Ah yes, get rid of extremism with different extremism. I think we’ve been there already. Spoiler: Didnt work.
What’s extremism?
Extremism is “the quality or state of being extreme” or “the advocacy of extreme measures or views”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremism
Or as i know it with these regimes both left or right: those that oppose and do not belive in our thing must be gotten rid of. I would say that is the extreme here to me. Thats what both communists and nazis did in Europe, in my country, in my city. And i want none of it to come back. Iam honestly terrified where is this world headding again.
But if you want to take a deeper look, this seems interesting if you have access:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-83336-7_2
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-political-extremist-1857297
Ah so you’re an imperialist
I myself consider imperialists to be extremists, their global oppression is certainly very extreme
Communists just want to have the fruits of their labor not be stolen, very normal
The portrayal of the Communists and Nazis as “twin evils” exaggerates the sins of the Communists in quantity and quality, while minimizing the sins of the Nazis in quantity and quality, in order to show them as relatively equal problems. In other words, its Nazi apologia, and historical revisionism. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
The Nazis executed the Communists, Socialists, gay people, trans people, disabled people, Jewish people, Slavic people, and many, many more. It wasn’t simple opposition, it was a racially supremacist ideology.
The Communists executed Tsarists, fascists, and terrorists to the state. They did not create a systematic industrialized murder machine like the Nazis did in order to keep up with how many people they needed to kill.
I can agree with you in some parts. They did not have any industrialized murder machine. But they mass murdered Polish by bullet, Ukrainians by starvation for example.
Communists imprisoned and/or sent to forced labor people for being gay, religious (not only jews) and yes “terrorists to the state” which in most of the time meant someone just spoke against regime. And well being a prisoner in Communist countries meant you were treated almost like jew in a nazi camp just without killing part sometimes.
All that said by my opinion communism wasnt racially supremacist ideology. It was just supremacist ideology. All they cared about was how great the state is and everything else is not.
They did not mass murder the Polish, nor did they intentionally starve Ukrainians. Both of those claims are highly inaccurate, the Nazis exterminated the Polish and the 1930s famine was unintended and tragic.
Further, your claims about the prison system are highly distorted in quantity and quality, they in no way compared to the industrial mass murder machines in Nazi Germany. Read Russian Justice.
Communism is about uplifting the working class, not worship of the state.
First, a societal organization outside the Western norm has no bearing on if it will be successful or not. The “middle” has no superior intrinsic characteristics.
Second, we know Socialism works, the PRC is now becoming the de facto world power as the US falls, all while providing dramatic improvements for its people and increasing levels of satisfaction.
What, specifically, doesn’t work?
Well, first, as far as i know China is known to miss report its economical report. But even if that would not be the case.
Human rights dont work there. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/china
Human Rights are overall good in China, and improving steadily.
HRW has ties to the US government, is a revolving door, and refuses to critique US foreign policy.
I’d say 1 person owning most of the money made at the company is the problem
To solve it everyone just needs to form or join a private unionized cooperative that doesn’t go on stock market for sustainable growth and so everyone at the company is making a lot of money too
Then collectively you all grow the pot that is available for all of you. Better to all be making 1,000,000 each and then grow it together to become 10,000,000-100,000,000+ for each of you
That is the root issue. Not enough of that
This doesn’t solve the systemic pressures within Capitalism, nor does it describe how to get from A to B. Your idea still depends on your one firm outcompeting other firms, which is difficult in saturated markets.
I recommend you look into Marxist theory, I have some recommendations I can make.
True but at least it’s a good step to take. More stuff will be useful as well
I’d say it would be a good step to take if I thought it was legitimately possible in the current system. If it succeded, it would be good, but such a strategy has never worked before and there’s no evidence that it will.
yeah instead of having all the money controlled by a few billionares, lets have an extremely powerful govt have that kinda power. great idea /s
It is better for the economy to be controlled by the public than by private interests, yes. You can study the democratizations of the economy made in AES states, and how the lives of the working class made the largest improvments.
