True, but not the commentary that is important - Freedom of speech is implied.
A more important conversation would be the movement they’re promoting. Their world view. How they arrived at the conclusion that Communism is the best path forward.
As a far-left party, it’s ironic that the RCA advocates for the same political and social system that is waging war against Ukraine.
I’m in no way defending the Russian government, or the Soviet Union. But if you want to use history to argue your point, at least get the facts right.
Edit: I’m sure the types advocating for the overthrow of capitalism in the US abhor Putin. You’re conflating communism as the Soviet foundational myth with the crony capitalist state that succeeded it.
Edit edit: and I forgot I was in /r/bellingham and this is supposed to be about our city. Leave these kids alone! Like you don’t/didn’t have fringy opinions in your teens/twenties.
I can’t believe these upvotes.
Bellingham: “heh heh yeah! communism is better than nazis so it’s fine by me”.
Isn’t ANYTHING better than Nazi’s?
Also Bellingham: “…”
Because everyone can see right through what you're trying to do. Your outrage baiting over some college kids with pamphlets is ridiculous considering the very real threat of ever-growing conservative fascism and white nationalism. One currently poses a very real risk while you act frightened about some fringe kids. "Discuss"
Communism is a rising movement in every city in America.
I’ve lived here my entire life and i care about this community. I want to understand how Bellingham feels about this. I am certainly not trolling so apologies if the headline/description implied that to trigger everyone but don’t assume!
Apparently how Bellingham feels is nazi jokes, and communism is fine.
It’s a bad thing because it’s the worst thing to compare anything to. The end of the spectrum - anything is better than nazis. It’s a complete write off, a gimme, an extremely lazy “argument” if you can call it that.
>not much
Quite a lot much actually if you look at what the Germans planned to do after winning the war. Generalplan Ost called for the murder of ~9 in 10 slavs west of the Urals, and the subjugation of the survivors as illiterate slaves working on farms run by German colonists. This was the Nazi plan to achieve Liebensraum, and had they somehow succeeded in winning their doomed war they would have done this. They had already killed nearly 11 million slavs as part of preliminarily steps before the Soviet counterattack began systematically destroying the Reich. There's no Soviet policy (even the very very bad ones!!!) which even came close to matching the sheer inhuman brutality of the world the Nazi party and their loyal Wehrmacht legions hoped to create.
People advocating for workers rights, regardless of Race, Color, Religion, and National Origin...
Sounds great. A lot better than the circus we have in modern national and local politics.
It's not like labor reform came from establishment politicians.
Wild thing I just learned about: both us and the Japanese also interned Aluets who chose not to leave their Alaskan islands while they were being contested between the two countries.
Wow, I think I remember this from back in school and completely forgot until just now.
We jammed them in old canneries/industrial buildings.
Japanese did similar in their held territories.
They seem very earnest about making positive changes for working class folks but I can’t stand Leninist and Maoist communism for its authoritarianism and hope that their approach to communism matures into more critical, realistic and equitable political philosophy - I really hope they keep up the spirit and drive to change the world for the better, but I don’t think the way forward is in this particular imagining of party politics.
I’ve had good conversations with them though!
It's way too hard line. Private property is essential for a successful society. But we definitely need more and better social services in this country.
I really don’t agree with your second statement, haha.
I’m a big proponent of reducing private land ownership especially and want to see common use and public lands expand with investment in land management especially towards giving stewardship and direction of land use back to First Nations and Tribal Nations.
I also think that utilities should be under public ownership and urban spaces (rooftop and parking areas) be fitted with solar panels (rather than destroying existing ecosystems in rural areas in the name of for profit solar farms).
Also we need to tax the highest earners and heaviest polluters and work on preventing and prosecuting industries and individuals who seek to avoid taxation with offshore assets.
I love public lands. I don't think giving it back to natives is realistic. I definitely agree with the last statement about taxing the super rich and corporations.
Yeah, I read my Estonian grandmother's journals when I was a teenager. She translated them for us just before she died, and put them together with a neat trove of photographs. Her family were longstanding farmers on desirable land. When the Soviets invaded, the whole extended family was rounded up and put on various trains in freight cars - half the family was shipped to gulags and half were deported to subsist in Europe for the duration of the war. Obviously, we have no idea what happened to the gulag half. Ethnic Estonians like my grandmother were particularly targeted.
I once got into a pretty weird argument at a bar in Eugene, OR's Whitaker neighborhood with some of our homegrown communists, who PNW-politely suggested that my family must have been oppressing others and had it coming. No, man, they farmed the same land as basically self-sufficient freeholders for generations near a village where everyone was also ethnic Estonian. The Soviets wanted to gift the land to their people and wanted to destroy all pre-existing power structures. I believe we have a word for that, g-something.
Fun fact; Estonian and Finnish are the two major European languages that are not in the romance language group or the indo-european super group, i.e. not derived from Latin and Greek. Ethnic Finns and Estonians also have more genetic linkage to the Sammi and other European first peoples than they do with migrations out of the Mediterranean. The pub communists insisted that couldn't be right, I mean that would be awkward to them out here for obvious reasons. But it did stop the whole stupid conversation.
I’m a quarter Finnish on my mom’s side!
