Simply put, communism is a system that works perfectly once you exterminate everyone who disagrees with it, and it doesn't matter if it's thousands, millions or billions, it's for the good of the people.

In truth, every masterplan society, be it communism, socialism, libertarianism or fascism has always proven to be a complete disaster because it doesn't account for 99.99999% of regular life, and it will always be that way, and the only thing that has ever had any measure of success is winging it and approaching problems as they come.

So never listen to any people like Dembo when they come with the "oh yes I love the exterminating billions one" and focus on solving our problems.

Yup, that's a lot better way to cut to the core of the issue


Here's a video just posted of the Philly protests from YouTuber hate5six (highly recommend his vids for those into hardcore). The police brutality is so fucking obvious here, at one point the entirety of the group of protesters are standing on a hill to the side of the road trying to get over a ledge while the police are lobbing tear gas right into the crowd. Completely disgraceful. From the video description:

You don't need to cut to anything of any issue. You just need to solve it.

I just want to underline this point because I've been blessed with having many close Finnish friends IRL, many of whom formerly worked (a few of whom still work) in government and all of whom have had extensive time in the US, and "I love our X policy/service but it would never work in America for cultural reasons" is a common theme I've heard from them. Americans tend to hear "culture" and mentally translate this as "race," but civic culture is a different---and very real---thing. And ours is not the same as yours. I don't think any political "revolution" can successfully change that; if anything, political revolutions require an antecedent change in civic culture to succeed.

I definitely agree with that. Maybe I'm a bit too optimistic because I'm young and, therefore, naive, but it does seem like the civic culture is vastly different between the younger and older generation of Americans, with the younger generation feeling vastly more personally responsible in how authority is carried out than the older. Could just be how things typically go, younger being are naive and tend to think the world can change where older people are more jaded. But still, if that change exists, then it clearly explains a big reason why we've reached a breaking point in our country.

It's also obvious that technology and video footage has a very large role in shaping how we perceive authority, and with younger people often spending more time online, I could see that seriously changing our perception of authority.

You can because there is still racism without capitalism, all communist societies have had racism too.

Take it from somebody whose family was an ethnic minority in a communist country-- commies can do racism every bit as well as capitalist societies can.

It's true that virtually all societies have in-group/out-group dynamics that often break down along ethnic lines. What is unique to the system of capitalism is its parallel system of white supremacy. White supremacy isn't just informal racial or ethnic conflict. It isn't individualized expressions of private prejudice. It is an entire system of oppression and exploitation, enforced through the official organs of state policy and violence. White supremacy is a bedrock principle of capitalism. The systems were intertwined from birth, as they both were born out of plantation chattel slavery. Those systems are beyond reform. The state violence and repression we are witnessing are cooked into the basic, unalterable nature of the current system. Only by smashing the entire structure and building a new system on its wreckage can we end the systemic violence against Black people, against nationally oppressed peoples, against LGBTQ+ folks. We need revolutionary socialism.

Not even close to that Drone, I usually read your comments and I mostly agree with you, but that's a (common) missconcept, of course, if you see Stalin or Mao (btw, if you see Chinese opposition of that time you will find that it was 100 times worse than Mao) you are obviously going to rant about communism, there's a book too that talks about the treason of Stalin to the revolutionary communism, but Leninism and Marxism are still right 'till this day about everything what they said/did.

About George Floyd, everything has to do with everything, coronavirus evidencied this actual failed system called capitalism, everything has been put on the table, now the world is on fire (still) because billionaire interests still remain above such a tragic thing as the pandemic, is incredible how tyrants still want to protect their own personal survivance instead of helping the people. Not even a pandemia can make them pay just a LITTLE MORE for someone poor, or working class people, this is ridiculous.

As I have read above, everything is a class thing.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't racism in a classless, stateless society with no money be relatively toothless? I don't think you can ever totally eliminate racism on an individual level, but without the mechanisms to enforce racist hierarchy on a massive scale, I don't think it could ever approach the kind of thing that we've seen in the US for the last 400 years.

