Opinion Why is Communism still around?

[DespicablePeep]

That's a fairly superficial position. Communism diminishes wealth inequality by making everyone poor? That's a theoretical analysis of communism or are you substituting examples of corruption for actual analysis?

Capitalism creates wealth inequality by making one person rich and everyone else poor (until some form of socialism is applied to redistribute the wealth).

its an anecdote about communism based on real world results for the past 100 years.

As for the rest of your post, this is what CAPITALISM achieved in the world

 

[panamaican]

its an anecdote about communism based on real world results for the past 100 years.

As for the rest of your post, this is what CAPITALISM achieved in the world

No, that's not what capitalism achieved. That's capitalism coupled with the governments employing re-distributive efforts and enforcing limitations achieved. It's capitalism combined with socialism. When the government steps in and prevents the sale of U.S. companies to foreign buyers, for example, you're not seeing capitalism. You're seeing a hybrid and that's what we've been experiencing in most of the Western world for 2 centuries at this point.

 

[DespicablePeep]

No, that's not what capitalism achieved. That's capitalism coupled with the governments employing re-distributive efforts and enforcing limitations achieved. It's capitalism combined with socialism. When the government steps in and prevents the sale of U.S. companies to foreign buyers, for example, you're not seeing capitalism. You're seeing a hybrid and that's what we've been experiencing in most of the Western world for 2 centuries at this point.

Nope

Thats a result of free market with zero economy planning. Countries where socialism was applied resulted in poverty and a broken state. Western success is about respecting individuals, private property and free market. Market regulation and laws do not make a country hybrid because production still at the hands of private individuals.

 

[Quipling]

Do children deserve education?

Do stupid questions need to be asked?

 

[Renard]

Better question, why is democracy in debt to communist China.

One good thing about communism. They learned a long time ago that you cannot trust the general dumb public with such important tasks such as voting.
Liberals will vote for a Kardashian or the rock next go around....

China hasn't been communist since the economic reform of the late 70s. It's pure capitalism, people buy things, they own shops, they make money, they trade property, etc, everything you'd do in the west. It's basically capitalism under a totalitarian government (one party rule).

 

[original doom]

i kind of see the allure of communism although the main supporters seem to be disgruntled middle class white people.

or soon to be lower class white people.

regardless wealth inequality is a problem when it comes to the truly elite.

i do wonder if a self reported communist would give away their wealth if they happened to win one of those 500 million dollar powerballs.

 

[original doom]

our western societies cant really survive on capitalism anyway, i include China here aswell. as jobs become scarcer or use fewer and fewer people you can kiss capitalism goodbye. atleast those comminist cointries had people in factories instead of economies being driven by the service industries and real estate.

 

[Mastoness]

@Snackbar , @Trotsky

since both of you mentioned Yugoslavia and Trotsky made a post about it, I can somehow describe a situation in former Yugoslavia cause I was born in it in 1983.

The success of communism in Yugoslavia is a myth, it was never successfull and Yugoslavia was never a land of freedom and equallity and worker's prosperity as some people like to present it.

The most "successful" period of Yugoslavia was 1970-1980. Among the older generations that was deemed as the golden period of Yugoslavia. And it is truth, the fabrics were modernised, hospitals and roads were built and life was solid.
The industry was pretty big but only domesticaly. Some companies like Koncar, Gorenje and Prvomajska participated on foreign markets but not nearly enough to be sustainable on their own.


The truth is, all of that was financed with the loans from MMF and western countries. And those loans were huge and the foreign debt was growing bigger from year to year.


In early 1980's, after death of yugoslav dictator Tito, the foreign debt was so huge that Yugoslavia wasn't able to pay it's loans anymore. The result of that was that there wasn't any money to run the country. As there wasn't any money left, there was lack of some ordinary goods like rice, soap, sugar, coffee and similar. The lines were being organized just to buy the most ordinary bread. And even though that Yugoslavian industry could produce some of those goods, there wasn't enough money to buy and import the raw materials for it. As a result, Yugoslavia decided to print large amounts of money which led to hyperinflation.