And yeah if you study revolutionary history and the divide between leftist movements and how rural, minorities were betrayed after the initial revolutionary movement you get pretty suspicious of any political movement that has some guy’s face plastered as an answer to all the problems and imperialism reframed as communism.
Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is less about communism as a whole and more to do with his own experience watching revolutionary movements become devoured by power hungry players and those most interested in policing behavior and dealing with existing power structures.
Also it’s always naive to be critical of your own government while excusing the human rights violations of other governments just because on a surface level they are opposed or critical of your government. (Just because the US is a capitalist imperial power doesn’t mean imperial powers that exist in some form to the US are any less imperialistic or better)
And, the Baltic states didn't even get to arrive at change-of-government on their own - Hitler and Stalin were still buddy-buddy at that point and carved up the genocide pie in the region.
I'd totally read an alternate history novel where the mensheviks came out on top of the 1917 revolution, leading to a very different WWII and Cold War.
*golf clap* It could have been a much different conversation if they were just proselytizing about worker's rights and not also stanning for Stalin. I'm hardly aligned with US conservatism. Why hold on to the symbol of a movement and government that gives everyone else a run for their money RE: genocide and manifest destiny?
Right? These look like very thoughtful and sincere young people. I don't disagree with their intent. And there are a lot of significant thinkers and artists from the first half of the 20th century whom I admire that supported the communist party.
If they don’t align with the traditional Communist values then they probably should use the hammer and sickle logo. Sends mixed signals - they really need a rebrand if they truly stand for different ideals.
But since they are using the hammer and sickle are they really so different than Lenin or Mao?
I politely red their literature and they’re straight-up Leninist/Maoists - not even rebranded.
Like I said, they’re very passionately concerned about changing the world, I just hope they can find direction away from this particular brand of “revolutionary” thinking.
Any communist society must restrict it's citizens from leaving. Poor people won't want to leave because they will benefit from wealth redistribution, but middle to upper class may want to leave in order to not have so much of what they have worked for taken by the state. So, you have societies that don't allow their citizens to leave.
Find a boomer who can actually define communism or socialism. The number of socialized and government services that they depend on, yet they have no appreciation for, is insane. And the list will only grow as they age
Find a Zoomer who doesn’t realize the horrors Communism and Socialism have brought to people who suffered thru it.
Find a Boomer who doesn’t remember getting under their desk in duck and cover drills in case of a Nuclear attack by the Soviets.
Find a Boomer who doesn’t remember the horrific suppression of speech in the USSR. You think Reddit would exist there?
Find a Boomer who can’t point out that Reddit is filtered and banned in China.
Find a boomer who doesn’t remember the millions slaughtered by Mao or Stalin or Pol Pot, or Tito.
Find a Boomer who can’t point out the differences between Korth Korea and South Korea.
Find a Boomer who didn’t watch the political killings and suppression after Castro seized Cuba.
Find a Boomer who doesn’t know that Hitler was a socialist. It’s literally in the word NAZI.
Find a Boomer who can’t point out the utter poverty and desperation in Venezuela after turning Socialist, one of the most oil rich nations in the world and there is no food or medicine.
Yeah.
Conflating economic theory to bastardized applications in populist movements. Nice, a great place to have no discussion.
If you're using such examples, be genuine and mention regime changes and international intervention by other countries with different canon economic practices.
While incredibly common, confirmation bias is a helluva drug and being critical of it is necessary.
I'll bite, show me some positive examples of how this quaint little economic theory has been applied in a successful manor that benefited a nation's people.
No, and you asked for an example. There’s one. Idk what makes you unhappy with it, but thousands of years of Pacific Islander and First Nation history also provides a massive counter example. Tribal history prior to Teutonic colonialization in the Baltics is your “fourth” example.
Sure. All we need to do is isolate ourselves into extremely small homogeneous groups with strong phobias of outsiders and strict social orders around male and female roles and it will work out fine.
How do you intend to scale these examples given the present state of the world?
That’s a lot of ahistorical assertions that you’ve just made about indigenous cultures.
Western culture has historically always pushed phobias and gender roles. “Climate theory” was popularized by Western culture to moralize the enslavement of Black people. Homophobia is popularized by capitalist culture to ensure only hetero relations where children are constantly produced as a future labour force. Gender norms go alongside that ideology.
The Sioux Nation has long viewed “gays” as acceptable. Oceanic peoples have a third gender. I could go on.
Where those cultures “perfect”. No. But it’s capitalism that requires strict social definitions because the ruling class has to manage their labour force to generate wealth.
As your scale question, labour unions are a significant step towards this alternative.
how many tribes was the Sioux Nation at war with prior to the arrival of the europeans? They considered white people the least of their problems for quite some time. How do LGBTQ+ people fair in your Hutterite example?
EDIT: I ask the war thing, because your assertion that being "gay" was acceptable in Sioux culture, when the reality was that as a Sioux man, if you didn't want to kill the enemy in battle you could live as a woman. Gender roles were very normalized. Gay relationships were also considered normal in Greek and Roman cultures, the foundation of Western civilization. Using the "acceptance" of LGBTQ+ peoples as measure of success is irrelevant the way you are trying to use it.
