288
Tankies take a moment to engage in some North Korea propaganda. 'North Korea is a democracy'
(sh.itjust.works)
also downvoted for preferring democracy lol
this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
288 points (95.0% liked)
MeanwhileOnGrad
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Is it though? I don’t think so. Authoritarian communism is an oxymoron, despite what most people think.
How is it?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society
A communist society needs to be stateless. Therefore authoritarian communism is an oxymoron. Is that what you were asking?
Now, whether this type of society envisioned by Marx is even possible is a whole separate question but that has no bearing on the fact that no so-called “communists” have ever achieved it.
So what are the Soviet Union, Mao China, Vietnam and Cuba?
Hello, communist here, No. Those places are NOT communist.
In fact, even they admit that they have not achieved communism, and communism is (from a marxist perspective, although there's much feuding about this) meant to be a gradual process after a revolution. These places haven't even achieved socialism.
The general idea is that there have been modes of production throughout history, first hunter gatherer, then agricultural feudalism, then capitalism, what communists believe is that the next step will be socialism. The reason they believe socialism will be next is because capitalism is defined by a class struggle between those who sell their labour and those who use others sold labour to profit. The next step is therefore to not have a class struggle between these two, the various ideas for what that might be like are socialist and communist.
Socialism is specifically when the workers own the means of production, communism is to take it yet another step further and abolish the state, currency, all forms of class division, etc.
Those are states claiming to be BUILDING communism... whether or not you believe them is a whole different story. I personally don't, I think it's POSSIBLE china actually might someday although probably against their governments will, but that's a story for another day.
As for why Communists support these countries?
They believe that these authoritarian policies are a necessary evil meant for building communism, they do not believe that the evil things these countries are doing are communism, they don't support the evil things these countries are doing, they just believe that they have no alternative in a world that is trying to crush communism, from their perspective all of the people with power, the bourgeois, are trying to prevent communism from taking hold, and these are VERY powerful people.
I personally believe it's incredibly silly to assume that a government has your best interests at heart just because they say so, which is why i'm not a tankie. I hope this helps your understanding of what they believe.
Sounds like your entire argument is based on nothing but semantic and personal opinion as to what true communism is.
Good luck trying to change society if you claim 'But that's not real communism!' every each time
Would you like me to cite marx...? These are not my opinions. These are the opinions of marxist scholars... who... defined marxism and communism in the first place?
these aren't arguments they're statements of fact about what communists believe...
also of course they're semantic, all conversations about the meaning of words are semantic??
"semantic /sĭ-măn′tĭk/
adjective
Of or relating to meaning, especially meaning in language."
What? No, the claim is that they're trying to build it, never that they just magically will achieve it. This argument doesn't make sense unless you don't even understand the claim being made.
Communism is quite clearly defined as a stateless, currencyless society without class division... we aren't denying that without reason? We're denying it because it definitionally doesn't match it, and can't hope to... because of the natural progression of history.
Please watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrBRV3WK2x4
Or learn about what "dialectical materialism" means so that you can actually understand what you're arguing against well enough to actually make an argument against it.
Marx is not infallible. Surely you disagree with Marx on what he said about jews?
I know the topic, and I've seen this argument so many times that it's generic. 'Oh, that wasn't communism because the bible says so.'
Marxes fallibility has nothing to do with anything, we were discussing what communists and MARXISTS believe... are you actually suggesting that what marx said is irrelevant when trying to understand communist thought??
the argument is that it wasn't communism because marx clearly and over the course of many books defined the term countless times as "the end of history" and a stateless classless currencyless society in which the workers own the means of production... my argument is based on a reading of marxist literature... your argument is based on what exactly?
how do you define communism?
Why did you report me? I have doubts about whether you're arguing in good faith.
Because I don't believe you're arguing in good faith, and i didn't realize you were a moderator.
So you were trying to silence me? What rules did I break?
They’re just undemocratic totalitarian states where the government has unrestrained control over basically every aspect of society. Overall, they’re in the same broad category as other dictatorships. There’s nothing particularly special about them other than good propaganda. Some of them did have stronger welfare states but I don’t think this makes them categorically different.
Are Hexbear, Lemmygrad and lemmy.ml communist?
Yes, but only because they truly believe these places are building communism and that the evils they are committing are necessary evils towards that goal, and that in the long-term that goal is worker ownership over the means of production in a currencyless classless society.
Whether or not they're actually supporting communist governments, whole different story...
There is no such thing as a necessary evil. Don't be revisionist.
Also I just want to say I have no idea why you think revisionism is relevant here
There are obviously many necessary evils in the world. That's just false. I don't agree that authoritarian communism is one of them, but there are many.
What do you think is a necessary evil?
And what do you mean? Is authoritarian communism evil?
All forms of authoritarianism are evil, but communist authoritarianism is an oxymoron.
self defense is a necessary evil, for example
It's nice you have a special, ever-changing definition of communism that conveniently excludes authoritarians whenever you want and which you're unable to properly define aside from vague handwaves with 'watch this video' or 'read this book' -- As if a youtube video is credible to the likes of scholars, or that you expect people to read a book that has a certain point of view that is at odds with others.
You're under the impression that this is an anti-communist community, it is not. You're under the impression I don't like communism, I don't care about it, I think it's wholly unrealistic and is entirely impossible to implement exactly as it's written. As it stands, communism is dead and shows no signs of life anywhere in the world. If you want to hold onto dead ideology, feel free, I am a gnostic afterall.
Though, I would like to see you make these arguments against tankies instead of communities like this one. Unless you think that tankies are communist, in which case I'm concerned if you agree with them. Tell me also what you think of Stalin, Mao, North Korea, and how every country that has tried communism has ended up authoritarian. It appears to me that it's impossible to implement communism without a dictatorship.
