Teenager Danuta Siedzikówna, medic of the Polish resistance, executed by the postwar Communist government in 1946
Teenager Danuta Siedzikówna, medic of the Polish resistance, executed by the postwar Communist government in 1946
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Fuck communists
Think communism is bad then read up about Americas involvement in Vietnam or capitalist El Salvador, and many other countries.
Which would then lead to the conclusion that both are terrible. Investigation into solutions will usually then reveal that the most promising one is Anarchism, as demonstrated in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, which is where George Orwell became fully soured on Communist Totalitarianism, and witnessed the extreme promise of Socialist Anarchist society.
Orwell is amazing though he was a social democrat and he never argued directly against communism, he was against totalitarianism authoritarianism.
And no I wouldn't say both are bad, one is geared towards betting the lives of the many, the other is geared towards betting the live of the elite, issue being bad actors have always managed to manipulate and hijack
All the iterations of Communism as enacted in the world with its various flavors (not as described by Marx himself, which I have less issue with) tend to have fundamental structural power issues that cannot be resolved, and inevitably become authoritarian and eventually corrupt. Relying on who is steering the boat to have a positive outcome means that even if lucky enough to get a good person, it's easy enough to replace them with a bad actor.
History has clearly shown centralized power cannot be wrangled reliably, which I think strongly necessitates the need for decentralizing power at a fundamental level to prevent the failings of the past.
I won't dispute that some communist dictatorships did result in some benefits to the poor and disadvantaged, but at a needlessly great cost to liberties and innocent lives. I don't personally agree with the Michael Parenti viewpoint that we shouldn't be so harsh on previous communist regimes because of those gains. I think in the end, Capitalism and Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, etc. are ultimately horrific for the soul, and we have better solutions that mitigate the possibility of those extreme negatives.
for a few to live dignified lives in capitalism many must suffer, this is a feature of capitalism one which progressively worsens as time goes on and can be seen in any 3rd and even 1st world country whereas communism has systems to counter these issues, it also has systems against corruption which like in capitalism have been subverted by bad actors only difference is that capitalism more often then not rewards these bad actors.
Another thing to think about is our bias, capitalism has a vested interest in quashing communism and socialism this is made apparent in Manufacturing Consent, where our western world view is made up of glimpses shown to us by media corporations, tax funded misinformation campaigns.
Does Cuba deserve to suffer embargo's? Its an indiscriminate way to kill a population. North Korea and its forgotten war where america spent years killing indiscriminately with napalm, threatening nuclear escalation which eventually lead a fledgly communist state to turn hermit and its leader a quasi-god. Vietnam wanted independence from France and america dropped agent orange across much of its fields and people again killing indiscriminately as well as napalm and setting embargo's. The USSR didn't have secret police for no reason, the USSR was under constant threat from western powers. Much of the issues in communism is a reaction to imperialism/capitalism.
This ends here. Apologia for Soviet secret police is not welcome here, nor is blaming North Korea's Juche system on outside forces.
You've been warned.
Its an acknowledgment of why things had gone the way they did. america have a history of monitoring and imprisoning communist and socialist, black panthers and even recently blm had undercover agents within the movement.
https://theintercept.com/2023/02/07/fbi-denver-racial-justice-protests-informant/
This is common within the us intelligence structure.
That does not make communism good though
it adds a backdrop to the statement "fuck communists" as if capitalism is the only way forward whereas really for a capitalist to be happy a dozen more must indirectly suffer.