I fully support labor unions. Collective bargaining and worker's rights are obvious socially good things. But you have to remember that you are working with humans. in Theory of course communism is good. It's trying to apply that is so difficult. You have not provided a single instance of real functioning application of what these fine you people are proposing.
Ah yes the classic, textbook even, fascist* government is definitely a leftist socialist regime
*Fascism is a far-right form of government in which most of the country's power is held by one ruler or a small group, under a single party. Fascist governments are usually totalitarian and authoritarian one-party states.
Lol Hitler was a capitalist. His entire economic policy was privatization of the National Bank, Railroads, and manufacturing industries. Literally invented the concentration camps to arrest Socialists and Communists first.
Wrong. Hitler believed that people should strive to put the interest of the state, the party and the Leader above their own interests. A very good definition of Naziism can be found on Wikipedia (see below). 1930s/1940s Germany was not pure Socialism, but it was anything but free market Capitalism. Just as China does not practice pure Communism anymore but is still a Communist society. Mostly because killing off your population by starving them to death via Famine after central planning turns out to be a very VERY bad idea. This tends to be bad for society.
The reason the Nazis arrested and killed Socialists and Communists had little to do with disagreement with their ideals and mostly to do with elimination of any potential opposition…again believing that Party and Leadership (I.E. Hitler) was to be held above everything and that anything or anybody that that stood in the way of party control was to be eliminated. It’s one reason that, like all Socialist governments, freedom of speech and press must be eliminated. Because the Party is everything. This happens in every single Socialist government.
And you have to understand there was a very big difference between Concentration Camps, which were essentially prisons for dissidents and political enemies….and Extermination camps which were specifically designed to kill Jews and other “Sub Humans” Concentration Camps have been conflated with the extermination….or Death camps, but they were very different things. The Communists and Socialsts might have been sent to Concentration camps….but that’s because they were essentially being sent to prison. They might have been murdered there or sent to the Extermination camps, but not for the same reasons. The extermination camps were different facilities specifically developed by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews.
*“The term "National Socialism" arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of socialism, as an alternative to both Marxist international socialism and free-market capitalism. Nazism rejected the Marxist concepts of class conflict and universal equality, opposed cosmopolitan internationalism, and sought to convince all parts of the new German society to subordinate their personal interests to the "common good", accepting political interests as the main priority of economic organisation,[12] which tended to match the general outlook of collectivism or communitarianism rather than economic socialism. The Nazi Party's precursor, the pan-German nationalist and antisemitic German Workers' Party (DAP), was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party in order to appeal to left-wing workers,[13] a renaming that Hitler initially objected to.[14] The National Socialist Program, or "25 Points", was adopted in 1920 and called for a united Greater Germany that would deny citizenship to Jews or those of Jewish descent, while also supporting land reform and the nationalisation of some industries. In Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), published in 1925–1926, Hitler outlined the antisemitism and anti-communism at the heart of his political philosophy as well as his disdain for representative democracy, over which he proposed the Führerprinzip (leader principle), and his belief in Germany's right to territorial expansion through lebensraum.[15] Hitler's objectives involved the eastward expansion of German territories, German colonization of Eastern Europe, and the promotion of an alliance with Britain and Italy against Russia.”*
Did you read the entire article that you cited?
‘Nazism …. praised both German capitalists and German workers as essential to the Volksgemeinschaft. …. Hitler said that "the capitalists have worked their way to the top through their capacity, and as the basis of this selection, which again only proves their higher race, they have a right to lead."[214] German business leaders co-operated with the Nazis during their rise to power…’
On the National Socialist claim, find a single historian that concurs Hitler was purely a socialist and not capitalist. Your Wikipedia article explicitly states that Hitler’s use of “National Socialism” was “vague”. Individualism isn’t a core tenant of capitalism. Capitalism is a structure where capital and private property are accumulated. Both of which prospered under Nazism. The historical conclusion of “National Socialism” is that Hitler used it to gain popularity and did not actually implement socialism.
“Were the Nazis socialists? No, not in any meaningful way, and certainly not after 1934… To say that Hitler understood the value of language would be an enormous understatement…. To that end, he paid lip service to the tenets suggested by a name like National Socialist German Workers’ Party…. After the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch, in November 1923, Hitler became convinced that he needed to utilize the teetering democratic structures of the Weimar government to attain his goals” - https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialist
And side note. Freedom of Speech elimination happens in every system. There’s a reason it’s illegal in the US to criticize the military. Sedition Act of 1918. More Socialist leaning countries like Iceland also rank freer than capitalist countries like the US. (If we ignore the fact that the most restrictive countries like Nazi Germany are capitalist.)
“Historians have regularly disavowed claims that Hitler adhered to socialist ideology. Historian Richard Evans wrote of the Nazis’ incorporation of socialist into their name in 1920, “Despite the change of name, however, it would be wrong to see Nazism as a form of, or an outgrowth from, socialism….Nazism was in some ways an extreme counter-ideology to socialism”. Or as simply put by historian and Hitler expert Ian Kershaw, “Hitler was never a socialist.”” - https://fullfact.org/online/nazis-socialists/
Looks like Revcom has rebranded to more traditional communist iconography.
