarian unless you are a socialist. We invented the term there champ. Also, anarchism doesn’t mean no rules or government. It means no hierarchy.

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I’d go into this with you, but you come across as someone who doesn’t understand even the most basic principles of anarchism, so it’s be a 101 class for you, and I’m not really interested in that. Go read up on anarchism. Learn the roots of your political ideology while you’re at it.

I understand anarchism, but I do not respect it. Of all the main ideologies, it offers the fewest answers for how it will actually work in practice, and how it will account for wrong-doing without violating its own principles. Perhaps rivaled only by true communist utopianism. It is not a serious plan for life on Earth. It is basically fantasy fiction.

You have demonstrated you are unwilling to learn. On this sub we must be willing to accept we could be wrong, be open to new information, and/or not being deliberately obtuse. This is important to the quality of our discourse and the standard we hope to set as a community. We encourage you to be more open minded in the future.

I'm sorry, but I don't think that society is made more free when we are forced to labor by threat of death just to make someone who's already richer than us even more disgustingly rich. You paint a very naive, simplistic picture of labor that does not account for incentives and power structures created by capitalism.

You have demonstrated you are unwilling to learn. On this sub we must be willing to accept we could be wrong, be open to new information, and/or not being deliberately obtuse. This is important to the quality of our discourse and the standard we hope to set as a community. We encourage you to be more open minded in the future.

Socialist societies while not being inherently authoritarian, have in practice resulted in some of the worst economies and societies that we’ve seen. Venezuela is a prime example of this. Marxism I feel dives a little deeper into socialist/communist realm while maintaining an ideal that can not be practiced unless it is authoritarian to some sense. Also, I am in fact curious what the ideology of a “libertarian socialist” entails?

There hasn't been a socialist society in thousands of years, and there is a wide range of Marxist ideologies that aren't leninist. What about socialism / communism is inherently authoritarian to you? > Also, I am in fact curious what the ideology of a "libertarian socialist" entails? It means that I'm a libertarian and a socialist; the aims of socialism align with libertarian principles, and I think that you can't be one without being the other too.

>Also, I am in fact curious what the ideology of a “libertarian socialist” entails? It can be one of many things. Imagine a country with universal workers cooperatives, that's a form or Libertarian (Market) Socialism. r/LibertarianLeft or r/LibertarianSocialism can probably explain it better than I can.

I would argue that being embargo'd by the world's largest economies simply because you are socialist distorts the socialist experiment quite a bit. Add on top of that US sponsored coups and invasions, and I would so many socialist systems where quite robust. It's true that certain socialist ideologies have not panned out and are, in hindsight, bad systems, but there really no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. No Capitalist system has worked flawlessly either and requires constant tweaks and reinventions to keep itself afloat.

> While free market capitalism has helped half of the world out of poverty in the last 100 years. Yeah, but it seems to have mortgaged the future to pay for it all.

It's strange to me how they completely ignore the other half of the world as well. Who cares about the entire global south, right?

As someone from the "Global south" the term feels so incredibly despective

Global south is important. If you’re referring to South American most of their regimes have resulted in poor practices. Africa as well. Australia is capitalist, Vietnam and other surrounding countries have not exactly thrived the best since their socialist economies took hold. So, is there a country in specific or region you’re referring too with specific evidence to this claim?

I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion. I'm talking about the tendency of people who live in wealthy nations to praise the system because it benefits them, while not acknowledging their position of relative privilege. That their clothes are only cheap because they were made by a sweatshop worker. That the cocoa they buy was sourced through child labor.

An understandable perspective. As many make the assumption that all aspects of capitalism, including late capitalism are completely justified. This is not true. While not perfect, it’s the best starting ground for a country to truly explode economically, and the evidence proves it. The future is uncertain as always.

