Why are communists incapable of building a functioning society?

Because it's too advanced for stupid humans.

>>2962835
>functioning society

name 1 (one)

>>2962835
Apparently human nature behaves differently from communist theory.

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>perfect nations built on communism don't exi-

>>2962841
Switzerland.

>>2962840
This
Its inhumane

>ussr last from 1917-1989
>didn't function for all that time

I think you mean "lasting" or "stable", because it obviously functioned during that period

>>2962835
Communism fundamentally doesn't work.

>>2962835
They are it's just that real communism has never actualy been tried because of bourgeouis interference

>>2962907
In part because of this. See Paris Commune and Russian Civil War.

>>2962907
Isn't it funny how every time communism is attempted it doesn't work out and isn't real communism? It's almost as if it's fundamentally flawed.

>>2962843
>kurdistan
>communist

bitch where

>>2962845
>Switzerland
>communist

bitch where

>>2962927
Tell me what "real communism" is you turd.
Communism is based off of Marx's writing,

>>2962843
>Kurdistan exists
>Kurdistan is built on communism

Not to mention that a good half of it belongs to the Barzani kleptocracy.

>>2962907
Why do commies act like they're innocent? what do you expect? whenever you ''tried communism", you did it with bloody revolution, how do you expect people to react? its not like you're trying to peacefully create your own society, in which way nobody would even bothers you

>>2962907
I'm the greatest swimmer in the world. Sure every time I faint before I can even make it into the pool, let alone actually swim, but believe me :^)

>>2962896
If you consider mass murder and totalitarian rule functioning, sure.

>>2962907
All you've proven is real communism is impossible to implement and always results in cruel, authoritarian regimes that murder millions of people. Better to not try at all.

>>2962927
Communists want A. Capitalists want B. The result is C. Communism would work if the west didn't interfere every time
>>2962938
I never claimed communists were innocent but when capitalism is so entrenched in most societies only violence can bring about a greater good for everyone. I'm not arrogant but a lot of people just don't know any better and communism guides them in the same way a parent guides a child
>>2962942
That's a terribly analogy
>>2962952
No all that's proven is that the admittedly authoritarian regimes resulting from communist revolutions are simply an unfortunate but necessary evil in implementing equality and goodwill for all. Besides they wouldn't have to happen in the first place if the communist cause wasn't undermined at every turn by the capitalist system.

>>2962948
That's generally how societies function, just some effectively sweep all that sausage-making under the rug.

>>2962962
If your system is so vulnerable to outside influence it fails every time it's enacted then that is a fundamental flaw. Why is it that resource poor countries like Chile or Singapore can thrive but oil-rich Venezuela is collapsing?

>>2962948

i'm not saying it was good, but it obviously functioned in some way if it lasted for that many decades.

for you "function" seems to mean "functioning well", which a different question.

>>2962962
>Make violence and "necessary evil"
>Waaa why does these evil capitalist interfere

>>2962948
Only Euro cucks believe death is a bad thing, instilled from their reliance on welfare states when intra-European wars were still a thing and each polity relied on manpower. The death of your enemies i.e. those who threaten your way of life is not a bad thing. Wanting to save every life is bourgeois values at work.

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>>2962989
Hey, I've finally found common ground with a communist!

If you actually believe this, you are delusional

>>2962985
What do you consider the purpose of a state to be if killing millions of its own people is fulfilling its purpose? cause it certainly isn't what I would call the function of a state.

>>2963039
Building and maintaining infrastructure. Enforcing law and order. Protecting its citizens. You could broadly say the responsibility of the state is it to keep order when people are living together.

However protecting its citizens can be laid out from different perspectives. Thats the point.

You cant say the ussr wasn't a functioning state. If you insist on this then the US is by your definition a failed state too.

>>2962835
Because centeraliztion resources/planning defacto creates a new governing class, defeating commies goal of equality

>>2963054
>However protecting its citizens can be laid out from different perspectives
It is some very extreme doublethink to hold killing millions of citizens as the same thing as protecting them.

>>2963062
Thousands are enough, you still have the death penalty.

>>2963054
The US didn't kill millions of it's own people.
You are fucking retarded if you are going to pretend the USSR was a state worthly of emulating, what with the gulags and starvtions and mass deprivations

>>2963070
Are you trolling or retarded? The US has Executed less than 2000 people sense the war, while in the same time the USSR killed millions of it's own.

>>2962931
>functioning society
learn to read greentext, fucking moron

>>2962907
>>2962919
>>2962962
>they needed a defense budget to stop capitalist interference
They still had a surplus on top of that. Postwar Russia had a gdp per capita double that of Britain in Marx's day. The entire country was indoctrinated into communist propaganda, they had plenty of resources to play with and decades to develop yet they did not achieve communism.