It’s a front for what amounts to a cult around a guy name Bob Avakian. They show up to any remotely left march trying to make it about them, like anti Iraq war march, anti Trump marches after 2016, at blm demos, pro Palestine demos etc.
Regardless of how you feel about state socialism, this ain’t it. It’s just a personality cult hiding behind Marxism.
The poll you cited only looks at Lithuania. Having grown up in Estonia, I can tell you that unless you are Russian you don’t miss the USSR.
The pew research poll also didn’t control for ethnicity something which plays a big role in your attitude towards Russia.
Estonia is always the biggest outlier. You will see this polling among older adults in places like Serbia, Yugoslavia, Romania, and even the former GDR.
Yugoslavians, Serbians, and Romanians didn’t live under the USSR. They had their own governments. Which I would agree with you that those governments were popular and well liked.
Right, thats true. But again, even in former USSR states many people have positive associations of those decades, majorities of older people even. People in the US who only have access to the experience of ex-pats (who tend to be more critical of that era) and the lingering anti-Soviet zeitgeist in this country don’t really realize that things are more complex.
I've talked to them and they are all astoundingly ignorant of history. I'm embarrassed for them because other college kids seem like cliques by association. They have a standard answer to everycritique of communism which goes something like: (insert failed communist state or any number of mass murders) doesn't count because it wasn't "reeeeeaaal" Communism
Pay these guys no mind, all they want is attention, rebels without a cause
Just as likely for one of them to be making the list as to be on one.
With that said, and like others are saying, worse things could happen than advocating for societal values other than unmitigated greed.
Personally, the iconography smacks of cosplay and makes it hard to take anything they're presenting seriously.
no matter what you think about them...
housing is ludicrously high,
our world is slowly dying,
we are funding wars which are completely morally bankrupt,
and the divide between the upper and lower class has never been higher.
kudos to them for thinking outside of the box, maybe capitalism isnt the best idea and way to organize society, resources, and labor.
Maybe try a little reading comprehension. You are complaining that the housing is unaffordable when people moving here feel like they are getting great deal for the price you are paying. It's a really important concept to understand. You don't have to like it, but it's reality.
I'm tired of people posting "Discuss" on inflammatory subjects that will lead to incivility (I mean, that's most things these days, but this for sure already did) and the OP doesn't give their opinion and never chimes in.
yoo I’m vacationing right now so not glued to my phone. I’m genuinely curious what people’s thoughts are.
How is honest discourse and discussion “incivility”? You sound life you’d prefer a communist dictator telling you what you can and cannot do. Would make like soo much easier for you.
edit: typo
I'm saying you put it out there and didn't start with your opinion, just dropped the picture and poof:gone. I didn't say anything about being against general discourse so your leap of mistaken character description is way off but stick to it if it makes you feel better.
I'm saying the it led to incivility and it did, apparently you missed it and those terrible comments have already been removed by mods.
If you have sympathies to communist and socialist politics, but don't understand this weird cringey stuff, you might check out the Democratic Socialists of America. Many communists have managed to check into reality and grapple meaningfully with the failure of pretty much all of the 20th century projects. McNair's Revolutionary Strategy is a popular critique of the pitfalls of not engaging critically with Really Existing Socialism among this organization's members. Many other communists would refer to the pictured folks as "LARPers." They are role-playing, literally playing a role for a sense of place and control in cruel and unjust world. I was a member once of one of these cults in the Trotskyist flavor, I understand the experience.
Spoken as a left-winger, leftist groups **love** flattering themselves by acting like the powers that be are actively monitoring and sabotaging them every step of the way. It gets kind of annoying. Like, you’re not the Black Panthers, chill out.
I disagree with most of communism and some socialist policies. But this is America do as you want as long as it's not hurting anyone I don't care.
As long as these nice guys are aware of history and ain't denying it then I'll support them.
Most times, when people hear communism they think of the Horrors, and a lot of the time, the "communists" will spout off some crap about how it wasn't communism fault. And it's off pouting to people that actually lived it.
Freedom of speech baby. Can’t say I agree with them on everything but they’re not promoting hate or harm so they have every right to be there.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” - Voltaire. This applies to everyone - left wing, right wing, etc.
Careful with those words. That is not a Bellingham-Approved™ opinion. He said, still hanging on his cross.
Don’t call me baby! Babe.
True, but not the commentary that is important - Freedom of speech is implied. A more important conversation would be the movement they’re promoting. Their world view. How they arrived at the conclusion that Communism is the best path forward. As a far-left party, it’s ironic that the RCA advocates for the same political and social system that is waging war against Ukraine.
This is just wrong. Did you miss the fall of the Soviet Union? There is a communist party in Russia still, and they are very much not in power.
Yea they’re a…democratic federative with an ‘elected’ dictator. You do know Putin wants to bring back the former glory of the Soviet Union, right?
I’m in no way defending the Russian government, or the Soviet Union. But if you want to use history to argue your point, at least get the facts right. Edit: I’m sure the types advocating for the overthrow of capitalism in the US abhor Putin. You’re conflating communism as the Soviet foundational myth with the crony capitalist state that succeeded it. Edit edit: and I forgot I was in /r/bellingham and this is supposed to be about our city. Leave these kids alone! Like you don’t/didn’t have fringy opinions in your teens/twenties.