Amazing! (commenting so there aren’t 88 comments 😤)
🫡
Yeah, there’s nothing worse than a bunch of billionaire shitheads, using the media they control to keep the lower classes fighting with each other while they . . . the rich . . . run off with all the farking money. Oh wait, that’s what’s going on Russia, too.
There are no “good guys” here. Just billionaire assholes exploiting everybody.
The Russian Federation ceased being Socialist in the early 90s, the Hammer and Sickle is a symbol of Marxism. Not sure what your point is.
The point is that it’s a class war. It always has been. It’s not about “socialism vs capitalism” or “liberals vs conservatives” or The Romulans vs The Federation. It’s about billionaires vs everybody else. It’s about the cluefull vs the clueless.
Class War is a fundamental part of the Socialist canon, though, while Capitalism affirms that it is unnecessary.
Further, a bit nitpicky, but I don’t like framing it as “cluefull vs clueless.” People’s ideas are a product of their material conditions, we shouldn’t downtalk those who don’t know more.
The people who told you what socialism or capitalism is, LIED to you. “The good of the people” is a noble-sounding goal. But the reality is that the people who deliberately seek power are . . . for the most part . . . vain, greedy, brutal assholes.
I don’t think Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc were lying to me when discussing what they wanted to implement and how Socialism and Capitalism function. I don’t think reading speeches and writings of Deng Xiapoing, Xi Jinping, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Joseph Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, or other leaders of AES states were lying about their intended goals or economic policies either.
I genuinely don’t understand what you are trying to say here. Are you rejecting analysis of Political Economy, in favor of vibes-based social movements? Genuinely.
Karl Marx said a lot of things about socialism and collectivism a hundred years ago, but he’s not in charge anymore. The rich oligarchs who replaced him are saying this. You keep saying “but they SAID they were SOCIALISTS” and all I see is Sponge Bob’s eyes, filling up with tears because he just can’t believe that some rich assholes are lying to him.
We have people in this country who claim to be “christians” who literally elected the anti-christ. Trump embodies ALL the seven deadly sins, but those folks are just fine with it. So let’s quit pretending that belief systems can’t be exploited.
Karl Marx was never “in charge.” He developed a framework for analyzing Political Economy in a manner useful for the Proletariat to identify the manner in which we are exploited, and how we may go about defeating the Bourgeoisie. There are no rich oligarchs replacing Marx.
Belief systems certainly can be exploited, but that isn’t the point you are making here. Your point is that we should disregard analysis of Political Economy in favor of vibes-based action. If you don’t do the effort of studying Political Economy, any conclusions you come to will be based on shaky foundations, rather than throwing theory aside, we need to weild it to guide correct practice.
Funny enough, Mao described your error over half a century ago, in On Practice:
The second point is that knowledge needs to be deepened, that the perceptual stage of knowledge needs to be developed to the rational stage – this is the dialectics of the theory of knowledge.[5] To think that knowledge can stop at the lower, perceptual stage and that perceptual knowledge alone is reliable while rational knowledge is not, would be to repeat the historical error of “empiricism”. This theory errs in failing to understand that, although the data of perception reflect certain realities in the objective world (I am not speaking here of idealist empiricism which confines experience to so-called introspection), they are merely one-sided and superficial, reflecting things incompletely and not reflecting their essence. Fully to reflect a thing in its totality, to reflect its essence, to reflect its inherent laws, it is necessary through the exercise of thought to reconstruct the rich data of sense perception, discarding the dross and selecting the essential, eliminating the false and retaining the true, proceeding from the one to the other and from the outside to the inside, in order to form a system of concepts and theories – it is necessary to make a leap from perceptual to rational knowledge. Such reconstructed knowledge is not more empty or more unreliable; on the contrary, whatever has been scientifically reconstructed in the process of cognition, on the basis of practice, reflects objective reality, as Lenin said, more deeply, more truly, more fully. As against this, vulgar “practical men” respect experience but despise theory, and therefore cannot have a comprehensive view of an entire objective process, lack clear direction and long-range perspective, and are complacent over occasional successes and glimpses of the truth. If such persons direct a revolution, they will lead it up a blind alley.
