Afaik this happened with every single instance of a communist country. Communism seems like a pretty good idea on the surface, but then why does it always become autocratic?
OP, do you have any knowledge about the CIA in the United States having involvement in “every single instance” you speak of?
Can you also please name those instances to better inform this conversation?
Instead of being condescending, how about you just go ahead and contribute that information yourself? Sheesh
Because it is a dictatorship.
A dictatorship of the proletariat.
For real though we’ve not seen communism yet.
Because nobody’s claiming all this stuff that’s now just freely lying around. Someone better claim it before it gets gone.
“Our” becomes “my”
Why? I’m not clear, but power corrupts regardless of the political structure surrounding it (e.g. look at pretty much any HOA).
Lots of reasons, but here’s one:
Because one of, if not the main purpose of money is to provide a decentralized way of transferring information about economic needs and capabilities. Without that mechanism in place, the only way of determining where goods can be created and where they need to go (a massive problem that it is a daily miracle we don’t generally have to deal with) is by an overbearing authoritarian state.
Spoken like someone that hasn’t paid attention to the supply chains of places like Walmart.
We already have command economies. They exist and are functional. The owners are simply siphoning away the surplus value.
As large as Walmart is, it is still absolute peanuts compared to the scale and (especially) dynamism of global production and consumption as a whole. Global supply chains have to change much faster and in arbitrary ways, compared to the centralized chains of something like Walmart, which in turn is also still subject to the external pressures of competition – even just hypothetical competition based on some hypothetical course of action is a powerful constraint.
So you’re saying you agree?
Walmart is absolutely a result of capitalism, those intricate supply chains are in place to make money. Maybe we could do it without a common way to track needs for a while, but would it adapt? Would the alternative resist corruption better? The invention of Money almost seems an inevitable consequence from one perspective.
I don’t think this answers the original question, but it’s an interesting side topic.
The invention of Money almost seems an inevitable consequence from one perspective.
That really depends on what you mean by money and how it’s used in the economy. David Graeber wrote a really great book covering this called “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” that I highly recommend.
I think because true communism never existed. All the previous attempts were flawed, people got corrupted, misused their power and it’s difficult to overcome human nature. It might work in theory (or not). But so far the attempts weren’t that many and they were all flawed for different reasons.
weren’t that many
It’s a pretty long list (1)
They had no communist intentions to begin with. The benefits of communism are just an easy way to market any nefarious movement with anticommunist intentions
They had no communist intentions to begin with.
All (>30 countries) of them (1)?
Which ones aligned with the principles?
Because people suck ass, and to successfully go from capitalism to socialism and then to communism, you need a whole population that puts the needs of the many above their own selfish desires. It’s not impossible, but it’s gonna be hard to truly accomplish.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely
Those who seek power least deserve it
I think those quotes answer your question well enough
My take on it from the theory is that most advocates say that you have to go through a period of single party socialism before the state somewhat fades away and it becomes communism.
I don’t think it’s actually possible in reality for a single party state to cede the power back to the people afterwards.
That’s a type. It’s what Russian Communism developed into. Not all Communist theory says you need to get rid of the state either, that’s Chinese Communism.
There’s even Communist theory that includes a thriving democracy.
Communism requires no state, no class, and no money. So, yes, all communist theory calls for the abolishment of the state.
Lmao. No.
That’s literally the definition of communism.
That’s the definition of one kind of communism.
Its literally the communism described by Marx, which, is, by nature, THE Definition of what communism is: https://web.archive.org/web/20090605001014/http://www.economictheories.org/2009/05/full-communism-ultimate-goal.html
This might be news to you but it’s not the mid to late 1800’s anymore. Marx is about as relevant as Locke.
Not all Communist theory says you need to get rid of the state either, that’s Chinese Communism.
…
And?
Yea its called vanguardism, where a “vanguard party” takes total control and then tries to estsblish communism, and once that is acheived, the state “withers away”.
Yea thats not gonna work in real life. Why ever give up power once you have it?