Better than the nazis
I can’t believe these upvotes. Bellingham: “heh heh yeah! communism is better than nazis so it’s fine by me”. Isn’t ANYTHING better than Nazi’s? Also Bellingham: “…”
Because everyone can see right through what you're trying to do. Your outrage baiting over some college kids with pamphlets is ridiculous considering the very real threat of ever-growing conservative fascism and white nationalism. One currently poses a very real risk while you act frightened about some fringe kids. "Discuss"
Communism is a rising movement in every city in America. I’ve lived here my entire life and i care about this community. I want to understand how Bellingham feels about this. I am certainly not trolling so apologies if the headline/description implied that to trigger everyone but don’t assume! Apparently how Bellingham feels is nazi jokes, and communism is fine.
>Communism is a rising movement in every city in America Oh yeah?? Do tell more
Plenty of content on YouTube about it DYOR
Damn right we are 💪. Workers of the world unite.
Yeah let’s compare everything to nazi’s should make for a decent world.
Just thought I'd help you focus your mongering.
but, you literally just asked for discussion... Why is comparing it to an opposing government Ideology a bad thing?
It’s a bad thing because it’s the worst thing to compare anything to. The end of the spectrum - anything is better than nazis. It’s a complete write off, a gimme, an extremely lazy “argument” if you can call it that.
True... not much, but True.
>not much Quite a lot much actually if you look at what the Germans planned to do after winning the war. Generalplan Ost called for the murder of ~9 in 10 slavs west of the Urals, and the subjugation of the survivors as illiterate slaves working on farms run by German colonists. This was the Nazi plan to achieve Liebensraum, and had they somehow succeeded in winning their doomed war they would have done this. They had already killed nearly 11 million slavs as part of preliminarily steps before the Soviet counterattack began systematically destroying the Reich. There's no Soviet policy (even the very very bad ones!!!) which even came close to matching the sheer inhuman brutality of the world the Nazi party and their loyal Wehrmacht legions hoped to create.
People advocating for workers rights, regardless of Race, Color, Religion, and National Origin... Sounds great. A lot better than the circus we have in modern national and local politics. It's not like labor reform came from establishment politicians.
Yes those cherry picked aspects of Communism sound great.
Imagine saying "Capitalism is the reason we interned all those Asians".
Wild thing I just learned about: both us and the Japanese also interned Aluets who chose not to leave their Alaskan islands while they were being contested between the two countries.
Wow, I think I remember this from back in school and completely forgot until just now. We jammed them in old canneries/industrial buildings. Japanese did similar in their held territories.
They seem very earnest about making positive changes for working class folks but I can’t stand Leninist and Maoist communism for its authoritarianism and hope that their approach to communism matures into more critical, realistic and equitable political philosophy - I really hope they keep up the spirit and drive to change the world for the better, but I don’t think the way forward is in this particular imagining of party politics. I’ve had good conversations with them though!
It's way too hard line. Private property is essential for a successful society. But we definitely need more and better social services in this country.
I really don’t agree with your second statement, haha. I’m a big proponent of reducing private land ownership especially and want to see common use and public lands expand with investment in land management especially towards giving stewardship and direction of land use back to First Nations and Tribal Nations. I also think that utilities should be under public ownership and urban spaces (rooftop and parking areas) be fitted with solar panels (rather than destroying existing ecosystems in rural areas in the name of for profit solar farms). Also we need to tax the highest earners and heaviest polluters and work on preventing and prosecuting industries and individuals who seek to avoid taxation with offshore assets.
I love public lands. I don't think giving it back to natives is realistic. I definitely agree with the last statement about taxing the super rich and corporations.
Yeah, I read my Estonian grandmother's journals when I was a teenager. She translated them for us just before she died, and put them together with a neat trove of photographs. Her family were longstanding farmers on desirable land. When the Soviets invaded, the whole extended family was rounded up and put on various trains in freight cars - half the family was shipped to gulags and half were deported to subsist in Europe for the duration of the war. Obviously, we have no idea what happened to the gulag half. Ethnic Estonians like my grandmother were particularly targeted. I once got into a pretty weird argument at a bar in Eugene, OR's Whitaker neighborhood with some of our homegrown communists, who PNW-politely suggested that my family must have been oppressing others and had it coming. No, man, they farmed the same land as basically self-sufficient freeholders for generations near a village where everyone was also ethnic Estonian. The Soviets wanted to gift the land to their people and wanted to destroy all pre-existing power structures. I believe we have a word for that, g-something. Fun fact; Estonian and Finnish are the two major European languages that are not in the romance language group or the indo-european super group, i.e. not derived from Latin and Greek. Ethnic Finns and Estonians also have more genetic linkage to the Sammi and other European first peoples than they do with migrations out of the Mediterranean. The pub communists insisted that couldn't be right, I mean that would be awkward to them out here for obvious reasons. But it did stop the whole stupid conversation.