Luigi’s hand doesn’t look anything like that. Someone fix this meme
You’re not going to overthrow fascism, white supremacy or capitalism with random acts of adventurism. If you’re not more organized than your enemy they will crush you.
Workers of the world unite!
Edit: not that I’m into that sort of thing… I’ve taken history classes, I’ve read about, I’ve watched documentaries, I understand that communism is not to be desired or
Communism is to be desired, though it’s understandable that you’d be opposed if your major exposure is through western education and western documentaries.
Communism is shit based on facts… not opinion.
What “facts?”
Look you dirty Marxist, I’ve looked at your bio. Pushing for the extremes you push is crazy. Why don’t you dial it back from 11. Why push past socialism. That’s the way to go if anything.
Communism is just a later stage of Socialism, ie Socialism of a more developed character, similar to how the Capitalism of today is a more developed version of what it was in the 1800s. All Communists are advocates of Socialism, because Socialism is a necessary prerequisite. There’s nothing “crazy” about that at all.
Further, “dirty Marxist?” Is this the 1950s? Yes, I am a Marxist, there are a lot of us on Lemmy, including the developers. I don’t hide being a Marxist-Leninist, I put it on my bio because I want to make it available information for those who want to know.
If you don’t mind, what country are you from? An d how old are you?
I’m going to look into the developers of lemmy… if that’s true, I won’t be staying on lemmy.
I’m a working adult, not doxxing my exact age. I live in the US Empire. Neither of those detract from the hard data and historical texts I read regularly as a part of my continued self-study.
As for the devs, yes, they are Marxists. Here is a list of essays and compiled resources from the lead developer of Lemmy. You’ll find FOSS projects in general have many Marxists and Anarchists, and few liberals.
Maaaaaaybe the USSR isn’t the best example of a better society we want to be building.
I’m watching the whole ideological-purge thing happen in the US and it kinda sucks.
Either build something better or shutup, I say. Unless you’re a big fan of Tsarist Russia
How does one go about building their own government/economic system?
The Soviet revolution managed it
Yeah, it wasn’t one guy on Reddit lol. Why haven’t you started the revolution?
And y’all wonder why people rag on .ml.
There are tens of millions of communists world wide, what are you on about?
The whole point was that I don’t reject successful revolutions while not having achieved anything myself. That’s you dog.
I’ve played civilization and I’m pretty sure there’s other forms of government besides Communism and Monarchy that have low corruption, albeit lacking the ability to force the citizens into war on the leader’s whim.
Lol, good bit.
Both extremes on display those examples, seems like they both end up in the same place in the end. Maybe it would be reasonable to use any system that is a mix of things, instead of focusing on pure capitalism or communism.
There’s really no such thing as a pure system, any mix is still going to have either the public sector as principle or private, ie which controls the state, large firms, and key industries. There’s no way to keep them “balanced,” one will have power over the other, and its best for it to be the public sector.
Because at then end ,power over the people is given to the state. When you give the state the means of production and that state falls under the sway of humans with power, you get corruption and death.
Once a place has enough people, anonymity happens. We stop knowing our neighbors and leaders. We don’t see the corruption they can now hide. Communism gives an easier way to leverage that corruption and power more easily
Socialism, more specifically forms of democratic socialism ( and with today’s tech it can be one vite one person), is far more scalable and stable
We need a new constitution with more power given to the people and LESS to the state
Communism gives no more anonymity or room for corruption than Capitalism or Socialism. Further, Communism is Socialism developed to a higher stage. Socialism itself is an economy where public ownership is the principle aspect, ie has control over large firms, key industries, and the state. All Socialism is democratic, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, I don’t see why you say it’s more scaleable when Communism is a global and fully publicly owned version of Socialism, ie Socialism developed to its natural higher stages. Even further, the government is made up of the people, assuming proper measures are in place, you can’t give more power to private interests and keep it democratic.
I’m sorry history has proven you wrong. You’re glossing over so many issues in this statement, I really don’t know where to begin
I sincerely hope you have a great day. I’m not disengaging because of anything you said, I just don’t have the energy. Please. Have a great day
History has proven me correct, from the data I’ve looked over and the books I’ve read. If you specify, then we can go over what I think is relevant to the conversation, rather than me just regurgitating facts and book recommendations. I am oversimplifying, but it was a response to an oversimplification to begin with, specificity helps direct conversations.