The Yugoslavia went on decline until the late 80's and early 90's when it finally falled apart but that is the story for another topic.


And now time for some quotes and notes.

worker organizations had greater autonomy from the state

Influence and participation of worker organizations in work and politics of the companies were nothing but an ilusion. The companies and the whole industry were completely owned and controlled by the government.

Every company had the directors, bosses and lower staff that were in control.

The only influence that worker's sindycates had was that they could've choose the directors and staff, but the thing is, every candidate for those positions was nominanted by the communist party. With that said, the membership in communist party wasn't mandatory. Yet, if you wanted to advance as the worker, you had to be a member of the communist party. You wanted to be a manager in your factory unit you had to be member of the communist party. Same goes for bosses and the directors but they had to be a higher in hierarchy. If you weren't a communist, you knew that you will have to spend your intire lifetime as the ordinary worker with the lowest salary without any possibility to advance in your carrer.


And of course, salary gap between workers and staff in charge was huge. Even between the workers in the same workplaces, if some of them were members of the communist party they had the bigger salaries.


It was same in every part of society, the communists were living in the bigger houses, to many of them the government even gifted the apartments, they were driving the better cars (imported from those evil capitalist countries like Germany for example) and they had connections in every structure. The regular folks had just enough not to be homeless or hungry.

Freedom of speech was non existent, the media, culture, music and literature were controlled and censored by the communist party.

f you had balls to publicly criticise communism and socialism, there was a high possibility of being declared as the enemy of the regime. Those who were declared as the enemies of the regime were imprisoned ( yup, imprisoned for verbal delict ) or sentenced with the heavy phisical work in labor camp.


And just to mention Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav dictator. He was the leader of yugoslav resistance movement in WW2. Under his leadership, Yugoslavia was freed from the german and italian occupation. After the end of WW2 he became the head of the communist party. Later he declared himself as the lifelong president of Yugoslavia. Like every true communist leader he enjoyed luxury and high lifestyle. He owned villas, cars, yachts and the boat, he was spending summers on the Island of Brijuni with his own private zoo park. He enjoyed expensive whiskey and cigars. Of course, all of that was financed by the state but hey, he wasn't the owner cause after all, all of that was owned by the people ( yep, on the paper, everything in Yugoslavia was owned by it's people, I just don't remember that those people had any benfit of all of that luxury ).

In short, communism in Yugoslavia wasn't doomed because of tribalism, it was doomed because it was the unsustainable system, built on the fairytales and lies about unity and equality, without any future.


And yes, forgive me for my bad writing and if any sentences looks weird and grammatically wrong, I haven't slept in 2 days and I can barely see letters on my keyboard.

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

I'm not comparing Cuban healthcare to healthcare in Norway, I know its shit compared to what I get in terms of quality. But in Brazil if you are poor and have cancer, you ain't seeing a doctor in 3 months or in 3 years. As far as education, pretty much only private schools are worth a damn which is partly why my parents came to the US since the public schools here are better and don't require you pay out the nose. Like I said, something is better than nothing and that's what Cubans have compared to other Latin Americans.

Uh, we also have universal healthcare and we even have Cuban doctors here, it's so bad for Cubans that the government created a program to recruit doctors for public hospitals where each doctor would receive 10k BRL/month, that's an ok salary as you can still have your own office etc. But we also did a deal with Cuba where we would pay their government 10k, they would send a doctor who would receive only 3k and Castro would keep the rest. Around 10,000 Cubans came.
They were woefully under prepared, and to practice medicine in Brazil you need to pass a series of exams, but our left wing government reached a deal where Cubans wouldn't need to do so.
So, we end up with doctors without proper qualifications receiving only 30% of their proper salary and they kept coming because either the government was forcing them or even 3kBRL(1k dollars) was still much more than they would have in Cuba, plus a chance to get the hell out.
It was later shown that our left wing government crafted that deal with Cuba not because we even needed the doctors but as a way to prop up the Cuban dictatorship that was running out of hard cash.
After Bolsonaro was elected he scrapped the deal and said the Cubans can stay but money will be paid directly to them and they will have to take the exams. Some are staying, most are leaving, see how they're packed with consumer goods like TVs.