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>>2962927
Wow it is almost as if a group of people with elevated status and power don't want to see that go away...

>>2963081
>>2963094
Huh, its not about the numbers, its about the concept of killing sovereign citizens of the state, by the state itself. The reason these people were imprisoned or killed was that they were a threat to the communist state or the other citizens residing inside the SU in the eyes of the persecutors.

If you execute a citizen, the concept is the same. Which makes the us a failed state by your definition.

This concept is probably new to you since you grew up in a country with a biased view. Might makes right, after all.
But trust me the apparatschiks in the SU and other socialist countries entirely believed that the things they were doing, were for the common good of the people.
Its about the intention they were following.

You never lived inside a repressive state and thus lack the understanding of the proceedings that take place inside one.

You had everything you needed, as long as you followed the laws, the state didnt persecute you. We had no luxuries, but it was definitely a working, functioning State.

The SU was a repressive State, but it was still a functioning one, it ultimately failed because of the repression itself. Ironically because glasnosk tried to undo these repressions to a certain extent, the citizens couldnt handle it, atleast not that fast. The fall of the SU was the reason for a global power struggle, which ultimately benefited the US.

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>funny how it's never "real communism"
>guys, there never was a free market coz of commies, it's not funny

>>2962843
>built on islamic tribalism

>be ex commie country
>multiple nationalities live peacefully with eachother

>be capitalist
>UGAA BUGAAA NIGGERS WHITEY BANGBANG CHICANO GO HOME REMOVE WHITEY RACEWAR RAAR

The only reason the USSR even functioned for 90 years was because it wasn't even a Communist state.

It was a society where the state owned all private property, which could be called state socialism or state capitalism.

The fact that it was a flawed form of capitalism is what made it a hellhole. Capitalism cannot function properly when there is no competition and without decentralization of capital.

>>2962934
A currency-less economy.

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>>2963250

>>2963250
>equating race with nationalities

>>2962983
Chile has enormous base metal deposits.

>>2962952
>murder millions of people
Only two leaders in two different countries killed millions.

>>2963250
Are we seriously going to ignore Yugoslavia and how as soon as commies fell, the oogabooga nationalism started happening?

>>2963000
what is this trash

>>2962927
This.

>>2962934
Marx isn't the end-all be-all, dude. Believe it or not, they are other commie thinkers.

>>2963021
If you don't think communism has been a complete failure, you're the one who's deluded.

>>2962835
Because their whole system is fundamentally flawed.

brain drain. the best and brightest flee or they get starved or purged-systematically.

>>2963158
Executing murders after a trial is not the same as starving Ukrainian peasants to death because you want them dead. If you can't see that then you are the problem.

>>2963488
Stalin
Mao
Pol pot

Oh shit you were totally wrong!

>>2962835
1) Because people who are out for equality aren't interested in being leaders and vice versa
2) Because violent destruction is an awful way of building anything
3) Because Russia's entire history is horrible and blood-drenched, always was and always will be

>>2963619
Three then. I forgot about Pol Pot. Then again, he was radically different from any other communist to the point where you might say he wasn't communist.

>>2962845
Switzerland only works because it's a small homogenized population so people trust and like each other.

>>2963647
Derg.

>dude communism doesn't work
>sends the gendarmies to murder and accost the free citizens in the paris commune

>>2963647
That's not what he'd say

>>2962927
Literally every communist project has been a different flavor of Marxist-Leninist poison.

Marx outlined, very clearly, that communism would be a society resulting from the abolition of private property and wage labor. Except for potentially Catalonia in the '30s, no such society has existed. Marxism-Leninism, created by Stalin through a clumsy and disingenuous piecing-together of the writings of Marx and Lenin, instead believes that an all-powerful state led by a vanguard of intellectuals (rather than the proletariat as a class) can assume the role of the capitalist industrialist. Lenin admitted that the Soviet economy in the short term would be state capitalism.

Marxist-Leninists insist that a communist government will abolish wage labor and private property, but none did. While Lenin laid out a potentially useful framework of workers' councils and labor unions to govern local communities, Stalin in his autocratic autism preferred a massive unitary state with no elements of worker control. He was openly skeptical of Marxist apprehensions about wage labor, while simultaneously decrying more committed Marxists as revisionists because they deviated from his confused and contradictory party line.

Other socialist states, including Yugoslavia and the Chinese Maoist sphere, similarly preserved wage labor. Rather than socializing property, the governments just took it all for themselves. Yugoslavia was from a Stalinist standpoint the "least communist" country behind the iron curtain, but they were just more honest. They put forward a system of "socialism" that preserved the useful trappings of bourgeois capitalism rather than pretending to make something new because the government was powerful.

