Even from people that never lived in a communist state
edit: im 17 and i hate communism
Lemmy, the social network, started off as a leftist hangout spot.
From the perspective of “Open Source developers who are anti-Reddit pro-Fediverse”, it makes a lot of sense for Leftist/Communist and anti-corporation leaning people to hang out.
After all, the more extreme the viewpoint, the more driven to action (ie: write tens-of-thousands of lines of code and release for free) people get. In some regards, its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology. IE: Free Software is driven by ideology, not by money. So you get ideological people, especially when the software is small and niche.
The July 2023 Reddit Blackout was a big challenge for Lemmy’s old community and the new community, as the new community basically “invaded” a large scale leftist hangout spot. But hopefully we all learn to work together and the nature of our neighbors moving forward.
I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion. Which is enough of an alliance to keep us together, for now.
It does mean that we’ll have to keep up with the far-left old-timers on this network who wish to push their viewpoints. But they are the legacy and the start of Lemmy in some respects, even as the hypergrowth (starting in July 2023) has moderated the community pretty severely.
I don’t see the problem with people having communist views…capitalism isn’t great.
Yeah, the problem is that you have instances like Hexbear and Lemmy.ml that tread more into tankie territory, where if you argue anything less than the complete annihilation of the West and hail China, you’re likely to get harassed. I think rational people can agree that there’s a pretty gap between “The current system is corrupt” and "anyone who thinks differently than me should die,’ but I’ve seen plenty of irrational leftists.
Came here to make this point.
The CCP’s version of “communism” is almost a textbook example to me of how an interesting system that can work beautifully on the local level can be completely betrayed and turned in to something much more like an oligarchy.I don’t understand how someone of reasonable knowledge and judgement could possibly be a tankie in 2024.
Eh, if by tankie you only mean literal communist tankies, that’s just a single aspect of human nature.
There’s absolutists, extremists, and (frankly) sociopaths in every political/ideological grouping. The more you get towards an extreme, the more you run into militant examples of the group. Tankies are just the communist bloc of the crazies.
But, there’s folks like me that are all for revolution, but draw the line at unlimited killing to achieve it, or the eradication of groups in the name of the cause. I’m an extremist by most peoples’ standards, but they’ve never been exposed to the real crazies of any extremist bloc.
You run into the bonkers adherents of communism, anarchism, nationalism, or religious extremists, and they’re essentially the same mentality because it’s a human failing that some of us are willing to kill indiscriminately for a belief. We’re just lucky that that degree of extremism is split up, keeping them from being a serious, constant threat rather than the intermittent threat that they are.
Seriously, if you ever spend time around people that are working towards a goal like a change towards socialist thought, you’ll run into the batshit ones on the edges. You hang around the wrong places, you’ll run into right wing militants as well. They, none of them, are avoid knowledge, judgement, or reason. They’re zealots, and they’d be the same no matter what ism infected them because it’s about the fire, the anger, not the actual thing they’re using as their obsession.
Fuck, I’ve met a couple of people involved in pacifist movements seriously express the idea that “we” should just rise up and kill until all the warmongers are gone. People, humans, are always going to have zealots like that, no matter what.
Because they’re paid shills using communism as a facade to spread Kremlin and CCP propaganda.
Those places are basically just The_Donald for people who think they’re more clever than to fall for the typical bullshit that was found in The_Donald.
They’re not.
I don’t agree with that crowd at all politically, but I don’t agree with everyone on all Web forums out there, all subreddits, all Usenet groups, or such either. We can share an Internet without it being a problem, I think. Just means that I tend to avoid a couple of instances and communities.
l’d be more worried about influence attempts, astroturfing, than people who openly take a position. Having a hexbear or lemmygrad home instance is being pretty open about one’s positions.
I mean, I don’t have much problem with people disagreeing with me. But I’m pretty openly pro-capitalist, though I’m not a dumbass libertarian.
