Socialism allows for both public and private ownership, individual freedoms, and democratic decision-making, while still aiming for social equality. Communism, in contrast, tends to involve total state control and often limits personal freedoms.
Both Capitalism and Socialism have room for public and private ownership, the difference is which sector controls the state, large firms, and key industries. The Nordic Countries are dominated by Private Capital, ie it is Capitalist, while the PRC is dominated by Public Ownership, ie it is Socialist.
Communism limits the personal freedoms of the bourgeoisie. All Communism is, is a more developed and global form of Socialism, where the small firms that once were private have all grown into the public sector or collapsed.
Tell me you’ve never read anything about communism that wasn’t written by anti-communists without telling me you’ve never read anything about communism that wasn’t written by anti-communists.
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Jesus what a mess of a sentence. You really tried to hamfist that one in there.
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Well I will agree that your average 16 year-old is more well read then the person I replied to.
That doesn’t even make sense…
😘 be well
be better
You should go back to Reddit, you’d be happier there
All this things sound great, we just need humanity to not be shitty to each other.
It is terrible to see so many comments here celebrating communism. Communists were ruining our country (Czechia) for over 40 years and led it to economical collapse. When we tried to reform the regime in 1968, the Russians invaded to stop it. Communism doesn’t really work, and it has already been proven.
Also, I have to say the country worked in a bizzare way. The government robbed everyone of their property, so in return, people were stealing from public supplies.
So please try to study something first about communism in Eastern Europe before you start to celebrare this regime.
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In what way?
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I’d say all AES states have broadly managed to achieve their goals. There have been troubles and struggles faced internally and externally, none have been dreamlike utopian wonderlands, but seemingly only non-Marxists are the ones that require that of Marxist movements.
I had to google that first. Had no idea what the sahel states had to do with socialism or communism.
Those AES states are mostly highly corrupt though. I wouldn’t refer to north Korea as a livable place, plus the leaders are bathing in money while the populace dies from hunger. In Vietnam, if you know someone in politics, you can get whatever you want. I know this (nearly) first-hand. Laos, lol. And why the hell is China on that list? They’re way too deep in the capitalist game to be on that list, no? People also don’t mean shit to the ones in charge. Their people are executed by the thousands every year and they like to keep minorities in concentration camps. I’m sorry, those states are failed states in my opinion.
And as long as there is corruption, communism is not going to work. It’s a nice theory, but it just takes one black sheep to fuck it up for everyone. I wish it weren’t that way. It’d be nice to live in a world where people work for a purpose and everyone gets the same and no one has to suffer. Not going to happen.
Capitalism is plain evil though, I’ll give you that.
AES as in “Actually Existing Socialism.” The Sahel States are a quasi-Socialist national liberatory alliance. Burkina Faso was briefly Socialist under Sankara, but that time has passed.
The struggles faced in the DPRK are more due to sanctions and embargo than anything else, kinda like Cuba. Unlike Cuba, the US slaughtered 20% of their population and destroyed 80% of their buildings, yet they were economically ahead of South Korea until the 80s. The leadership is not “bathing in money” either.
Vietnam is rising rapidly. It isn’t a Utopia, but is dramatically improving. Same with Laos.
The PRC is more classically Marxist than they were under the late Mao period and Gang of Four, I elaborated on that, here. Further, you’re repeating state department propaganda about them, very silly.
Further, China is democratic. It doesn’t have a western liberal democracy, but it does have a comprehensive Socialist democracy. You can read this article talking about why the Chinese democratic model is in place and why the people support it, or this article on how the Chinese model of democracy works in contrast to western democracy, or this short video on how it works, or this video on how elections work, or this article on the makeup of the NPC.
By what metrics is China not democratic? What mechanically would they have to change for you to accept the opinions of the Chinese citizenry on their own system? I recommend this introduction to SWCC, it goes in-detail about how elections and the democratic model work in China. what mechanically would China have to change in order for you to accept the system that the Chinese have implemented by and for themselves, and approve of at rates exceeding 90%?
Please explain how “one black sheep” would ruin Socialism/Communism. Given that you clearly aren’t familiar with Marxist theory nor how AES states function, this is a telltale sign that your critiques are of strawmen.
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Russia is a shit hole and has failed in every type of government they’ve ever had.
The soviets found themselves in a feudal shithole, and elevated it to a global super power.
China was also doing no better before “communism”.
Not sure who claims that China is communist, but it’s definitely not the chines. They have a market socialist system (or more accurately SWCC), which still has class society and its own contradictions.
Educate yourself on basic facts before you speak on a topic and stfu until you do so shitlib
gives way too much power to the govt and replaces monitary incentive systems with ones based on fear and coruption
That’s not how AES states function, in any capacity. Further, people get paid in Socialist states, so I really don’t know what strawman you’re fighting here.
Ask any post soviet country how they liked it during the USSR
The vast majority believe they are worse off now than under Socialism, which makes sense because the reintroduction of Capitalism resulted in skyrocketing rates of poverty, prostitution, drug abuse, homelessness, and an estimated 7 million excess deaths around the world.
A Medium.com post isn’t a source, dude
Medium.com isn’t the source, it references the sources. Here’s Wikipedia referencing many of the same sources.
As opposed to the source you provided, which was nothing
I guess you can say Ukraine is now worse off than in the USSR, Back then they weren’t at war. The current situation isn’t exactly the fault of capitalism (or Ukranie for that matter)
This data was pre-Russo-Ukrainian war.