Tito, unlike the Marxist-Leninists or their stepchildren the Maoists, understood that communism had to involve a global transformation of labor relations. In a communist society, production is geared directly to use and power is held directly by the working people.

>>2963507
Every single state run by a communist government has been based on the teachings of Marx, despite completely ignoring everything he said.

Marx wrote that proletarian revolution across the capitalist world would overthrow capitalism. Bolsheviks just constructed an authoritarian social democracy in one country and tried to survive in competition with the old capitalist order.

>>2963617
What's the fucntional difference between the state killing criminals because they are a risk to public order and the state killing (under their unjust laws) criminals because they are a risk to the public order? The soviet union is no state to emulate, as nay authoritarian state falls to the same underlying problems of monarchy, but to say that the soviet union wasn't functioning is totally false.

>>2963650
>homogenized
>literally a multiethnic country of Germans, French and Italians

>>2964385
>>2964396
>>2964405

These posts are the only ones itt that have some proper argumentation principles.

God damn I hate pol so fucking much, they are ruining nearly every board now.

To get back to the topic.

Holodomor happend because of the repressive nature of the stalinist regime, it didnt happen because the SU was a communist country.

Ukrainians were considered enemys of the state back then, it isn't even proven that stalin did it to supress them, it could have been a famine, which isnt that unlikely, since the same situation unfolded in other soviet republics at that time.

Furthermore if it was an repressive manoeuvre, it happened because Stalin thought that he had to do something against a threat, Ukrainian nationalism in that case, which he might have thought to be endangering to the peace in the Union and therefore the well-being of every Soviet citizen.

The Soviet Union was a country without liberty's
It was a repressive country
It was a country that followed communist principles to a certain extent
and it was a functioning Country.

The holy roman empire was not functioning for example.

>>2964405
Okay then it functions like a shitty murder machine functions, granted.

>>2962929
>what the fuck is Rojava
>what the fuck is the PKK

>>2962840
First Post Best Post

>>2964669
If you are setting aside the achievements in Science, education, agriculture, infrastructure, housing and industrialization of the country.

No,
Not even then, your post is just that fucking FAT.

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>>2962929
The Syrian Kurdish organization is now formally communAList, not communist, but they emerged out of a Marxist-Leninist structure and many high-profile members of the government are outspoken Marxists. An obvious example is Brace Belden, lefty-pinup and hardline tankie who spent a year in Syria fighting ISIS.

Essentially everybody in Rojava is a socialist to see extent. After the fall of the USSR, PKK leader Ocalan believed a new strategy of autonomous socialism was necessary, though he likely still supports the idea of communism.

Syrian Kurdistan has historically been one of the farthest-left corners of the world, because they've been pushed around by everyone and are pretty poor. They don't even benefit from oil reserved like their cousins in Iraq.

The PKK/PYD developed huge loyalty among the local people by relieving their poverty. Now they're seen as battlers of ISIS. While their radical feminist policies lead to a lot of grumbling, they've freed Kurdish women from horrific traditional restrictions and only increased their popularity long-term.

>>2964729
If only they could have done it without murdering all those millions of innocent people.

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>people replying to this

>>2962835
1) because the state still exist

>>2964794
Interesting
Your posts are really good and informal.
I've read about rojavas system and heard they've managed to secure support from neighbouring arab settlements. Their system seems to be some sort of anarcho syndicalism. The arabs get to form local councils in their settlements, according to tribal traditions. The people there are able to send their representatives to rojavas greater councils.
I am well aware that this sounds like a normal democracy but the structures and govermental proceedings are more direct and they are doing pretty well, even in these harsh conditions

>>2964385
>>2964514
Obviously the biggest contributor to the authoritarian character of the USSR, Yugoslavia, Maoist China, and other "Second World" countries was Lenin. Lenin was the biggest promoter of the revolutionary vanguard theory and demanded that said vanguard have immense power over the proletariat—and the state—so as to save the proletariat from corrupt, or confused, leaders. Lenin was the source of many ills that Americans—and most other Liberals—mistakenly believe to be inherent within Marxism itself.

One ought to examine what caused Lenin to write such innovations into existence, I think the underlying cause of Lenin's innovation is more damning to the functionality of Marxist theory than sperging out with: "Stalin is meany. He send you to gulag if you no sugg his dik. MAGA".