I recognize the need for the “capitalist edge cases” (externalities, monopolies, etc. etc.) that must be regulated and fixed for the system to work. I also recognize that we’ve failed to regulate externalities (ex: CO2 emissions), and failed to regulate monopolies / anticompetitive behavior (see Google).
So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
Overall, I accept that the commies / tankies were here first, and the history of Lemmy makes it clear why that happened.
So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.
Right there with you.
We just gotta do the same thing today.
We also HAVE to teach the kids how to protect it better than people did 100 years ago. Most of our problems today stem from people voting to remove “useless red tape” (that was put there for damn good reasons).
The Marxist answer to why the red tape is removed is not because people directly vote for it, but that the State serves the bourgeoisie.
A leftist world view is the correct world view in my book. What I can’t stand are people who defend Russia and China.
In my experience in lemmy these same people have a very big problem with you not sharing their communist views
My problem with communist views is they’re unproven and have only lead to authoritarian governments when put into play.
Capitalism has regularly gone off the rails … but not to the degree communism has. Capitalism has been defending democracy for the last few centuries, not communism.
These are the nations that identify as communist:
- China (PRC)
- Cuba
- Laos
- North Korea (DPRK)
- Vietnam
These countries were previously communist and (of that has that) have pretty much only improved since transitioning to democracy with capitalist economic systems:
- Afghanistan
- Albania
- Angola
- Benin
- Bulgaria
- Congo
- Czechoslovakia
- Ethiopia
- Germany (GDR)
- Grenada
- Hungary
- Kampuchea
- Mongolia
- Mozambique
- Poland
- Romania
- Somalia
- Soviet Union
- Tuva
- Yemen (PDRY)
- Yugoslavia
That’s not to say that capitalism doesn’t have its problems, people here aren’t angry with it over nothing. However, if you really look at the problems it’s had, they all come down to voter manipulation and/or apathy “things are going good, why do I need to worry about politics?”.
We didn’t just wake up with weakened labor unions, weakened voter rights, weakened infrastructure, etc; we got their because of generations of apathy and frankly electing the wrong people. People that cut taxes, asked “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” (short term gain), allowed our unions to be broken up, allowed jobs to be exported over seas to communist China (which is now one of the greatest international threats), bought the cheapest products (from mom and dad at the store to the executives running major corporations) without asking why they’re cheap, etc.
The “common people” cast the votes that ultimately lead to corporations being people. The “middle class” cost votes that ultimately lead to the middle class shrinking.
I think it’s naive that communism somehow automatically makes those problems go away/means we’ll never end up with similar problems. Especially when communist countries are consistently doing worse/falling into authoritarian rule.
We need to expand our social programs, reign in our billionaires, and reign in our corporations and we’d be a lot better off. Capitalism works so long as you don’t let anyone or anything get “too big to fail.” Capitalism doesn’t have to be capitalism without limits. The reigns of power will always be challenged no matter what system we find ourselves under, only an educated vigilant population can stop that.
Capitalism “going off the rails” completely understates it. The history of the last 500 years is soaked in the blood of the capitalism. Voter apathy has nothing to do with it. Enthusiastic voters gave us genocide of indigenous peoples of North America, the nuclear bombing of Japan, and currently a 75 year genocide of Palestinians. Not to mention things that voters do not have even the semblance of a choice, such as CIA activities in the 20th century which led to bloody coups in Indonesia, Chile, and Iran, just to name 3.
You need to incorporate class analysis or else nothing makes sense. Why do American voters get shitty choices that reduce their power to the advantage of the wealthy oligarch class? Why are there oligarchs if capitalism doesn’t tend to monopoly? Does voting actually do anything? Why does the electoral college still exist? Why did Americans support the Iraq War? What role did the media serve?
I think it’s naive that communism somehow automatically makes those problems go away/means we’ll never end up with similar problems. Especially when communist countries are consistently doing worse/falling into authoritarian rule.
Communism doesn’t automatically make anything go away. The point is that the ruling class of capitalists are an obstacle to making things go away. I’m not sure what is your criteria for authoritarian rule. Capitalist countries are authoritarian too, it’s basically a meaningless signifier coming out of cold war propaganda that said communism = dictatorship and capitalism = muh freedom. The democratic processes in China and Cuba of example are lightyears ahead of what you can find in the US or European parliamentary so-called democracies.