Hope you gave a good one too, but for future reference, disengaging right after saying “you’re entirely wrong” isn’t really disengaging, I still have to respond to what I think is a directed attack. You don’t have to respond if you don’t want to, but disengaging while doing so is ceding the last word, so to speak.
Stop. I don’t have patience for bloviation and self aggrandizing I sincerely wished you a good day. I do not care at all what you think of my disengagement. That farewell was your hint that I don’t have patience for this fantasy that has been tried , failed and regurgitated.
Please honor my wishes and simply go Have a good day. If you have to get the last word, so be it. I won’t be responding
1·1 month agoAs cowbee said, you can’t disengage and then continue to engage. Either disengage and do not include your arguments against what the other has said, or continue to engage.
Insulting me then telling me to have a good day is childish behavior. If you don’t want to have a conversation, don’t try to exit it by trying to suggest whatever I have to say is devoid of value.
Communist parties have successfully built Socialism throughout the world, and this continues to this day. The PRC is now the largest economy on the planet when adjusting for Purchasing Power Parity, and has seen the greatest alleviation of poverty in human history. The USSR may have dissolved, but during its existence it brought a doubling of life expectancy, tripling of literacy rates to 99.9%, dramatically lowered wealth inequality while rapidly growing the economy, provided free healthcare, education, and childcare, and dramatically improved women’s rights.
No Socialist state has been a mythical wonderland, all have faced great struggles both internal and external, but we know it works because we can track metrics and gauge trajectories. Facts and history do not align with your assertions.
“X is good, Y is bad.” It rarely is that simple.
Cool agitprop posters like what OP posted rarely give you a particularly nuanced perspective due to their limited space. The intended effect is to spark conversation, not to beam Marxism into the heads of anyone who sees it.
rip marxists, the one type they make a meme with fewer than 100 words and people still complain :0
For real… 🫠
If I write an essay, people don’t genuinely read it, if I write short responses I either over-simplify or manage to raise more questions than I answer… at least, it feels that way sometimes, lol
Your comments are consistently high quality and there’s plenty of people reading without engaging who will be influenced in small but meaningful ways. You’re planting good seeds.
Thank you, I appreciate it! I do it more for others than the people I directly interact with, who have largely made up their mind already. That’s generally my strategy, people looking to argue online aren’t going to change their minds, they see it as a “win/lose” situation. Instead, I focus on refutation of absurd claims and well-sourced information more for onlookers to engage with. I really like Nia Frome’s articles on Red Sails called Marketing Socialism and On Dialectics, Or How to Defeat Enemies. They really help shape how I engage with others online, decisive and sharp refutation is very useful for onlookers to see.
For more fun articles on why people believe what they do, I’m a big fan of Roderic Day’s “Brainwashing” and Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing.” Those help dramatically with seeing that, really, there’s little convincing others directly in online debate, but there is hope for others whose material conditions have opened them up to new ideas to see and engage with more information they are curious about.
I read them. I have learned a lot on Lemmy.
Thanks, I appreciate it! I know there are people who do, some of them send me DMs or reply directly to me so it all justifies the efforts I do, I just wish the human brain worked better with direct argumentation than it does when viewing a debate from the outside. Ie, I wish those I carefully spend time writing for took it to heart more than onlookers tend to, but the net result is still positive so I keep with it.
Thanks again!
Capitalism breeds fascism. As long as we have capitalism we will fight fascism. Communism is not the answer though nor is any extreme ideology. Social direct democracy or even sociocracy would be better systems.
Social Democracy retains Private Ownership as the principle aspect of its economy, ergo its still Capitalist. Fascism isn’t distinct from Capitalism, but Capitalism in certain circumstances, ie when it needs to put on a mask and brutally protect itself from its own decay, before taking off the mask and pretending it’s something else, ie it keeps Capitalism’s record “clean.”