Lenin was responding—in part—to the problematic experience of the socialist parties in the First World War; a war in which the socialist parties supported their own state/nation, even though it meant supporting the bourgeoisie-controlled government—thus there was no clear, unified interest of the proletariat. Lenin responded by awarding the earlier-theorized vanguard dictatorial power, so as to save the proles from themselves—he believed only the revolutionary vanguard could make the proles realize their own self-interest. Other theorists either blamed the German SPD for betraying the cause of world communism, or accused various party leaders of taking bribes from the capitalists. Any way you slice this issue, you’ve got a problem: how does one rectify the apparent inability of the international proletariat to unite. I don’t have an answer and I’m not well read enough to give other answers, perhaps someone could help with that. But to me, this appears to be pretty problematic—if man isn’t a primarily economic creature that undermines a pretty substantial portion of Marxist theory (Or so I think, if not please correct me).

>>2964934
Its not about the numbers, its about killing sovereign citizens.
So why did the americans kill the natives and treated black people as second class citizens?

Are you just to dumb to understand it or are you really that indoctrinated?

>>2965184
I think that your conclusions are pretty Spot on for the most part.

The german Spd was indeed belittled as a party of "lampenputzers" which is a slur for a socialist that fears for his job and status, but still likes to parade himself as a socialist. When the real socialists demonstrated or fought they were going to wash the lamps, since it was their job.

The point is that Lenin sought a repressive state as a tool to establish a socialist state, collectivation wouldnt have been possible as long as the bourgeoisie land owner class had means to fight it. Therfore he sought the transition after the establishment of the communist structures, as we all knew he died before that and wasnt able to finish the transition.
Nearly every other communist country established itself with the help of a stalinist Soviet Union. Even the republicans in the spanish civil war were supported by stalin and thus he divided the republicans and aided only the marxist faction, the infighting was the reason for the rebulican defeat.

The world might have been different if lenin would have lived a few more years

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>>2962835
ideologists don't build them. they just herd a mob and meme all over them.

>it's another americans can't separate descriptive from normative statements episode

>>2963652
Arguably hundreds of thousands, and they had help from natural disasters.

>>2964425
Who all share same values and swiss identity.

>>2963081
>muh own people

There are enemies and then there are non-enemies. Everything else is spook.

>>2965263
I get that it was a means to an end: the end being the establishment of socialism as organized at the nation-state level, and, eventually, the post-state system; and the means being violent repression of dissidents, re-education system, purges, &c, all things we are familiar with from the USSR, China, and Nazi Germany.

[I would add that most totalitarian regimes imagine themselves as being a means to an end—not all mind you—so that defense of Lenin isn't exactly convincing. Hitler was only dictator because the nation needed it à la Roman dictators.]

But what is interesting/troubling about Lenin's theory is that it can be directed AT the proletariat class. Following WW1, one could reasonably think that the proletariat is less united than Marxist theory would require—perhaps people love their nation more than their own economic well-being. Lenin seems to say that this is NOT the case—that Marx was right—there is only one interest of the international proletariat, but the people can become easily divided, distracted, and confused. Therefore both party and ideological discipline must be rigorously enforced, or else we become divided against each other as during WW1.

Maybe I'm misreading it, but it sounds like forcibly saving man from himself.

>>2962840
>>2962842
This. Communism is concerned with the "new humanity" that is supposed to emerge out the socialist revolutions.

>>2965553
it could work if you educate the child early on, if they show any signs of individualist behavior, they get a beating

children show an aversion to pain in the early stages of its life

>>2965517
Marx said that the german proles should back the franco german war of 1870 though

>>2963168
>Half-ass capitalism gives poor people flat-screens and fast cars
>half-ass communism starves everyone aside from a few government bigwigs

Almost sounds like increased economic freedom offers increased standards of living. Might want to try something other than a tu quoque argument. It really doesn't help your case.

>>2965641
That's bullshit and you know it.

Back then I could rent my flat for 80 Ostmark and I could travel everywhere in the city for a dime. Sure we had no aubergines or other tropic fruits for example, but you and I know that its just a luxury that doesnt matter anyway.

>>2962835
Because humans aren't developed enough for something like a planned economy. It might be possible with more advanced computers and artificial intelligence, but the market is still too complex of a system for it to be manipulated by a couple of dozen politicians, especially when the other half of the world wants to see thm fail. We still need to rely on the invisible hand. People underestimate the complexity of economics.

Another issues is that material possessions are linked to power which create a social hierarchy and that's the way we've evolved to function.

>>2965184
>Lenin was the source of many ills that Americans—and most other Liberals—mistakenly believe to be inherent within Marxism itself.

Well if Marxism quite consistently produces totalitarian dictatorships, there's no reason to trust another Marxist in the levers of power ever again.

Even if all of the shit you say is true, there's no reason to believe it can't degenerate in to the same shit show once again.