The history of the last 500 years is soaked in the blood of the capitalism.
That’s a pretty hot take to blame all the conflict that’s happened in the last 500 years on capitalism. I think it’s likely a significant oversimplification at best. For instance, you can argue many things caused (just) WW2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II
Voter apathy has nothing to do with it. Enthusiastic voters gave us genocide of indigenous peoples of North America, the nuclear bombing of Japan, and currently a 75 year genocide of Palestinians.
That’s provably wrong. The voter turn out as a percentage of population is abysmal historically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_presidential_elections#/media/File:USA_Presidential_Elections_Turnout_by_Share_of_Population.png
I also find some of your examples, e.g., the Native Americans similarly a red herring. The plight of the Native American peoples is far more complicated than “blame capitalism.”
Not to mention things that voters do not have even the semblance of a choice, such as CIA activities in the 20th century which led to bloody coups in Indonesia, Chile, and Iran, just to name 3.
Voters control who is elected. Those that are elected control whether or not the CIA exists. The CIA would disappear tomorrow if only folks that believed the CIA shouldn’t exist were in congress.
You need to incorporate class analysis or else nothing makes sense.
No you don’t, it makes plenty of sense without “class analysis.”
Why do American voters get shitty choices that reduce their power to the advantage of the wealthy oligarch class?
Because of the people who vote a fraction of them bother with primaries and because it’s hard to find good people to run for office that want to do the job (for a myriad of reasons)?
Why are there oligarchs if capitalism doesn’t tend to monopoly?
It’s not an objective thing that “there are oligarchs.”
Does voting actually do anything?
Yes, voting matters. See policies under Trump vs policies under Biden. See Net Neutrality. See Climate Change Policy. See EPA Policy.
It’s frankly anti-intellectual to claim that “voting doesn’t do anything” or even imply as much.
Why does the electoral college still exist?
Because people vote for representatives that don’t want to get rid of it?
Why did Americans support the Iraq War?
Because people vote for representatives that supported it? Because the general population was not adequately educated and engaged in politics to understand the facts of the situation and was mislead?
What role did the media serve?
What role didn’t the media serve? What role should it have served?
You’re asking leading questions to argue your point similar to a flat-earth or giant-ism conspiracy theorist. Like, these questions do have answers and those answers go far beyond people’s economic classes and dive into a number of cultural, period, regional, and global factors. There isn’t one answer, and the one answer certainly isn’t “because the rich people made us do it.”
I’m not sure what is your criteria for authoritarian rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism
Literally, the criteria for authoritarian rule.
Capitalist countries are authoritarian too
No, they are not. Some may be, but the vast majority of western capitalistic societies are nowhere near authoritarian rule. The US is creeping towards it and (as elections do matter) may creep closer this year; time will tell.
it’s basically a meaningless signifier coming out of cold war propaganda that said communism = dictatorship and capitalism = muh freedom
That is provably false. Look at the governance models of the countries above. They were not “communism = dictatorship” they were “communism and authoritarianism.” For some reason people can’t explain away, those two things go hand and hand.
My personal take is that when you take away ownership, ownership doesn’t disappear, it just means the state is the owner. So you go from “the rich people and the government officials own the means of production” to “the government officials (that are the rich people) own the means of production” (which is exactly what happened in China).
The democratic processes in China and Cuba of example are lightyears ahead of what you can find in the US or European parliamentary so-called democracies.
That’s straight up bull shit. A mono-party rule is not under any circumstance democratic.
Can you explain one thing about how the Chinese or Cuban elections work without looking it up?
Would it change any of your opinion if I did?
But yes, I can (for China), I can explain the important part … which is that the CCP required to rubber stamp any nomination to run for office. There is no democracy when your rule can not be meaningfully challenged.
This is furthered by the infringement of rights that is the great firewall.