I defined it clearly, as all marxists do, as a classless, currencyless, stateless society in which the workers own the means of production at the "end of history" by the marxist materialist dialectic. I will not use any other definition because that's the definition marx made...
Marx never gave a specific implementation or even wrote about how it would be implemented... he merely gave a critique of capital and explained some inevitabilities about future societies based on these observations.
I do. Furthermore I wasn't even trying to argue with you, just inform you about communist belief. You were arguing against something no communist scholar would've said.
I think they are (sometimes) communist, but I disagree with their methods to such a degree that we are not similar at all. In the same way you don't agree with hitler just because he was a capitalist.
Easy, I think they ended up authoritarian for a number of reasons, the first and foremost of which is that there is a great deal of power attempting to suppress communist thought, and a vanguard party was the easiest way to enact communist thought in the early history of communism, this combined with the fact that capitalists actively try to dismantle non-capitalist societies at every possible threat lead to a survival of the fittest scenario where authoritarian methods were the most survivable because ruthless authoritarianism is very good at surviving despite the world being against it.
I don't want authoritarian communism, in my eyes the ends do not justify the means, I want something similar to the anarcho-syndicalists of revolutionary catalonia, or the zapatistas of mexico... which by the way are counter examples to the notion that all socialist projects end up authoritarian, they were both fundamentally democratic from the ground up to such an extent that everything was handled democratically, no politicians even in the case of the zapatistas.
It's not at all impossible to implement communism without a dictatorship, anarchists have done it countless times and then been destroyed by large capitalist armies throughout history. The real question is can a communist or anarchist society survive being trampled by the bourgeois. I think it's possible but the conditions must be right, and I think your stance would have said the american revolution would be impossible.
I am aware of the End of History and it's more likely that society will shift towards libertarianism instead of socialism, considering how popular a brand is at being the US president and how everything regarding communism is already dead, or just capitalism painted red like what China does (see this community's icon as an example). I'd like to see socialism, something like UBI, but we're in a corporate world showing no signs of stopping, where brands are so prevalent that people flock to defend them without a second thought.
You're also using it wrong. Currency and the state have been a part of human society throughout history, from slavery to feudalism to capitalism. Implying that the End of History will somehow remove this need for currency and the state is a fairy tale and a misuse of The End of History.
What you're looking for is an apocalypse. -- Not that an apocalypse is automatically bad.
Yes, he did.
Your belief on communism. Not communist belief -- yours.
You're avoiding the question. Yes, that is the origin of communism in the soviet union. But by the time Stalin and even Lenin were dictators, why did they still require authoritarianism despite being in control of everything already? What purpose does the extermination of minorities and dissenters play in this magical communism you dreamt up? Wouldn't it serve better if they were at least somewhat democratic? Regardless, they fronted communism and were literally the faces of it, as much as that upsets your fluid definition of communism. It's really more of a religion you have here as opposed to society.
Really? I can't think of any.
I don't care about the US, it's a clown country and always has been.
See, your vagueness is really quite annoying. You don't say much of substance and leave everything up to the interpretation of others, leaving you a nice little window you can poke at because you've toyed them along; you've previously been called out on this multiple times. Here's you: Ah, yes, conditions, mm. Communist scholars, quite, quite. Methods, mm, yes, it's very convenient when I can use vagueness as a shield to hide behind. -- See how this is annoying? See how these don't answer anything? See how you don't actually say anything of meaning and leave it up to others to make up an interpretation, which is easier for you to dismantle since you haven't actually said anything of your own views.
I know how sealions work, and I'd like you focus only on the following question, again, but exact and honest this time. Tell me also what you think of Stalin, Mao, North Korea and tankie communities. No vague handwaving 'methods,' or 'reasons.' Those aren't answers. You need to be exact. Otherwise, I have no other option than assume you're arguing in bad faith, again, as above.
Well, not by the above definition, but that can’t apply to individuals since it describes qualities unique to groups of people and their relations.
So we get into a bit of a semantic dilemma here. Conventionally, communist can have two distinct meanings. One, describing an economic and political system, is the one I cited above. This is the most appropriate definition when speaking of nations or other large, autonomous societies. We could, in theory, assess whether these instances operate as communist societies in miniature, but it seems fairly clear they do not. And it’s not clear they really could, given their reliance on broader social systems. Indeed, many have argued that communism is only possible as a global system. If true, this could explain the failure of any existing or historical nation to reach this standard.
However, “communist” has also frequently been used as a term to describe people who advocate for or seek to build the above society—or at least claim to. So in that sense, users on those instances could be reasonably described this way. But this gets very messy. On the one hand, we could simply accept their statements on the matter. However, that would mean accepting that some dishonest people would be labeled communists despite not really matching the above definition at all. On the other hand, any standard to separate out such charlatans would require us to know their true intentions and perhaps even the reasonableness and effectiveness of their political actions and strategies.
Is an abolitionist who in every concrete action supports the institution of slavery really an abolitionist? Many so-called communists behave similarly with respect to the state. They claim their end goal is a stateless society, but at every opportunity they defend and expand state power, violence, and impunity. I don’t see how this will ever lead to a stateless society. So these questions are very difficult to answer, and some may even be fundamentally unknowable.
So TL;DR would be I don’t know, maybe, some probably yes, others probably no.
So if you know your argument is semantic, why are you even arguing it to begin with?
Because semantics are an important element of this discussion? I don’t understand the question.
semantics /sĭ-măn′tĭks/
noun
The study or science of meaning in language.
It does not mean "pointless things that shouldn't be argued"
Can you send this definition to the above user as well?
No need.
Oh, I'll do it for you.
semantics /sĭ-măn′tĭks/
noun
The study or science of meaning in language.
There was no need because they used the word properly.
perhaps you can too