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>>2965677
Hardly. Western European countries (Capitalist with welfare states) are all doing well thanks to the support of strong markets and liberal policy, whereas communist countries haven't come close to western standards of living. Try grocery shopping in Venezuela.

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>>2965677
>>2965714
Rather than struggling to take care of basic survival needs, mixed capitalist economies have surpluses not only of essentials, but of outright luxury goods. Capitalism is a blatantly clear winner here.

>>2965714
Venezuelas economy is based on crude oil, the main problem is corruption and isolation from the international markets

>>2965769
The main problem is that leftists got a hold of the economic policy instead of being chucked out of flying helicopters like they should've been.

>>2965706
Imagine if there were an authoritarian branch of liberal capitalism—there is, his name is The Donald, all praise kek—that killed tons of people, had gulags, racial cleansing, et cetera. Would you damn every democracy for the behavior of a degenerated form? Perhaps you would. I’m no Marxist, but most Liberal capitalists are so fucking lazy about this shit; you can critique Marxism in-itself without making recourse to how Leninist and Leninist-derived regimes have operated.

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>>2965769
Considering the state ran the oil industry into the ground through neglect, it's not a good argument for economic planning. The fact that every other commie state failed in similar fashion doesn't help any pro-communist argument, either. Keep in mind capitalist economies have been far more robust against minor economic shocks.

>>2965729
It's pretty telling of the superority of mixed economies that a somewhat regulated market is considered the default of capitalism.

>>2965790
How mixed, though? Keep in mind America's economy has not performed well under hard-left presidents. Reagan and Eisenhower presided over stronger economies than, say, FDR or Obama.

>>2965789
The Oil Industry and the refineries based around it were in the hands of the bourgeoisie ruling class in Venezuela until a few years ago. They were the main opposition against chavez for many Years and neglected the infrastructure to hurt their political opponent

Should be well known desu

>>2965785
>you can critique Marxism in-itself without making recourse to how Leninist and Leninist-derived regimes have operated.

Indeed you can, and I wasn't arguing that it wasn't possible, but I was implying that society scale experiments of the Marxist kind haven't produced positive outcomes in the past, which is a pragmatic consideration.

It literally has to be the single strongest proof that Marxism is an ideology and not the "science" it claims to be, when 100 million people dead in the 20th century directly caused by its principles, doesn't even vex people's adherence to the ideology.

>>2965814
Revisionism at work. The Chavez regime privitized the oil industry rather early on, and being lazy bureaucrats, didn't bother keeping equipment working after gaining control of it. But yeah, seizing the means of production isn't a bad idea at least.

You still haven't made the case for communist governments' ability to handle the ebb and flow of economic circumstance. You've only insisted that communism fails only due to conspiracy.

>>2962835
Because communism has never been tried.

>>2965808
Under which metrics?

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>>2965852

>>2965867
So, the average increase of inflation and unemployment in comparison to the 2008 banking crisis, supply side economics is unsustainable.

>>2965835
No, No, No

Look it up, the wealthy Businessmen were running campaigns against chaves on television in Venezuela when he run for his second term.

Im mot even arguing that capitalism works better with the adaptations of a free market. Thats a fact.

This is now my personal opinion of living in not only one, but two so called socialist Countrys. The basic needs were covered to such an extent that you didnt have to worry about medical bills or the rent, transportation or your job. You dont miss luxuries if you are not used to them.

After the Iron Curtain fell, this social security really fell apart. But thanks to the state sponsored education im doing pretty well by now in a capitalist society.

You cant imagine how glad I was after the fall off the berlin wall, thanks to a sort of Erasmus program I was able to emigrate to east Germany from the Soviet Union in 1987, I was able to stay there and finished my Studies shortly before the Unification and personally experienced the struggles during unification. Im a wolga german and found a good job in the western part of Germany.

Out off a consumerist notion it is superior, but sometimes I think the Government isnt even interested in the well beeing of their citizens.

>>2965448
have you ever even been to switzerland?

>>2965905
Reagan picked up from the Carter stagflation-oil crash and built up a stable economy. Obama picked up from the real estate crash and failed to start a recovery. They both started with a shit hand. Reagan just handled it better.

>>2965706
Capitalism also produces dozens of totalitarian dictatorships. The difference is that capitalist societies have had far more opportunities to emerge, and have emerged in nations with a strong liberal traditions.

>>2965908
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDVSA
The Venezuelan oil industry has been nationalized since 1976. The incident you speak of was an internal squabble.

Even so, the installation of Chavez supporters happened way before the crash. The government just didn't really give a shit about the oil business. Better to send the pipeline maintenance money elsewhere.