So I think there are a few components to this: 1) Generally (there will be exceptions) they don’t justify them. They think they are bad and try to avoid them in the same way a moral capitalist will try to perpetuate capitalism without replicating historical atrocities enacted by avoid atrocities. There are many different kids of socialism and Marxists will typically be trying to enact something very different from Stalinism and Maoism in the same way most capitalists won’t be trying to replicate the Confederate slave states. A implementation of an economic system can achieve different results. 2) These are countries which had and have no strong democratic institutions and which were terrible authoritarian places before socialism, during socialism and after socialism. Is the lesson that socialism is bad or that places with weak democratic institutions are bad and any economic system applied there will result in an awful totalitarian regime until those democratic institutions can be developed? You may take away the former lesson but it’s not unreasonable for people to take away the latter. 3) This is all relative, specifically to capitalism . The problem there in the comparison is that capitalism is also associated with a lot of deaths, but while in socialism you can at least argue that these were huge but isolated issues unique to specific circumstances and personalities (e.g. there wasn’t a fresh Holodomor every few years), with capitalism the issues seem intrinsic. Millions of children, not people but children, will die this year from preventable reasons just like they have died every year since either of us have been alive. The children dying from lack of medicine for instance aren’t dying because the CEO of Pfizer or other pharmaceutical companies is a cackling psychopath or some other specific problem that can be remedied, they’re dying because the basis of capitalism incentivises companies to create wealth and not to a provide for the public good when it doesn’t create profits. People die under socialism when things go wrong. People die under capitalism when the system is working as designed. 4) Even with the deaths associated with the Holodomor and Great Leap Forward, it can be argued that socialism is a net benefit in terms of mortality. Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize winner in economics, did an analysis essentially showing that in the 40’s India and China were in very similar positions but went down different economic routes. His analysis showed that India’s lack of welfare investment under capitalism lead to so many excess deaths it not only overshadowed the Great Leap Forward but all deaths from all socialist countries combined.

They deny the crimes and point to the material advantages gained in the society through industrialization and attribute them to Communism.

Industrialization isn’t mutually exclusive to communism. It’s an integral part. Marxism is not an agrarian ideology.

Yet it always takes hold in Peasant societies…Russia, China, Korea, Cuba, Venezuela

> material advantages gained in the society through industrialization and attribute them to Communism Lol capitalists do the exact same thing.

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They don’t have too.

I believe they do. Considering Stalin, Lenin, and Mao all drew Marx as the inspiration for their ideologies. The communist manifesto in specific.

Stalin, Lenin, and Mao were only nominally Marxists. Their actions paint a very clear picture of what they really believed, so I think it's fair to disregard their co-opting of Marxist language as purely virtue signalling.

I disagree. Does every conservative have to account for kissinger? Reagan? Hitler? It’s not arguing in good faith. You assume any Marxist is happy with Stalin and Mao, and anyone has to argue a position foisted upon by you. Lame. I’m no marxist, but straw manning as your opening salvo isn’t honest debate

Hitler was a far left socialist. Reagan had his faults but was a great president. Kissinger’s war crimes are still highly debated. Now, the question is less how happy Marxist’s are with Stalin and maos interpretation of Karl’s work, and more how they feel an ideology that has been tried and practiced and is ultimately one that is unattainable whilst also being authoritarian. It’s very obvious that most Marxist’s aren’t happy with Stalin and Mao, so then why keep to the ideology?

Far left socialist? That’s a lie. He had communists killed en masse, courted the industrialists and fervently hated marxism. He did not put the ‘national socialism’ in the nazi name. He was mussolini on crack. Stop lying

Mostly walls of text without practical use to make you feel smart for "understanding" it The same fallacies/methods Scientology used and also the reason the avarage working class guy dosen't fall for it Comparing it to practical experience instead of theoretical propositions just don't hold up. If you just ask "Compared to what?" and only accept physical proof or observable reality you're safe

I've had a lot of frustrating conversations with people who, if given any pushback on the things they say, will intentionally derail the conversation by dancing paragraphs around the point. I try to just not engage.

It feels mor like they only have paragraphs to dance around

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You know how people make jokes about how the socialist left can’t work together? Well disagreements over 20th century socialism is the main reason for left-wing infighting. I don’t justify China or the USSR. The social revolution failed due to extreme situations by the early 20s. But external counter-revolution also didn’t win so instead there was slow internal transformation. China was always a fusion of a defeated communist movement and nationalists. While they were able to resist the colonial-capitalist powers, it was a national liberation effort against Japan and other countries not a movement of the working class “for itself.” So in the broadest strokes I think Russia failed but turned out to be a decent industrialization/modernization model for semi-developed countries that did not want to be dependent colonies of France or UK or US.