Further, being radical does not equal being wrong. Distance from the status quo does not mean it is not correct, we need to judge legitimately the merits of Socialism/Communism and not just say they are too radical.
Not necessarily. A true sociocracy would value corporations on a system of social good. Not, as now, a measure of how much spare money it has after trade and costs. It should also be very possible to run corporations as co-operatives which spread ownership among the workers.
Unless the Proletariat has control of the state, and thus can implement a “corporation behavior credit score” like in the PRC that isn’t in control of private interests, you will see corporations just lobby and get what they want that way. Socialism remains necessary, which is the first step to Communism.
Secondly, cooperative ownership is nice, but it doesn’t stop the natural centralizing of markets or prove more efficient than public ownership and planning at higher levels of development.
Really, it sounds like you would like the PRC’s model of economy. Companies like Huawei are worker-owned, the Proletariat has control over the state and thus profit isn’t the central guiding factor of the economy, and there are checks in place to punish corporations that go against benchmarks and metrics for “good” vs “bad” behavior.
This is the “extreme ideology” you said doesn’t work.
capitalism breeds fascism. I support capitalism
Social democracy is an extreme ideology
nor is any extreme ideology. Social direct democracy
Whoah hold it right there, that’s democratic extremism! You’re taking away all the representatives of bribery and extortion. Best to leave a few weak points, for balance.
Of course something simillar to Switzerland’s model.
Anonymous bank accounts for rich criminals from other countries?
I don’t get why every Reddit alternative needs to be filled with these weird political ideas. Communism, Fascism and every other form of extremism only leads to misery.
I’m sure capitalism is flawed, but you can make it work better. Any of the Nordic countries works as a great example. And no they aren’t perfect but nothing ever will be.
Communism is no more extreme than capitalism. They just stand in opposition of one another. The red scare is back I guess.
I would say we have seen both extremes and we like neither and some people think a third alternative is “killing everyone else” can we not?
What are you on about with “red scare”? You can simply look at the poor attempts made in the name of communism to see how well that idea succeeds in practice. Simple solutions to complex issues never work. Communism is an extreme ideology based on the oversimplification of complex like every other form of populism.
Communism is not a simple solution, nor does it oversimplify the problem. What do you mean when you say this?
Well don’t you think it’s a bit simple to pin every single problem in the world on property rights and a conspiracy theory level class divide between proletariats and “bourgeoisie”? It’s ann exhausting ordeal to hear all these complaints when humanity has never been at a more advanced point than it is now despite all its flaws.
How on Earth is it a conspiracy theory to say that business owners and employees exist? What exists in your mind palace?
Plus, Marx notes that Capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism, but has come with its own new problems that Socialism resolves.
Are you serious? Do you not understand the concept that you can be an employee today and business owner tomorrow? How do you not understand the irony that suddenly once you start your own business you’re an exploitative devil and as long as you stay as an employee you’re somehow a better person? Don’t you realize what moronic baiting that is? Humanity never learns from populists it seems, whether it’s Trump or Lenin, it’s all the same.
Marx never for a single second suggested that Class is an immutable characteristic.
The bible is also a long book, does that make it believable to you?
You said Communism was based on oversimplification, now you’re saying it’s suspicious for being long? Make up your mind.
You’re saying it’s not simplistic just because it has a lot of words. Please refer to my other post on why it’s Marxism is a ridiculous and frankly childish theory.
No, I’m saying it’s not simplistic because I’ve read a lot of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and from many, many, many more Communist leaders and theorists since them.
Reddit is state controlled media. You’re seeing weird ideas outside of it because you’re allowed to now
For your first question, Lemmy is developed by Communists, and is an answer to the Capitalist failings of Reddit. Simple as that.
For the Capitalism bit, you’re waving away the fact thay the Nordic countries are Imperialist. They shift all of the suffering and worst exploitation to the Global South. At the same time, worker’s rights and safety nets are being eroded, because Capital controls the state, not the people.