EDIT: For anyone who actually is reading this and wants a source instead of “he (I) said, the other person said” here’s some information fairly well compiled: https://decodingchina.eu/democracy/
I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion.
I don’t particularly have any problem with Reddit beyond the fact that (a) I don’t like their “new” Web UI and (b) the fact that one of the moves that they made to monetize their service was to ban third-party clients, which is a tradeoff that I’m not willing to make.
I mean, I was expecting that at some point, Reddit was going to have to have to shift from growth to monetization. I just didn’t agree with the particular tradeoff that they chose to make.
Are you okay with the advertising? That’s another thing that I find unacceptable.
I don’t really know what ads they showed, as I used an ad-blocker. I’d believe that it’s probably annoying, but the same is true of most websites that show ads. Reddit Gold provided a commercial ad-free option, so it wasn’t a requirement even without blocked ads. And unlike most companies, it was possible to purchase Reddit Gold without linking to one’s financial data, since they provided purchase options bounced through cryptocurrency and such. As web services go, I suppose it was probably a fair bit better than the average.
I’d have probably been willing to buy commercial Reddit service – I mean, I’ve subscribed to Usenet service, have commercial email hosting service, have commercial VPS service. I don’t have a problem with commercial service, as long as it’s something solid. The value-for-money was probably pretty good, given how much I used it. I just don’t want to be obliged to run their binary code on my systems and have data extracted from my system and be data-mined other than what they get from my web browser or open-source client.
In the beginning, I was okay with the ads on Reddit. But then, Reddit just kept making stupid decision after stupid decision on the official app’s UI, so I switched to a third party app, that happens to also have no Reddit ads. When Reddit killed the apps and continued making the official experience worse, I bailed Reddit and came here because I’m not supporting a greedy platform.
Multiple reasons.
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Lemmy was crested by and is maintained by Marxist-Leninists.
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Lemmy’s structure and rejection of the Profit Motive is in line with Communist ideals, and attracts Communists and other leftists over Reddit, which is Capitalist.
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FOSS in general is supported by Communists and Anarchists.
This is basically the most serious answer
FOSS is strongly supported by communists, but there’s also strong support for it from right-libertarians (when I was younger I remember the stereotype being that Linux users believed taxation was theft)
(I agree that the way FOSS operates is anarcho-communist in nature; I just think people with fringe politics are more likely to support FOSS in general)
Point 3 is true for almost any group you can think of. Communists, anarchists, Baptists, disestablishmentarians, etc., for any large group of people of course some of them will advocate for FOSS.
some of them
Implying that not all communists and anarchists are FOSS-advocates
We are, for obvious reasons
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Be careful where you tread here. You must be careful to separate “communists” (people who believe in economic reorganization away from the power of capital) and “tankies” (those who support corrupt regimes that project the illusion of communism).
There are indeed quite a few communists and various other alt-camp political spectrum believers on here. They do have quite liberal beliefs but don’t typically cause much of a fuss, because rational people can coexist with differing beliefs… and i dont mind them one bit. But the tankes, like lemmygrad, hexbear, etc, do stir up an anti-west "commie propaganda"fuss every chance they get, without being related to actual communism, especially if one mentions a hot button like Israel or Ukraine. And if you get into an argument with a tankie, they will just sling mud on you and call you a Nazi.
The cool part is, you can filter a lot of the chaff by just blocking the ugly instances from your user settings page (since Lemmy supports that now), blocking frequent flyers, and trimming/moving your subscribed community list to other, often smaller instances. A minimal amount of effort VASTLY increases the quality of content you’ll see on lemmy.
There are very few real communists left. On here, it’s going to be pretty much all tankies.
There are dozens of us!
Yeah, unfortunate but true…
“It wasn’t real socialism!!1!” lmao
This is the position you get when you understand capitalism is fucked but you still believe capitalist states’ propaganda about socialist revolutions that have actually managed to successfully overthrow the capitalist class, which gets worse the more those states have managed to rival and threaten capitalist rule globally.