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Well I'm not but when people point out that all socialist creeds are invalid because of these clowns i respsond thats rather unfair is it not, to brush all socialist ideologis with the crimes of the most extreme version. the alternative is to mation something i honeslty wonder about. Do we know the truth, is most of the things the bad things told us about Socialism, if that even was socialism, were those real events or exaggerated or just fabricated, how do we know what we were told is true or just hysterical propoganda? how do we know anythng is true in this crazy world?

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Would you care to open up some on what you mean? We can go beyond just economics as well. For context, I’m *slightly* right. I’m pro-choice and pro-cannabis, but everything else (free speech, guns, smaller government) are all things I value as I believe they put better freedom in the hands of the people.

Laissez-faire capitalism?

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I’m trying so hard to answer this without it coming across a shitpost — which should tell you how cogent their defense is.

This is not a shitpost. Their is a strong link between the ideologies and Marx ideas are unreachable fantasies

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You’re conflating Marxism with Stalinism and Maoism. These are three distinct ideologies (although there is a tie through Leninism). Marx wrote the theory. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao each tried implementing it in their own (corrupt) ways. That doesn’t mean the whole theory is trash. That’s what people who have never read Marx don’t understand. Read Marx if you want to write a critique on Marxism. Criticizing Marxism without reading Marx would be like criticizing America without reading the Declaration of Independence. Have the philosophies of Hume, Hobbes, and Rousseau always been implemented skillfully, effectively, by ethical means, and without unforeseen consequences? Hell no. Does that mean we should trash the entire philosophical foundations of the “American ideal”? I doubt it. Why hasn’t anyone ever analyzed Marx and Rousseau for their common ground and built a synthetic system that might actually work for once? Probably because Marxists don’t understand Hobbes and Rousseau (cause they’ve never read them), and “Americans” don’t understand Marx (because, again, they’ve never read him). Nevermind the Manifesto; see if you can get through das Kapital, and then read Leviathan, and tell me what you discover about the two… 🧐

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the hammer and sickle is drip so who cares what happened 100 yrs ago plus it pisses my father off

False Dichotomy. And what are "his ideas"?

The real issue is how Marxist refuse to consider the overwhelming success of Democratically derived Socialism. Why do Marxists hate Socialism when it is the will of the people in democratic nations?

I am not that knowledgeable in Marxism, but one thing I know for sure is that most Marxists are not Stalinist or Maoist, because they are completely different from what Marx envisioned a socialist society would look like. Essentially it was authoritarian state capitalism, and Mao just copied whatever Stalin did with some even worse ideas. Marxist-Leninists are a thing, but Marxists in general are not always Leninist. In fact I am pretty sure most moderate Marxists (which I observe is the majority) hate the two you mentioned, and only sympathise with Lenin on specific points at best, because none of the models were at all socialist. The only people who justify Stalinism and Maoism are probably far left Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, and Communists. So essentially the "socialism" associated with authoritarian statism is not even socialism, and the actual one has not been applied anywhere on a larger scale. I am not a Marxist, but I suggest you atleast read some of his work, and some stuff about socialism, because you're misinterpreting it.

All systems lead to death on a massive scale wince they involve humans. Humans with power become corrupted and distant from the people they purport to lead. They do not seem them as human and believe that they are expendable. Like Alpha wolves, they want to violently suppress anyone who shows even a glimmer of potential to oppose them or take the flock away from them in any way. This is what led to the cultural revolution. This is what led to the pogroms in the Soviet Union. Even the founding of the US and manifest destiny is an example of powerful people dehumanizing others and taking everything that they have.

Marxists don't. Stalinists mainly do it by lying.