>>2965836
And it never will be because it's a ridiculous utopian pipe dream. Tens of millions have died trying to reach it, though.

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>>2965829
>100 million people killed directly by its principles

Not only is that statistic ridiculously inflated, but in no way were the crimes of Stalin and Mao and other socialist autocrats the expression of Marxist philosophy. There's no horrible protocol encouraging dissenters to be slaughtered

Marx laid out the principles by which capitalism operates from the perspective of the worker, and explained how the mechanics of this mode of production would lead to its expansion, decay, and ultimate destruction. Just as Marx predicted, we're seeing wealth be grossly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Neoliberal politicians, who have no god but the dollar, eagerly destroy the traditional industrial workforce of Western nations and use such brutal means to expand capitalism to the rest of the world that many traditional Asian and African societies are being shaved of their culture and identity in order to make them more productive workers. What we have not yet seen is the grand overthrow of this system by the world's workers, who take destiny into their own hands by seizing their workplaces and taking for themselves the full worth of their labor.

But Marx wrote a hundred pages about capitalism for every page about socialism. He proposed no policies. Rather than laying out a utopian society and demanding people conform to it, Marx used the information at hand to imagine a plausible society in which the exploitative nature of capitalism did not exist.

>>2965714
Venezuela is also a capitalist welfare state. Businesses are mostly owned privately, not by the government. The difference between Venezuela and Sweden is that the Venezuelans tried to built their whole economy around export sales, and in their revolutionary seizure of power found themselves excluded from much of the global market. This worked pretty well, but then demand for Venezuelan oil plummeted and we got the shitshow we see today.

>>2966069
>muh not real gommunism

Even half-ass capitalist states perform better than any attempt at socialism ever will.

>>2966080
You sure showed him.

Socialism doesn't work.

Marxism doesn't work.

Communism doesn't work.

>>2966119
Then explain all the times it worked? I'm waiting.

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>>2966129
>all the times it worked

>>2966103
Look at the economic performance of Western Europe and North America compared to Eastern Europe and South America. Of course the true believers have to deflect from their failed attempts at building commie utopias while mismanaged capitalist states chug along smoothly. Even in the far-flung future, a workers' revolt is unlikely, as workers' self-management is rarely effective on a large scale.

Hell, capitalism even does a better job of allowing workers to seize the means of production. Look at every work shed in America. Look at every blue-collar worker starting up a small business.

Your worthless response provides no example of a working communist society, nor does the original comment I replied to.

>>2966144
'Look at' is not an argument.

>>2966137
I'd say industrializing russia to the point that it had the moxie to challenge the US through proxy war is a pretty big economic success.

>>2966152
>industrializing slower than Japan and then collapsing is success

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>>2966080
No, they don't. Cuba, which calls itself socialist because it has a nationalized economy, is substantially more developed than its liberal capitalist neighbors, like Jamaica or El Salvador.

Many capitalist nations are wealthier than Cuba, but that's because they are wealthy and industrialized economies who enjoy command of a global market of resources. Capitalism relies on a wealthy core of nations extracting resources from a periphery.

While some nations like South Korea and Singapore have jumped from the periphery to the core, this is incredibly difficult. And our economy can't support more than a few developing economies rising up through the cracks. Argentina tried to do this, but did not possess a national bourgeoisie powerful enough to create large corporations and join the big boys. As any leader of a developing country would tell you, the best somewhere Brazil or Indonesia can hope for in our current economy is to become somewhat more comfortable in their position as a plantation for the West. Becoming a first world country is only possible once Brazilian or Indonesian businesses do more than just facilitate first world resource extraction. Panama, Costa Rica, and Chile seem to be getting there, but poor economic management or a global market downturn can through this all into chaos.

Venezuela is only considered socialist because a left-wing government nationalized its oil resources. Chavez' dream was using their great natural resource to enrich the citizenry. But this scheme relied on selling to the first world. It was a "socialist revolution" entirely on bourgeois terms. Chavez used capitalistic tactics like price fixing to increase revenue and did not develop the rest of the economy. When changes in the global oil industry allowed Western governments to buy cheaper oil from closer and friendlier countries, the whole Venezuelan system collapsed.

Socialism is not just nationalizing sole companies and selling to rich capitalists.

>>2966159
Transitioning to another state system isn't collapse.

Fuck I hate memes.

>>2966151
>empiricism is invalid

Of course the commies would argue against looking at results.

>>2966164
As usual, you have to dodge definitions to support socialist systems. Maybe try going with a system that works? One that leaves the lower middle class with more luxuries than the robber barons of a century ago?