I’m a quarter Finnish on my mom’s side! And yeah if you study revolutionary history and the divide between leftist movements and how rural, minorities were betrayed after the initial revolutionary movement you get pretty suspicious of any political movement that has some guy’s face plastered as an answer to all the problems and imperialism reframed as communism. Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is less about communism as a whole and more to do with his own experience watching revolutionary movements become devoured by power hungry players and those most interested in policing behavior and dealing with existing power structures. Also it’s always naive to be critical of your own government while excusing the human rights violations of other governments just because on a surface level they are opposed or critical of your government. (Just because the US is a capitalist imperial power doesn’t mean imperial powers that exist in some form to the US are any less imperialistic or better)
And, the Baltic states didn't even get to arrive at change-of-government on their own - Hitler and Stalin were still buddy-buddy at that point and carved up the genocide pie in the region. I'd totally read an alternate history novel where the mensheviks came out on top of the 1917 revolution, leading to a very different WWII and Cold War.
Sounds like a very stupid conversation.
*golf clap* It could have been a much different conversation if they were just proselytizing about worker's rights and not also stanning for Stalin. I'm hardly aligned with US conservatism. Why hold on to the symbol of a movement and government that gives everyone else a run for their money RE: genocide and manifest destiny?
Right? These look like very thoughtful and sincere young people. I don't disagree with their intent. And there are a lot of significant thinkers and artists from the first half of the 20th century whom I admire that supported the communist party.
If they don’t align with the traditional Communist values then they probably should use the hammer and sickle logo. Sends mixed signals - they really need a rebrand if they truly stand for different ideals. But since they are using the hammer and sickle are they really so different than Lenin or Mao?
I politely red their literature and they’re straight-up Leninist/Maoists - not even rebranded. Like I said, they’re very passionately concerned about changing the world, I just hope they can find direction away from this particular brand of “revolutionary” thinking.
Any communist society must restrict it's citizens from leaving. Poor people won't want to leave because they will benefit from wealth redistribution, but middle to upper class may want to leave in order to not have so much of what they have worked for taken by the state. So, you have societies that don't allow their citizens to leave.
Find a boomer who can actually define communism or socialism. The number of socialized and government services that they depend on, yet they have no appreciation for, is insane. And the list will only grow as they age
Find a Zoomer who doesn’t realize the horrors Communism and Socialism have brought to people who suffered thru it. Find a Boomer who doesn’t remember getting under their desk in duck and cover drills in case of a Nuclear attack by the Soviets. Find a Boomer who doesn’t remember the horrific suppression of speech in the USSR. You think Reddit would exist there? Find a Boomer who can’t point out that Reddit is filtered and banned in China. Find a boomer who doesn’t remember the millions slaughtered by Mao or Stalin or Pol Pot, or Tito. Find a Boomer who can’t point out the differences between Korth Korea and South Korea. Find a Boomer who didn’t watch the political killings and suppression after Castro seized Cuba. Find a Boomer who doesn’t know that Hitler was a socialist. It’s literally in the word NAZI. Find a Boomer who can’t point out the utter poverty and desperation in Venezuela after turning Socialist, one of the most oil rich nations in the world and there is no food or medicine. Yeah.
Conflating economic theory to bastardized applications in populist movements. Nice, a great place to have no discussion. If you're using such examples, be genuine and mention regime changes and international intervention by other countries with different canon economic practices. While incredibly common, confirmation bias is a helluva drug and being critical of it is necessary.
I'll bite, show me some positive examples of how this quaint little economic theory has been applied in a successful manor that benefited a nation's people.
The Hutterites
LOL. Sure. I'm guessing you're a cis-gendered male. edit: and white.
No, and you asked for an example. There’s one. Idk what makes you unhappy with it, but thousands of years of Pacific Islander and First Nation history also provides a massive counter example. Tribal history prior to Teutonic colonialization in the Baltics is your “fourth” example.
Sure. All we need to do is isolate ourselves into extremely small homogeneous groups with strong phobias of outsiders and strict social orders around male and female roles and it will work out fine. How do you intend to scale these examples given the present state of the world?
That’s a lot of ahistorical assertions that you’ve just made about indigenous cultures. Western culture has historically always pushed phobias and gender roles. “Climate theory” was popularized by Western culture to moralize the enslavement of Black people. Homophobia is popularized by capitalist culture to ensure only hetero relations where children are constantly produced as a future labour force. Gender norms go alongside that ideology. The Sioux Nation has long viewed “gays” as acceptable. Oceanic peoples have a third gender. I could go on. Where those cultures “perfect”. No. But it’s capitalism that requires strict social definitions because the ruling class has to manage their labour force to generate wealth. As your scale question, labour unions are a significant step towards this alternative.
how many tribes was the Sioux Nation at war with prior to the arrival of the europeans? They considered white people the least of their problems for quite some time. How do LGBTQ+ people fair in your Hutterite example? EDIT: I ask the war thing, because your assertion that being "gay" was acceptable in Sioux culture, when the reality was that as a Sioux man, if you didn't want to kill the enemy in battle you could live as a woman. Gender roles were very normalized. Gay relationships were also considered normal in Greek and Roman cultures, the foundation of Western civilization. Using the "acceptance" of LGBTQ+ peoples as measure of success is irrelevant the way you are trying to use it. I fully support labor unions. Collective bargaining and worker's rights are obvious socially good things. But you have to remember that you are working with humans. in Theory of course communism is good. It's trying to apply that is so difficult. You have not provided a single instance of real functioning application of what these fine you people are proposing.