Please explain the way in which the Nordic countries are imperialist and exploitative and which country you personally look for moral guidance? And if there is none what makes you think we are capable of building a system that wouldn’t be exploitative by your grandiose unrealistic standards? Workers rights and safety nets are far beyond any other country in the world and in fact they’ve essentially never been better. The only change is that populists like you have given up on building and improving the system which in fact does require everyone to commit to improving society together, not just whining in a basement about some socialist utopia that is never going to happen.
Here are some good resources others have compiled on the Nordic Model in general:
- What about social democracy / democratic socialism / the Nordic model? Isn’t Sweden socialist?
- On the unraveling of the Nordic welfare states: increasing inequality and forced austerity.
- Scandinavia’s covert role in western imperialism
Essentially, Finland (and Imperialist countries in general) operate on a principle of unequal exchange. By leveraging mechanisms like IMF loans with clauses requiring privatization of resources and industry for foreign capture, to relying on overseas production to super-exploit for super-profits, to simply relying on high interest rates on foreign loans, Imperialist countries consume more of the Global South’s value than they provide the Global South.
As for which countries I think are headed in the right direction, I like the PRC quite a bit. It’s certainly not perfect and it has a long way to go, but it’s making rapid improvements and doesn’t rely on Imperialism to provide for its people. And Socialism does exist, already, though nobody is genuinely waiting for a magical Utopian version of it.
Are you joking with China or am I talking with a bot?
China is a massive massive loan shark to emerging economies and is literally one of the largest IMF backers. Although once again you’re sound very conspiracy theorist here blaming the IMF which the entire world is a member essentially. If you look at voting power China alone has more than every Nordic country combined.
China literally exploits not only their own people but everyone who’s weaker than them. You’re seriously commenting in bad faith here.
China doesn’t operate in that way. China is a country focused on selling goods it produces, ergo it cares more to have customers. The BRI and BRICs exist purely to build up more customers, it’s neither charity nor Imperialism. Countries enter it in exchange for large infrastructural build up, in order for China to have new customers that aren’t the West, who as we observe are quite fickle to work with. As this article from The Atlantic puts it, The “Chinese Debt Trap” is a Myth.
The IMF is absolutely to blame for requiring loan recipients to privatize their key industries for foreign plundering, and the US is the worst among the biggest lenders.
No, I’m not being bad faith here. You’re stonewalling and relying on false assumptions, which I have already pointed out.
Capitalism is a form of extremism
“capitalism is evil”
so what’s not evil?
“a totalitarian socialist shithole, where you got no freedom or human rights”
A river floods every year. If someone builds a house next to it and the river takes it, is the river evil, or is the person suffering the consequences of their own ignorance? The consequences of capitalism are predictable and inevitable. The behaviour of a dollar is almost as predictable as that of an electron. Why do people pretend like we don’t know what is going to happen?
The caricature in your head of Socialism in practice does not exist. I recommend you read Anticommunism & Wonderland, which despite its title does show a nuanced view of the Soviet Union.
Are you bourgeois? Under communism the owning class has no freedom
To paraphrase Bernard Shaw, Communism might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.
Many places have, like the PRC, Vietnam, DPRK, Laos, Cuba, and former USSR.
This would go harder without the hammer and sickle. Communism didnt fail; the ussr did.
The Hammer & Sickle is the symbol of Marxism-Leninism, not just the USSR. There are several Marxist-Leninist states to this day, including the PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and the DPRK.
My point remains valid.
It wasn’t to start with
Naw you’re just pedantic.
I’m not sure you know what “pedantic” means
Oh snap 🙄
That wasn’t a zinger, I actually don’t think you do
Is the PRC still communist though?
Yes. They are more classically Marxist now, than they were in the late Mao and Gang of Four period. I elaborated on that, here.
No
Greed, not capitalism is the root of evil. Fight me.
lol, so stupid
So many replies to this topic are just ‘everything sucks because humans are horrible’.
I could understand a kid making angsty comments like that, but it’s just embarrassing when a grown-up does it.
Human aspects like greed are not intrinsic to humanity, but created by the material conditions and mechanisms surrounding them, and are thus malleable and expressed in lower or greater degrees in different systems. Capitalism in particular expresses greed as its entire foundation is the relentless accumulation of profit and exansion of markets and commodification for the purposes of private wealth.