Over 15 year old data at this point. And in countries that don’t have a free press.
It’s still well-documented and consistent. Socialism worked better than Capitalism. Plus, no press is ever “free,” either private interests dominate it or public interests do.
Oh my fing god, I thought lemmy is only full of extreme liberals, but it’s also full of wannabe comunists. Dude, have you ever asked yourself why USSR fell if everything was better than in the west? Why people risked their lives jumping over the Berlin wall? Why there was a whole black market of importing goods from the west into ussr? Why people didn’t enjoy being sent to Siberia by the millions to die of hunger and of forced labor?
Or was Cuba a success?
Lemmy is developed by Communists, the Communists were here first.
Secondly, the dissolution of the USSR was driven instead by numerous complex factors:
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Liberal reforms that gave the Bourgeoisie power over key industries
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A firm dedication to planning by hand even as the economy grew more complex and computers too slow to be adapted to the planning mechanisms
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A huge portion of resources were spent on maintaining millitary parity with the US in order to dissuade US invasion
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80% of the combat done in World War II was on the Eastern Front, and 20 million Soviets lost their lives, with no real economic support from the West in rebuilding despite taking the largest cost of war
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An enclosed, heavily sanctioned economy relied on internal resource gathering, closed off from the world market
Countries like the PRC have taken to heart what happened in the USSR. As an example, the PRC shifted to a more classically Marxist economy, focusing on public ownership of only the large firms and key industries, and relying on markets to develop out of private ownership. This keeps them in touch with the global economy without giving the bourgeoisie control of key industries, and thus the bourgeoisie has no power over the economy or the state.
People left the DDR after getting good educations for free, and higher wages in West Germany. They got the best of both worlds.
Millions were not sent to Siberia.
Cuba is a resilliant success story given its brutal embargo and sanctions, yes. It has astounding metrics in areas like life expectancy despite being intentionally impoverished by the US Empire.
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Private interests do align, but rarely. Meaning you have more chance at opposing narratives forming. Public is monovoiced. Without an opposing voice its data becomes suspect.
Private is controlled by large corporations, and often gets state funding. All press has bias. Really, you don’t have anything against the data other than you feel like it could be wrong.
if you gave a shit what they wanted you wouldn’t have overthrown them in a violent coup
Not quite. Dont get me wrong capitalism sucks and we should get rid of it, but for example colonialism is older than capitalism and part of its cause. So is colonialsim the root cause of evil? not quite again before colonialism there where still a lot of repressive and very hierarchical societies so again to frame capitalism as the root of all evil is ignoring a whole bunch of other repressive systems that are older but are certainly strengthend by it.
So if you want to simplisticly frame something as the root cause of evil then it would be “opressive hierarchies are the root cause of evil”. but maybe im biased here since im an anarchist
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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.
Haha
Ah yes, get rid of extremism with different extremism. I think we’ve been there already. Spoiler: Didnt work.
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?
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Chinese people are not in constant fear of execution, lmao, that goes directly against polling results from western pollsters:
Although state censorship and propaganda are widespread in China, these findings highlight that citizen perceptions of governmental performance respond most to real, measurable changes in individuals’ material well-being. Satisfaction and support must be consistently reinforced. As a result, the data point to specific areas in which citizen satisfaction could decline in today’s era of slowing economic growth and continued environmental degradation.
That first chart isn’t even trying to hide that is fake. It’s depicting a perfect mirroring.
Conveniently, clicking through to the actual data returns a 404.
Pretty odd, considering it’s the official Pew Research website, but the findings are not out of consistency with similar polls on approval for the government and the continuous improvements in purchasing power for the working class.
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.
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Not paid by China, I’m just a Marxist-Leninist. I would love to visit or live in China for a year or more, but would want to be back with my family.
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Pretty sure I’ll only become more Communist, haha. From the Chinese ex-pats I’ve spoken with, it’s very pleasant to live in, and far easier for those without money than in the US.
Funny that you link the BBC, given their historical willingness to lie on the subject and continue to report the ludicrous 10,000 dead at Tian’anmen figure that was the sole claim of a British diplomat that fled the square before the PLA arrived, and later was confirmed to have been a fabrication. Hundreds died that day, maybe low thousands, not 10,000, yet the BBC both knows that and reports otherwise. BBC also got caught doctoring images to make China seem “depressing” that they swapped back after getting called out.
Either way, Zenz is a known liar, works for the “Victims of Communism” propaganda outlet, and was commisioned by the BBC to fight China, which he believes is the “Anti-Christ.” Moreover, he misrepresents numbers, such as 8% new IUD rates as 80% new IUD rates, to give an idea of forced steralization that doesn’t exist. As for XPF? Check out https://this-person-does-not-exist.com/en, then the glasses picture, https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt_imgs/20180515184435950_653121197306.jpg, pretty damning. BBC recieved these photos straight from Zenz, a known liar. We know there are camps, either way, but Zenz is a serial liar and you trust him, why?
As if intensity is what makes ideologies bad. 🙄
uhh, anarchism clears lol
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What does this have to do with Russia
what does this have to do with this post
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
i want memes, not politics
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Yeah communism isn’t any better so the both can fuck off
Greed is the evil.
Sad to say, but humans are the root of evil. Atrocities have been done in the name of all sorts of things, but it’s always humans carrying it out.