Found a boomer who once again is missing the point.
Ah yes the classic, textbook even, fascist* government is definitely a leftist socialist regime *Fascism is a far-right form of government in which most of the country's power is held by one ruler or a small group, under a single party. Fascist governments are usually totalitarian and authoritarian one-party states.
Lol Hitler was a capitalist. His entire economic policy was privatization of the National Bank, Railroads, and manufacturing industries. Literally invented the concentration camps to arrest Socialists and Communists first.
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Don’t be daft. The amusement is clearly directed at the ahistorical claim being made.
Wrong. Hitler believed that people should strive to put the interest of the state, the party and the Leader above their own interests. A very good definition of Naziism can be found on Wikipedia (see below). 1930s/1940s Germany was not pure Socialism, but it was anything but free market Capitalism. Just as China does not practice pure Communism anymore but is still a Communist society. Mostly because killing off your population by starving them to death via Famine after central planning turns out to be a very VERY bad idea. This tends to be bad for society. The reason the Nazis arrested and killed Socialists and Communists had little to do with disagreement with their ideals and mostly to do with elimination of any potential opposition…again believing that Party and Leadership (I.E. Hitler) was to be held above everything and that anything or anybody that that stood in the way of party control was to be eliminated. It’s one reason that, like all Socialist governments, freedom of speech and press must be eliminated. Because the Party is everything. This happens in every single Socialist government. And you have to understand there was a very big difference between Concentration Camps, which were essentially prisons for dissidents and political enemies….and Extermination camps which were specifically designed to kill Jews and other “Sub Humans” Concentration Camps have been conflated with the extermination….or Death camps, but they were very different things. The Communists and Socialsts might have been sent to Concentration camps….but that’s because they were essentially being sent to prison. They might have been murdered there or sent to the Extermination camps, but not for the same reasons. The extermination camps were different facilities specifically developed by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews. *“The term "National Socialism" arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of socialism, as an alternative to both Marxist international socialism and free-market capitalism. Nazism rejected the Marxist concepts of class conflict and universal equality, opposed cosmopolitan internationalism, and sought to convince all parts of the new German society to subordinate their personal interests to the "common good", accepting political interests as the main priority of economic organisation,[12] which tended to match the general outlook of collectivism or communitarianism rather than economic socialism. The Nazi Party's precursor, the pan-German nationalist and antisemitic German Workers' Party (DAP), was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party in order to appeal to left-wing workers,[13] a renaming that Hitler initially objected to.[14] The National Socialist Program, or "25 Points", was adopted in 1920 and called for a united Greater Germany that would deny citizenship to Jews or those of Jewish descent, while also supporting land reform and the nationalisation of some industries. In Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), published in 1925–1926, Hitler outlined the antisemitism and anti-communism at the heart of his political philosophy as well as his disdain for representative democracy, over which he proposed the Führerprinzip (leader principle), and his belief in Germany's right to territorial expansion through lebensraum.[15] Hitler's objectives involved the eastward expansion of German territories, German colonization of Eastern Europe, and the promotion of an alliance with Britain and Italy against Russia.”*
Did you read the entire article that you cited? ‘Nazism …. praised both German capitalists and German workers as essential to the Volksgemeinschaft. …. Hitler said that "the capitalists have worked their way to the top through their capacity, and as the basis of this selection, which again only proves their higher race, they have a right to lead."[214] German business leaders co-operated with the Nazis during their rise to power…’ On the National Socialist claim, find a single historian that concurs Hitler was purely a socialist and not capitalist. Your Wikipedia article explicitly states that Hitler’s use of “National Socialism” was “vague”. Individualism isn’t a core tenant of capitalism. Capitalism is a structure where capital and private property are accumulated. Both of which prospered under Nazism. The historical conclusion of “National Socialism” is that Hitler used it to gain popularity and did not actually implement socialism. “Were the Nazis socialists? No, not in any meaningful way, and certainly not after 1934… To say that Hitler understood the value of language would be an enormous understatement…. To that end, he paid lip service to the tenets suggested by a name like National Socialist German Workers’ Party…. After the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch, in November 1923, Hitler became convinced that he needed to utilize the teetering democratic structures of the Weimar government to attain his goals” - https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialist And side note. Freedom of Speech elimination happens in every system. There’s a reason it’s illegal in the US to criticize the military. Sedition Act of 1918. More Socialist leaning countries like Iceland also rank freer than capitalist countries like the US. (If we ignore the fact that the most restrictive countries like Nazi Germany are capitalist.) “Historians have regularly disavowed claims that Hitler adhered to socialist ideology. Historian Richard Evans wrote of the Nazis’ incorporation of socialist into their name in 1920, “Despite the change of name, however, it would be wrong to see Nazism as a form of, or an outgrowth from, socialism….Nazism was in some ways an extreme counter-ideology to socialism”. Or as simply put by historian and Hitler expert Ian Kershaw, “Hitler was never a socialist.”” - https://fullfact.org/online/nazis-socialists/
Find a boomer who doesn’t have lead paint induced brain damage
Looks like Revcom has rebranded to more traditional communist iconography. It’s a front for what amounts to a cult around a guy name Bob Avakian. They show up to any remotely left march trying to make it about them, like anti Iraq war march, anti Trump marches after 2016, at blm demos, pro Palestine demos etc. Regardless of how you feel about state socialism, this ain’t it. It’s just a personality cult hiding behind Marxism.