>>2966170
Losing control of half of your territory, being forced to renounce your ideology, and then experiencing a period of violence, increased mortality and widespread failure of government is a collapse.

>well, the Macedonian empire didn't collapse, after all, Ptolemy was still running Egypt

>>2966175
What results are you talking about? This is what I'm getting at -- empiricism requires close looking, not some meme gander at 'results' and coming to conclusions you already hold. Summed up: what are you talking about? Saying 'look at' is intellectually lazy and betrays your lack of actual, applicable knowledge in the subject. This is why you're responding in bite-size posts compared to the multiple paragraphs of the guy you were initially responding to, and why I said 'you sure showed him' because you're not actually contributing anything. Why are you talking about economic performance as though its the only metric? Why are you asking me for examples of working communist societies (which also betrays your lazy thinking, in that you won't actually look for information but you prefer for it to be spoonfed) when that wasn't even my point? There are thousands of people who can hold your position better than you can, who are more worthwhile to actually discuss things with. You're not as informed as you think you are.

>inb4 single line response

>>2966069
Finally someone who know about what he talk about.

>>2966191
Right I guess all those socialist revolutions were capitalism collapsing then.

>>2966069
>Thats not real communism but if it is they didnt kill that many

>>2966196
>Russia crashed
>NK is limping along
>Cuba can't even keep up native crops
>Venezuela is in open revolt

Meanwhile, America maintains steady GDP growth and great standard of living despite being managed by clowns top to bottom.

Of course you are out to push a pie-in the sky dream of some anarcho-syndicalist utopia that has never existed, while ignoring market economies that have brought Star Trek technology to the poorest neighborhoods in the west.

>If I were supreme dictator, communism would work dammit

>>2966224
More memes. I wonder if you would be saying the same thing in 1933.

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>>2965808
Obama is anything but hard left. He's slightly less enthusiastically capitalist than Bill Clinton, making him the second most right wing Democratic president since Wilson.

Contrasting Obama with Reagan is odd because they relied on similar neoliberal methods of building the economy. Both thought tax cuts could stimulate commerce and job creation. The difference wasn't in their policies so much as the broader economic conditions at the time of their presidency.

Reagan enjoyed higher economic growth because his extensive deregulation allowed for corporations to hire Americans more cheaply than they would otherwise. Industrial jobs that had begun fleeing to Asia and Latin America in the 1970s were retained for a period. However, Reagan's liberal policies did nothing to retain American jobs in the long term.

Reagan's low taxes spurred economic activity but cause federal debt to blossom at a rate never seen elsewhere. His muscular foreign policy helped us overpass the slouching USSR more quickly, but was incredibly expensive. This rising public debt, exacerbated by the expensive wars of all subsequent presidents, eroded the gains of the Reagan era.

>>2966186
No extant economic system works. Every country is either poor, or floating on a prosperity subsidized by the poverty of others. American capitalism is experiencing a bitter decay as our industrial base dissolves and real wages slowly drop. See pic. Neither Hillary or Trump offered any serious plan to fight back against this.

Socialism, as the abolition of wage labor and private industry, is the only way to resolve the contradictions of capitalism. No society has been socialist because no "socialist country" did anything beyond nationalization. What socialism means is a full transformation of labor relations, as workers become owners transition their economy toward development and need fulfilment rather than competition and profit.

Problem is that nobody knows what the hell it will take to get there.

>>2964514
>e-everyone who disagrees with me is /pol/!
All of those replies were legible and well thought out. Don't be so childish and arrogant to think that only /pol/ poster see the flaws in your ideology.

>>2966254
>Problem is that nobody knows what the hell it will take to get there.

It takes nothing because socialism doesn't work.

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>>2966254
>No society has been socialist because no "socialist country" did anything beyond nationalization. What socialism means is a full transformation of labor relations, as workers become owners transition their economy toward development and need fulfilment rather than competition and profit.Problem is that nobody knows what the hell it will take to get there.

you guys better work that shit out before destroying the whole system my friend

>>2966280
I'm a socialist and I'm working.

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>>2966295
>I'm a socialist

>>2966301
Well yeah it works.

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>>2966307
>socialism works

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Why not form your own commune's?

Gather some likeminded individuals and work out the kinks, this would also prevent forcing it upon people who do not wish to participate in a commonwealth.

>>2966315
It's working for me right now.