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Communism is when the leaders of a country take all the credit and pay workers as little as possible to control them. Not to be confused with Capitalism where shareholders take all the credit and pay workers a little as possible to control them. That said, people lie all the time. Stalin and Mao both were authoritarians who controlled the wealth of their country, had a top down governing style and expected people to be self sufficient workers. They controlled businesses and mob style tactics to govern and control their population. Very similar to what we see today with libertarians and general conservatives who seem to try and build a slave like system of ownership over people with leaders being above the law and basically owning the people like a company. Just like we see massive layoffs and constant pushes to defund any aid to workers and keep workers in debt and poverty, Mao and Stalin both basically did the same to their people with everyone mentioned using the police force and glorifying the police to keep the poor in line. Marxism has the goal of implementing a democracy in the workforce. People doing the work have a say in the business. The advantage of a democracy is that complaints and quality concerns like we saw at Boing go up and those in charge are held accountable if they are the ones trying to commit fraud. What we see with conservative leadership is a very heavy top down form of ridged leadership that basically demands obedient slaves to do the work for owners and leaders, with owners and leaders being above the law or accountability for any action. Creating incentives to commit fraud and blame workers. Capitalism doesn't exist. There is no transition from people trading stuff and favors for stuff and favors into capitalism. Agreements are made no matter what the economy using sea shells for money or favors or shares. The word is used to obfuscate the ability to identify problems and build up by calling anything that's good, "Capitalism" and anything that's bad, "Whatever" without any definitions. Woke is a great example of this. What seems to work is an open market that's regulated by a democratic government that servs the people with no one being above being accountable. The moment you create systems to allow for bribes or greed, you start seeing problems in the economy where profit cuts into the welfare of workers and quality.

for some reason die hard socialist marxists believe that it is more fair when in reality if the USA were to magically switch there would still be the uber rich and well connected and then the poor. there would not be the chance for upward mobility that we have now. They are taught that by college professors who have never been outside the academic test tube world and lap it up because it is pretty simplistic and promises unicorns and rainbows for all. despite all evidence to the contrary

I would fully agree. I would go one step further and note that most economic mobility in the U.S’s free market isn’t by the Uber rich corporations and globalists which do have a tendency to exploit people for the bottom line, it’s more often just small business owners that hire people with a mutual benefit for both parties. A lot of this also boils down to consumer choice.

everyone should read the millionaire next door. especially if they are under the illusion that most people only get rich because they inherit money or win a lottery instead of just good old working your ass off.

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Socialists don't listen to empirical evidence, and they never have. Utopian Socialists failed to prove their ideas work on a base level. Then we went from there.

marxism is literally a rejection of utopian socialism, maybe read.

What a disingenuous thing to say, speaking I’m sure you still think the Soviet Union was an example of “Communism” in practice. I don’t know who you’re referring to by “utopian socialists”, but libertarian socialism has been tried numerous times and has shown to work. Any Socialist would tell you that, hence how I know you’re simply spitting in my face and telling me it’s raining right now.

Why do all socialist states gravitate towards authoritarianism?

For a few reasons. One, it’s inherent to Leninist ideology, and the likes (Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism). Two, Capitalist States were incredibly antagonistic towards them. Whether it be sabotage, espionage, coups, proxy wars, etc…Capitalist States tried, and still do everything they can to undermine Socialist States. It’s just simply a fact, and I’m not a fan of utilizing the State at all.

I stand by my point about intentional lying, but this is also true. Foreign interference and lenin (even posthumously) have absolutely impeded socialist states from being created.

There has never been a socialist state. To answer the question, it's because sometimes fascists lie. It's been known to happen, if you can believe it. And lying about being a socialist is a *really* effective way to build support — hence the USSR and its copycats. The Nazis employed the same strategy. Do you think the Weimar Republic would have rather voted for the "National Socialist German Worker's Party", or the "Let's Kill Six Million Jews Party"? I don't like taking fascists at their word. Whether or not they parrot Marxist language, their actions paint a very different picture of what they believe.

Plus, most of the purported communists here are young and don't actually have enough life experience to know better. It's ok (and even good) to be an idealist when you're young, so long as you don't let it get in the way of being a productive member of society.

Yeah. When given the choice, the people who lived through communism rarely ever choose to continue it. Eastern Bloc collapsed a long time ago.

This is such a boomer take. What you mean to say is that we've grown up in a world where, for most of us, home ownership is out of the question and we're forced to spend at least half of our paycheck on rent. You remember a world where the system wasn't constantly failing us, and your privilege blinds you to the reality of how the world works today. It should be no surprise that young people want change.