https://g1.globo.com/df/distrito-fe...orto-de-brasilia-para-retornar-a-havana.ghtml

After seeing how unprepared Cuban doctors were, how desperate and how unfamiliar with modern equipment they were I came to the conclusion Cuba only maintain decent health indicators because they can control people lives to a much higher degree than democratic countries. Can you even be obese in Cuba? Do drugs? Things like alcohol are probably heavily controlled too.

 

[zebby23]

Better question, why is democracy in debt to communist China.

One good thing about communism. They learned a long time ago that you cannot trust the general dumb public with such important tasks such as voting.
Liberals will vote for a Kardashian or the rock next go around....

I’d rather have a Kardashian or a Rock than a Putin Puppet like Trump

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

I’d rather have a Kardashian or a Rock than a Putin Puppet like Trump

I'd take Xi Jinping

 

[Islam Imamate]

Uh, we also have universal healthcare and we even have Cuban doctors here, it's so bad for Cubans that the government created a program to recruit doctors for public hospitals where each doctor would receive 10k BRL/month, that's an ok salary as you can still have your own office etc. But we also did a deal with Cuba where we would pay their government 10k, they would send a doctor who would receive only 3k and Castro would keep the rest. Around 10,000 Cubans came.
They were woefully under prepared, and to practice medicine in Brazil you need to pass a series of exams, but our left wing government reached a deal where Cubans wouldn't need to do so.
So, we end up with doctors without proper qualifications receiving only 30% of their proper salary and they kept coming because either the government was forcing them or even 3kBRL(1k dollars) was still much more than they would have in Cuba, plus a chance to get the hell out.
It was later shown that our left wing government crafted that deal with Cuba not because we even needed the doctors but as a way to prop up the Cuban dictatorship that was running out of hard cash.
After Bolsonaro was elected he scrapped the deal and said the Cubans can stay but money will be paid directly to them and they will have to take the exams. Some are staying, most are leaving, see how they're packed with consumer goods like TVs.

https://g1.globo.com/df/distrito-fe...orto-de-brasilia-para-retornar-a-havana.ghtml

After seeing how unprepared Cuban doctors were, how desperate and how unfamiliar with modern equipment they were I came to the conclusion Cuba only maintain decent health indicators because they can control people lives to a much higher degree than democratic countries. Can you even be obese in Cuba? Do drugs? Things like alcohol are probably heavily controlled too.

Like I said earlier, I'm not going to pretend that Cuban healthcare is amazing but I'd definitely bet a dollar that a poor Cuban gets better healthcare than a poor Guatemalan or Honduran or Mexican or poor people in many other Latin American countries.

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

Like I said earlier, I'm not going to pretend that Cuban healthcare is amazing but I'd definitely bet a dollar that a poor Cuban gets better healthcare than a poor Guatemalan or Honduran or Mexican or poor people in many other Latin American countries.

I think it would be similar with Mexico and Brazil, except if you live in the Amazon, better than Honduras. The problems seem similar, you have hospitals and doctors, but they're underfunded and badly administered. Cubans are definitely better at preventive medicine though, probably the best in the world.

 

[cincymma79]

@Snackbar , @Trotsky

since both of you mentioned Yugoslavia and Trotsky made a post about it, I can somehow describe a situation in former Yugoslavia cause I was born in it in 1983.

The success of communism in Yugoslavia is a myth, it was never successfull and Yugoslavia was never a land of freedom and equallity and worker's prosperity as some people like to present it.

The most "successful" period of Yugoslavia was 1970-1980. Among the older generations that was deemed as the golden period of Yugoslavia. And it is truth, the fabrics were modernised, hospitals and roads were built and life was solid.
The industry was pretty big but only domesticaly. Some companies like Koncar, Gorenje and Prvomajska participated on foreign markets but not nearly enough to be sustainable on their own.