>>2965192
>john you raped and murdered a woman, you've been found guilty by a jury of your peers and the state will be executing you
>alright sergei and alexsandr we find you guilty of disagreeing with the state you and your families and neighbors will be shipped to siberia where you'll be starved and murdered and shoved into a snowy ditch
>"wow what's the fucking difference"

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>>2966216
Yes, that's correct. Socialist states of the 20th century weren't very successful or praiseworthy. But narratives about these societies are hugely informed by bourgeois prejudiced against socialism. All of the really scary USSR historiography comes out of the Cold War era, when information was scarce and academics had very good reasons for wanting to illustrate communist brutality. Famous historian Robert Conquest spent eight years on the payroll of the British intelligence service, with the specific goal of promoting a poorer image of Marxist ideology among other academics. Martin Malia, a fellow Soviet historian, was a devoted anticommunist who recognized that scholarship of the past could shape the attitudes of the future.

While Conquest treated the post-1992 revelations as some great vindication, because the few delusional tankies who denied the existence of mass gulags and killings in the Stalin period had been proven wrong, he and many other anticommunist historians quietly revised their statistics, conceding that their estimates of famine dead and purge victims has been inflated.

What irks me isn't so much the blatant dishonesty and revisionism in mainstream discussions of the USSR but instead how the failings (real or imagined) of one particular economic system are extrapolated backwards to the ideological underpinnings which didn't mention any of that. It's like blaming Thomas Paine for American imperialism a century later. Because nobody actually reads Marx, they don't realize that his writings contradict most Soviet policy.

Karl Marx was relentlessly critical of other socialists and a lifelong humanitarian. He would stare agape at the gross abuses of the vulgar communist strongmen while writing volumes on why the USSR was not socialistic. During in their lifetimes, Marx and Engels rallied against the problems which plagued these societies -- reliance on state control, the preservation of wage labor, and cooperation with bourgeois powers.

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>>2966317
Because I can enjoy a more fulfilling life in a well-connected economy than in an isolated commune.

For people who don't have this luxury, a socialized self-exclusion could be a better idea. Not only have whole agrarian societies done this in Chiapas and Syrian Kurdistan, but collective farming societies are emerging with increasing frequency in India and China.

Socialism isn't just a change in lifestyle for individuals, it's a radical and large-scale transformation in labor relations. Poor countries lack the wealth to substantially raise the quality of life of their citizens and rich countries lack the resources necessary to stay comfortable.

>>2966280
Why do you think so?

There's never been a socialist society so it's difficult to say it wouldn't work. :)

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>>2966325
>Socialists work

>>2962948
>mass murder
like the US?

>>2966455
Yep.

>tfw the only other superpower besides America was communist

>>2966724
20 killed in some random rampage vs tens of millions dead due to governmental incompetence.

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>>2966754
>yep

>>2966269
Well thought out my ass, half of it is shitposting

>>2966331
Nice argument, how about you try refuting the core of my argument.

>>2966958
Americans dindu nuffin

Goulash Communism worked...

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>>2966369
Good fuckin post right here

>>2967552
L A N D W E H R C A N A L

>>2962835

It could be if we started eliminating people that hold capitalist sympathies. And also capitalists in other countries.

>>2965564

There is absolutely nothing wrong with individualism. What the fuck? Where did that come from? You can be equal to everyone and still be an individual.

>>2966069
>Not only is that statistic ridiculously inflated

No it's not. Mao alone is responsible for the deaths of at least 20 million and several reputable historians say it's closer to 40 million.

>but in no way were the crimes of Stalin and Mao and other socialist autocrats the expression of Marxist philosophy.

It most certainly was. You don't get murderous against private property owners, expropriate their property and put them in concentration camps if you don't believe there's anything wrong with private property owners.

>>2962835

In a spectrum of state inteventionism and non-interventionism, states commonly regarded as socialist are closer to the interventionist spectrum, which tends to inhibit economic efficiency.
Politicians in general are economically illiterate, but I would argue that in less interventionist environment the most purely extractive actions don't pass political processes as easily.

>>2967679
Seriously what the fuck. Just read some marxist lectures for example.
Im asking you where exactly he wrote that communism is necessarily tied with totalitarianism and violent repression.

>>2967742
Violent revolution is literally a core doctrine in Marxist Communist you fucking obscurantist.

The ruling class either needs to give up their property or they will all be annihilated.

And that's precisely what happened in all the countries where Marxism became state ideology.

>>2967772
FAT Posters are the worst

>>2967787
Not an argument tankie.

>>2967792
Quote me the part where marx said that you must repress individual citizens through force.

Until you can do that you have to get warm with the idea that maoist china and stalinist Russia were suppressive regimes that followed communist ideas, but ultimately failed to establish marxist ideals.

>>2967818
Doesn't matter if he said it outright or not if his entire ideology must necessarily base itself on that fundamental axiom.

You can't have a Communist society if you don't appropriate the means of production, and in order to appropriate anything you need political power and force, which is by definition violence.