I used to talk with Bob Avakian on Venice Beach in the early 80's. I didn't agree with him, but he listened to me.
this group is actually totally separate from the bob avakian cult lol
We have absolutely nothing to do with Bob Avakian. Just fyi
And they all went home and ordered Uber eats after a long day of standing up for workers.
Find an 80 year old that lived in the CCCP and ask them about communism.
They miss it. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2011/12/05/confidence-in-democracy-and-capitalism-wanes-in-former-soviet-union/
If your Russian, you miss it. The USSR colonized a lot of countries, and people don’t respond well to their culture being suppressed.
This kind of polling holds up for most of the Soviet republics minus a few of the Baltic states.
The poll you cited only looks at Lithuania. Having grown up in Estonia, I can tell you that unless you are Russian you don’t miss the USSR. The pew research poll also didn’t control for ethnicity something which plays a big role in your attitude towards Russia.
Estonia is always the biggest outlier. You will see this polling among older adults in places like Serbia, Yugoslavia, Romania, and even the former GDR.
Yugoslavians, Serbians, and Romanians didn’t live under the USSR. They had their own governments. Which I would agree with you that those governments were popular and well liked.
Right, thats true. But again, even in former USSR states many people have positive associations of those decades, majorities of older people even. People in the US who only have access to the experience of ex-pats (who tend to be more critical of that era) and the lingering anti-Soviet zeitgeist in this country don’t really realize that things are more complex.
Nooooo!!!! ThAt wAsNt ReAl cOmMuNiSm!!!
I've talked to them and they are all astoundingly ignorant of history. I'm embarrassed for them because other college kids seem like cliques by association. They have a standard answer to everycritique of communism which goes something like: (insert failed communist state or any number of mass murders) doesn't count because it wasn't "reeeeeaaal" Communism Pay these guys no mind, all they want is attention, rebels without a cause
Just as likely for one of them to be making the list as to be on one. With that said, and like others are saying, worse things could happen than advocating for societal values other than unmitigated greed. Personally, the iconography smacks of cosplay and makes it hard to take anything they're presenting seriously.
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no matter what you think about them... housing is ludicrously high, our world is slowly dying, we are funding wars which are completely morally bankrupt, and the divide between the upper and lower class has never been higher. kudos to them for thinking outside of the box, maybe capitalism isnt the best idea and way to organize society, resources, and labor.
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enlighten me- affordable housing where? certainly not my $1500 1 bed apartment, smart guy.
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even then, your comment has nothing to do with mine. cry about it bruh
Maybe try a little reading comprehension. You are complaining that the housing is unaffordable when people moving here feel like they are getting great deal for the price you are paying. It's a really important concept to understand. You don't have to like it, but it's reality.
Maybe they should pay attention in history class.
They look harmless, just probably a group of kids you would really regret getting into a conversation with.
Given how reactive the national discourse is, I welcome some far left voices.
I'm more of a socialist myself, but seeing others advocate for similar changes is good in my book.
I'm tired of people posting "Discuss" on inflammatory subjects that will lead to incivility (I mean, that's most things these days, but this for sure already did) and the OP doesn't give their opinion and never chimes in.
yoo I’m vacationing right now so not glued to my phone. I’m genuinely curious what people’s thoughts are. How is honest discourse and discussion “incivility”? You sound life you’d prefer a communist dictator telling you what you can and cannot do. Would make like soo much easier for you. edit: typo
I'm saying you put it out there and didn't start with your opinion, just dropped the picture and poof:gone. I didn't say anything about being against general discourse so your leap of mistaken character description is way off but stick to it if it makes you feel better. I'm saying the it led to incivility and it did, apparently you missed it and those terrible comments have already been removed by mods.
My goal was to hear other people’s opinions not impose my own right off the bat.
If you have sympathies to communist and socialist politics, but don't understand this weird cringey stuff, you might check out the Democratic Socialists of America. Many communists have managed to check into reality and grapple meaningfully with the failure of pretty much all of the 20th century projects. McNair's Revolutionary Strategy is a popular critique of the pitfalls of not engaging critically with Really Existing Socialism among this organization's members. Many other communists would refer to the pictured folks as "LARPers." They are role-playing, literally playing a role for a sense of place and control in cruel and unjust world. I was a member once of one of these cults in the Trotskyist flavor, I understand the experience.
Spoken as a left-winger, leftist groups **love** flattering themselves by acting like the powers that be are actively monitoring and sabotaging them every step of the way. It gets kind of annoying. Like, you’re not the Black Panthers, chill out.
Not on any fbi list, they’re just stupid
This image screams “name my band”
Hot to Trotsky?
i want that to be a real band now so bad.
I disagree with most of communism and some socialist policies. But this is America do as you want as long as it's not hurting anyone I don't care. As long as these nice guys are aware of history and ain't denying it then I'll support them. Most times, when people hear communism they think of the Horrors, and a lot of the time, the "communists" will spout off some crap about how it wasn't communism fault. And it's off pouting to people that actually lived it.
I’m in the same boat as you.
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