This is kinda off topic so I’m putting it in a reply to myself like a weirdo, but despite being something of an anarchist / left-libertarian in mindset… I don’t actually think most people are capable of living in a world where someone isn’t ordering them around. Many people need and crave a power hierarchy, and if they were ever gifted some kind of anarchist utopia by way of magic they’d likely form up another hierarchy based system all over again from scratch.
This is what actually got me banned from lemmy.ml. I said that although Communism can be done in a ML way, it has never actually happened because it has never actually be a revolution by the people. In the case of Russia and the places they influenced, it was a group of self-appointed elites that did the actual revolting, and then they imposed a new system on the populace.
In all of my debates with those types they always see shadowy conspiracies preventing Americans from having real actual communism…whereas I see that nobody in this country – especially in this country – would vote for a communist.
The US spent 60 years actively treating Communists as enemies of the state and propagandizing against them. There’s no need to talk about shadows and conspiracies. The capitalist and political elite were very open about it.
There’s multiple elements to why people won’t vote for a communist, but they still won’t.
Certainly state actions play a role, and communists were victims of free speech violations in a much realer sense than victims of “cancel culture” ever were.
In the case of Russia and the places they influenced, it was a group of self-appointed elites that did the actual revolting, and then they imposed a new system on the populace.
What on earth are you talking about? How would “a group of self-appointed elites” even be enough to overthrow the government? That fundamentally doesn’t make any sense.
It’s also whitewashing the Tsar. As if the Russian people were happy and content while they were starving and subject to serfdom and being fed into the meat grinder of WWI.
Hell, Lenin is even on record saying that Russia wasn’t going to have a revolution, before it did, and by the time he arrived in Russia, the Tsar had already been forced to abdicate!
The Marxist theory of the State is as an instrument of class oppression, not all forms of government. The idea is that the Proletariat, after destroying the Capitalist State and replacing it with a Proletarian State, this “dictatorship of the proletariat” will gradually fold Private Property into the Public Sector after markets cease to be an effective tool for developing and Public Ownership and Central Planning becomes more effective.
This happens unevenly, and there are different points where some sectors can be publicly owned much earlier than others, so this doesn’t happen overnight. Once all property is in the Public Sector, there are no more classes, and thus all instruments that protected against the bourgeoisie become superfluous and “dies out,” leaving a stateless, classless society with central planning. Engels calls this the “administration of things.”
Simple. Power corrupts. Even with a socialist government there is always gonna be power hungry people seeking authority over their constituents. Think of the majority as sheep, comfortable with being herded and the power hungerers as the wolves slavering to enslave them.
Thats like asking why North Korea became a dictatorship when it is a people’s democracy.
Power gaps get filled, small states get conquered.
ITT
First, and above all else, there are assholes (US) who will prevent you from having nice things. Democracy is the easiest vector to let CIA/money get a corrupt asshole into power. Democracy tends to be a fiction anyway. Money/CIA/Media control is just part of the reason. Should you let corrupt assholes vote or run for power?
A country that has an army has dictatorial power, whether there is a theater of elections or not. An autocratic chain of command controls it, and if you don’t behave, regardless of your constitution, you get smacked by the army.
In the US, there is communism for the corporatist oligarchy. Government they own will protect them from competition and bail them out when they fail. The CIA/media defines the communists as anyone who is not as pro business as the most pro business corporatist oligarch. US is a pure dictatorship in that Israel first corporatist oligarchy is guaranteed to win every seat/election, or 95%+ of the seats anyway. Every NATO country has a CIA allegiant party leader is also guaranteed to produce a CIA allegiant government. CIA vets all appointments to EU government to be pro US dictatorial NATO. IMF has 50%+ of votes all from US colonies.
Celebrating media simplifications of Democracy vs. non-US-compliant is the wrong metric to apply to nations. Industrial policy meant to promote equitable prosperity or defense from Imperialist forces determined to subjugate them are more important to a nation than what US media describes them as. “Everyone” loved Russia when they had Yeltsin as a puppet privatizing everything cheaply to US interests, just as they love Zelensky for the same. Ukraine, since US coup, is an apartheid ethnostate, which cannot qualify for any objective definition of democracy (we praise it for it anyway), and recently has suspended all elections.
Because it was spread by a totalitarian communist dictatorship. if the USSR were democratic , they wouldve spread democracy.