Leaves platform enshittified by capitalism
Complains about people being communists
Bruh
Yes, but it was not enshittified by capitalism, instead it was the evil corporation that wanted more money
🤣
without capitalism this company wouldn’t have existed and you could only share you thoughts on one single website. without competition, imagine that
The internet is a government project. Without “Communism” you wouldn’t even have a single website, imagine that.
so your point is that we should not have a choice at all?
We already don’t, our choices are dictated to us by the executive boards that act as America’s unelected central planning committees.
You realize that capitalism is different from the free market and commerce, right? … Right?
Capitalism isn’t about competition or the free market or any of that. It’s about the idea that there is an ownership class that is entitled to control the flow of wealth because they had some meetings, moved some money around, and now own some buildings they didn’t build full of machines they didn’t make or move, that produce things they didn’t design, test, inspect, or assemble. But they get to decide who gets the benefit of that economic activity (it’s them, while those who actually make all that happen get peanuts).
A communist economy can reduce redundancies to increase efficiency, but that doesn’t mean it can only offer one option for any good or service. Art, variety, and uniqueness can still exist in communist economies, they just wouldn’t be gated by ability to afford things but instead by ability to produce things. Star Trek is a communist economy because the replicators can make whatever anyone wants. We don’t have the technology for that level of communism and, IMO communism doesn’t work very well unless you’re in a post-scarcity world, until then I believe it’s good to incentivise and reward workers. But even with scarcity, a communist system could make you choose between having a really nice computer vs a really nice bike, and offer less nice options to those that choose the nice other thing.
I know getting upset means I’m losing, but you’re really good.
sorry for making you upset
What?? 😭 😭 😭
I’ve lived all my life under capitalism and I hate it.
I’ve read Marx, (for real, grab the book and read it!) and I see the dude does have a point.
The language can be a bit tough to understand these days though so might want to read Ted Reese’s Socialism Or Extinction instead
I’d recommend Chris Harman’s How Marxism Works for an intro, or Engels’ Principles of Communism. The Manifesto is more of a call to action for Workers than an overview of Communism, though it’s still an important work nonetheless.
How someone can downvote two subjective statements of opinion (hates capitalism, sees a point in a book) is beyond me. There’s nothing to downvote here. It’s an opinion, not a statement of fact that is incorrect.
People misuse downvotes.
That’s an easy question to answer. People often downvote comments that waste their time. Opinions that have no basis, or that are based on bad definitions or falsehoods, those tend to get downvoted. Because there’s nothing to learn and nothing to discuss.
My approach is to only downvote factual inaccuracies or extremely terrible takes. I know that’s not for everyone, but I wish it was.
I thought the same many years ago, until I saw how it went for every single country that implemented communism and then I didnt like it so much. You all seriously think is a coincidence?
Not really surprising, it’s complicated to make progress when every world power has it out for you.
You gotta look the context and learn about geopolitics. If Communism is so bad why the USA need to keep interfering with Cuba?
Lets compare Cuba with other Caribbean islands, how they perform against those? Remember they are blocked by the strongest country in the world.
Cuba developed its own covid vaccine, cuba sends doctors to africa in order to help people there, when Italia was in a health crisis Cuba sent thousands of doctors.
Cuba has the most advanced and inclusive family laws in the world.
Edit: btw Awesome album and Lemmy was an Anarchist.
First than anything, great taste in music my dude. Ok, fair point, these countries have it hard because of economic sanctions, but that doesn’t explain why they all devolve into a tyrannical, corrupt and repressive systems where people are forced to stay and a great majority seems to want to leave. People just don’t have free will and freedom of speech in these places. Is not a coincidence, its by design, communism is intentionally “the dictatorship of the working class”.
And don’t get me wrong, I dislike very much the unregulated capitalistic system of the USA too, yet a lot of people in the world seem to want to live there instead of any communist country. If I those were my only options, I would hate it, but I would choose the same.
I strongly recommend you to read Animal Farm, it’s very easy to understand
You mean Orwell’s classic anti-capitalist novel wherein a worker’s rebellion against tyrannical bosses is betrayed by capitalist pigs who re-create the farm’s original conditions for their own profit?
