• 0 Posts
  • 47 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: September 10th, 2023
  • Shyfer@ttrpg.networktoMemes@lemmy.ml•Communism in theory vs in practice
    5·
    19 hours ago

    There isn’t really a single form of communist government, same as there isn’t a single way to do democracy or capitalism. Every country does it different, experiments a different way. For all we know, the perfect way to do it is just waiting for us to discover.

    For example, I’d say the US’s form of liberal, bourgeois democracy is one of the worst ways to implement it, but it was also an early experiment with it and deserves credit for at least trying it and helping us learn what to do and what not to do.

  • Shyfer@ttrpg.networktoMemes@lemmy.ml•Communism in theory vs in practice
    9·
    19 hours ago

    Same, man, same lol. I’m still patriotic during the Olympics, but if we’re going to be funding genocides, assassinating leaders, and starting wars and shit, fuck it, I hope we lose them all lol. Let’s just start over on the whole project.

    I invite US balkanization at this point so I can go hang out in the new sovereign state of whatever CA, WA, and OR will be called. Hawaii can come, too.

  • Shyfer@ttrpg.networktoMemes@lemmy.ml•Communism in theory vs in practice
    7·
    19 hours ago

    You should compare countries of similar development. That’s a good thing. People always compare the richest capitalist countries with the poorest communist countries, but by doing that always ignore the mass amount of poor capitalist countries, ones that are poor specifically because of capitalism.

    Russia, for example, was extremely poor and behind. Comparing them to other majority agrarian societies during the Tsar makes way more sense than comparing them to countries that had been post-Industrial Revolution for awhile already, like Britain, Germany, or the US. That wouldn’t make any sense. They were trying to catch up but they were still only just getting a proletariat from their burgeoning heavy industry and rail industries when the Revolution happened. They were way behind the West otherwise. Yet in a short period of time they managed to catch up.

    China even more so was basically all peasants. Vietnam, Cuba, Korea, etc all the same, extremely poor, small, or both. So they should be compared with countries of relative equal development, which tends to be the countries in the global South, like Africa or Latin America.

    Then there’s the fact that they are kept at low development through purposeful exclusion from global markets, via sanctions, propaganda like the “Radio Free” programs, coups, support of separatist or terrorist groups, taking of national resources, being kept in debt by the IMF, and so on.

  • Shyfer@ttrpg.networktoMemes@lemmy.ml•Communism in theory vs in practice
    141·
    19 hours ago

    The USSR had to deal with a civil war, rising up during WWI and being sabotaged by the Germans, more civil war, foreign meddling, and all while being the first successful communist revolution. Yet they still managed to raise literacy, raise health outcomes, raise average life expectancy, gender equality, science and technology, end the cycle of famines (after the first one or two they had when they were still building up), had faster growth during that period than any capitalist country (except maybe the US, which was doing imperialism at the time and the biggest hegemon), all while helping sustain other socialist countries, like Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea.

  • Shyfer@ttrpg.networktoComics@lemmy.ml•“Communism bad”
    41·
    7 months ago

    Mind sharing what you mean, “or whatever?” Are you arguing using facts that came to you in a dream?

    I guess it was just no term limits? Still, he’s got control of all the levers of power and without term limits he can continue to consolidate power over time, gathering favors, loyalty, etc. There’s a reason people like term limits and Mexico fought a couple wars over the idea.

    In what way?

    Power goes from father to son. They have elections but the person in power always wins like 100% of us vote, and I don’t even think they have alternative candidates. Someone else above had a link that showed they have a person and you just vote “yes or no” for that person, which isn’t very democratic if you don’t know the alternative.

    Do you have evidence that there were not popularly elected bodies making all of the decisions, and that leaders of AES states were never contested successfully?

    I don’t, but if you have proof that those things have happened before, I’d be curious to see them.

  • Shyfer@ttrpg.networktoComics@lemmy.ml•“Communism bad”
    64·
    7 months ago

    What about Stalin who purged rivals and sent out hit men with ice picks to take out his critics? Or Xi Jinping who’s been made President for life or whatever recently? Or Fidel Castro who basically led the country from the revolution until he was too old to run it? The DPRK which looks like a monarchy in all but name? No one says dictators run whole countries literally by themselves but they do dictatorial things to make sure people only loyal to them can have power, their word is law without going through other checks or balances by the people, like some popularly elected body or something.

    I will admit though that after Stalin, the USSR changed out rulers pretty regularly so that doesn’t seem like a dictatorship to me. Same with Cuba now after Castro. Now people just say it because those countries allow only one party I guess.