The truth is, all of that was financed with the loans from MMF and western countries. And those loans were huge and the foreign debt was growing bigger from year to year.


In early 1980's, after death of yugoslav dictator Tito, the foreign debt was so huge that Yugoslavia wasn't able to pay it's loans anymore. The result of that was that there wasn't any money to run the country. As there wasn't any money left, there was lack of some ordinary goods like rice, soap, sugar, coffee and similar. The lines were being organized just to buy the most ordinary bread. And even though that Yugoslavian industry could produce some of those goods, there wasn't enough money to buy and import the raw materials for it. As a result, Yugoslavia decided to print large amounts of money which led to hyperinflation.

The Yugoslavia went on decline until the late 80's and early 90's when it finally falled apart but that is the story for another topic.


And now time for some quotes and notes.



Influence and participation of worker organizations in work and politics of the companies were nothing but an ilusion. The companies and the whole industry were completely owned and controlled by the government.

Every company had the directors, bosses and lower staff that were in control.

The only influence that worker's sindycates had was that they could've choose the directors and staff, but the thing is, every candidate for those positions was nominanted by the communist party. With that said, the membership in communist party wasn't mandatory. Yet, if you wanted to advance as the worker, you had to be a member of the communist party. You wanted to be a manager in your factory unit you had to be member of the communist party. Same goes for bosses and the directors but they had to be a higher in hierarchy. If you weren't a communist, you knew that you will have to spend your intire lifetime as the ordinary worker with the lowest salary without any possibility to advance in your carrer.


And of course, salary gap between workers and staff in charge was huge. Even between the workers in the same workplaces, if some of them were members of the communist party they had the bigger salaries.


It was same in every part of society, the communists were living in the bigger houses, to many of them the government even gifted the apartments, they were driving the better cars (imported from those evil capitalist countries like Germany for example) and they had connections in every structure. The regular folks had just enough not to be homeless or hungry.

Freedom of speech was non existent, the media, culture, music and literature were controlled and censored by the communist party.

f you had balls to publicly criticise communism and socialism, there was a high possibility of being declared as the enemy of the regime. Those who were declared as the enemies of the regime were imprisoned ( yup, imprisoned for verbal delict ) or sentenced with the heavy phisical work in labor camp.


And just to mention Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav dictator. He was the leader of yugoslav resistance movement in WW2. Under his leadership, Yugoslavia was freed from the german and italian occupation. After the end of WW2 he became the head of the communist party. Later he declared himself as the lifelong president of Yugoslavia. Like every true communist leader he enjoyed luxury and high lifestyle. He owned villas, cars, yachts and the boat, he was spending summers on the Island of Brijuni with his own private zoo park. He enjoyed expensive whiskey and cigars. Of course, all of that was financed by the state but hey, he wasn't the owner cause after all, all of that was owned by the people ( yep, on the paper, everything in Yugoslavia was owned by it's people, I just don't remember that those people had any benfit of all of that luxury ).

In short, communism in Yugoslavia wasn't doomed because of tribalism, it was doomed because it was the unsustainable system, built on the fairytales and lies about unity and equality, without any future.


And yes, forgive me for my bad writing and if any sentences looks weird and grammatically wrong, I haven't slept in 2 days and I can barely see letters on my keyboard.

Don’t expect a response

 

[Islam Imamate]

I think it would be similar with Mexico and Brazil, except if you live in the Amazon, better than Honduras. The problems seem similar, you have hospitals and doctors, but they're underfunded and badly administered. Cubans are definitely better at preventive medicine though, probably the best in the world.

I think they also have a high ratio of doctors to population as well.

 

[Goonerview]

Communism is still around because capitalism eventually leads to massive wealth inequality. And so long as that happens there will be people who advocate for a system that claims it can prevent it.

I prefer to use the word "freedom" than capitalism