You should read his “Homage to Catalonia”, Orwell fought against capitalists in Spain’s civil war and wrote a book about his experiences there.
oh you are 17. When I was 17 I also was just like you.
Also disliked communism?
When I was 17? Hell yeah, with the information I had back then.
I was super conservative lol.
I’ve read it.
Orwell was socialist my dude.
Ever read one of his other books Down and Out in Paris and London?
It helps explain why he is a socialist.
I recommend actually reading Marx and Lenin, and not fictitious allegories about strawmen
allegories are much better at explaining theories, you guys always say that it was never actually implemented. And I’m not gonna read something from a man who occupied my country in 1921
Allegories can help explain theories, but they are never sufficient to understand it. Animal Farm is an allegory of a strawman, it barely touches reality. And it’s no wonder you are that embedded in propaganda, it’s normal.
I did and it is stupid propaganda.
I recommend you learn from real books about real life like those of Marx and Lenin, not fiction.
Probably has something to do with leaving a platform because it turned into a capitalist shithole?
I’m beginning to see why people call lemmy.world the Reddit of the fediverse
It’s a microcosm of Reddit, in a lot of bad ways IMO.
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Reddit is clearly declining due to enshittification, so more ideological types leave. Radical liberals, Marxists, Anarchists, and so forth leave for other places.
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Leftists and people who have more niche interests like programming, Linux, FOSS, Piracy, Star Trek, LGBTQIA+, or other such unique interests go to more specific instances, while people seeking a replacement for Reddit go to the largest generalist instance.
The consequences of 1 and 2 are that Lemmy.world is filled with ideological liberals, but typically not leftists, FOSS enthusiasts, Piracy nerds, Star Trek, or other unique interests. All that’s left is the ideological generalist crowd, which is an echo chamber more defined by what it isn’t than by what it is.
May the foss be with you.
And also with you.
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deleted by creator
Maybe lemmy.world will have ads and NFTs at some point too lol
If you want capitalist propaganda you can go back to reddit lol
Well, it was created by “communists.”
“I’m 14 and very edgy.”
Ah yes wanting a better system not built on the capitalist exploitation of the working-class is “edgy”
Do you even know what you’re talking about?
Found them!
Sounds like you probably are
This has to be the greatest troll I’ve ever seen or else I’m a filthy commie.
Because there are a lot of communists on lemmy?
Some can be very annoying. If you haven’t blocked hexbear, I highly recommend it. They got exiled from reddit years ago and have been stewing in a tankie echo chamber ever since.
Hexbear aren’t communists, they’re just using it as a facade to spread propaganda.
They got exiled from reddit years ago
Huh, just like everyone else here
It’s weird rather that some people are such bootlickers that they complain about people being socialists/communists after leaving a platform because of capitalism
I complained about them being annoying and tankies.
The first instance of Lemmy is lemmy.ml
The ML stands for Marxist-Leninists
I mean, its actually the country tld of Mali
Yeah, but that’s not why it’s being used by those instances.
It was used because it was cheap (possibly free?).
It was free until last year, but the “enlightened” people repeating whatever they feel like, to shit on someone else’s work isn’t something new.
And .af is Afghanistan, .tv is Tuvalu, and .ai is Anguilla.
But .af is used for “As fuck”, .tv is used for media, and .ai is used for sketchy startups jumping on a bandwagon after they didn’t get rich off of blockchain/crypto.
so every other domain except lemmy is also marxists leninist like most tv and ai domains are mainly related to tv and AI, dumbass?
Could be both.
It is a communist platform, you will find communists
im 17
me too
i hate communism
I don’t care about this type of stuff on Lemmy. I love Cat, Linux, FOSS and Game. Lemmy have all of them.
GNU/Linux is all about Communism lol
I know but I don’t care. Communism have pro and cons like other system. But it’s slightly better than other if it executed correctly. That’s all I know. Please don’t ban me
.world only bans you if you criticize Biden too frequently