Exactly, literally speaking that's part of colonialism, all that eurocentrism is still beating in humanity (after 400 years!), come on, we americans are all colonies in some way, racism is just a fatal manipulated anthropologic error, the hilarous thing I had the opportunity to watch were black neonazis, black police, gendarmes officers, beating the shit out to other calling they of "negro de mierda" (fucking nigger) lol, the worst about being a desclassed folk is when you attempt against your own roots.

Some of the commentary is lit tonight. Keep it up, y'all!

Thanks for the signature mention ᴎostalgiʞK. Other than that,

''White supremacy is a bedrock principle of capitalism''. I don't think it's true. White people could be whipped out of this earth and capitalism could continue with all its inequalities. And capitalism can survive without racism and racism can definitely survive without capitalism.

Which absolutely totally doesn't exist in communist countries, tru... oh wait.

Back on topic



This is important. Everyone (outside those brave ones among you who are actually marching ) needs to watch the entire thing. 17 minutes, but yes, watch it all.

Make special note on the scene at 16:00.

If I know i’ll Be in a zone like that, i’m coming armed with a bat, knives, whatever. Don’t run, fight back. There’s more protesters than cops, they could be overrun easily. Create a distraction, seize their root gear, even the odds.
ACAB

Y'all see how Tom Cotton got an OP-ed in the fucking NYTIMES advancing his plan to unleash the US military on protesters? Seriously what the fuck, I thought during the COVID pandemic, liberals were supposed to keep their mask on?

Tom Cotton ain’t shit. He can go jerk off to military weapon porn all he wants, he still can eat my melted shit

You know how I and loads of other people have been saying that the only reason we haven't truly fallen into a fascist dystopia is because Trump is genuinely fuckin' dumb and can't do anything right, and instead the real threat is that he's laid the groundwork for an actually competent authoritarian to take the reins and turn us into the unambiguous villains of future history books?

Tom Cotton is that competent authoritarian. NYT lending their platform to him is genuinely terrifying.

...but it also shows how much a piece of shit he is. Let him spew his shit. It’s on record and he dare not try to run for President because that article will come back and bite him in the ass.

Sorry Tommy no White House for you!!!

The guy sitting in the White House got into politics by insisting Obama was born in Kenya.

I have agreed that Cotton is way too much of charisma-free nerd with a weird screw face to actually get anywhere near the presidency, but the closer he gets to a national spotlight, the more dangerous everything becomes. If Trump does manage to get reelected (and lord help us if he does), this motherfucker might be promoted to secretary of state.

That was painful to watch, so lets also have this on here for post-traumatic catharsis

That Tom Cotton op-ed is despicable trash and he should be shunned from polite society over it. But that just shows you how many other assholes, sociopaths and sadists out there who aren't Trump. There are people who have the werewithal to get elected who have these despicable views but also don't bray like a jackass as Trump does, so nobody bats an eye. It's important to watch out for that in future elections. They won't always be as obvious as Trump.

And now who is "whatabouting"? The truth is there is no system that has prevailed in any communist country that is or was analogous to the way white supremacy functions in these capitalist United States.

Well, I've got some Ukrainian friends that might disagree with you.

Great introductory article on white / slavic ethnic supremacy / Russian-colonialist policies in the Soviet Union -

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/10/09/how-putins-russia-uses-soviet-era-tricks-to-evoke-racist-white-fears/

I think one could argue that capitalism reinforces racism in a sense because it is inherently based on classism, and classism will naturally take the form of whatever social divisions already exist. But on the other hand, a capitalist system requires the active participation and exploitation of all able bodies, so a company that refuses to serve or hire different races will naturally do less business/be less successful than a business that doesn't. From my understanding, there isn't that same sort of incentive for involving all of society in a communist system (there's no profit motive preventing you from killing or imprisoning people even if you personally believe they're inferior because of their race), so even though the system isn't inherently classist there will be fewer structural barriers to people's social prejudices. Open to hearing other perspectives, though.

There is, you just don't want to believe that there is. If you don't think the Soviet Union was built on an edifice of white supremacy (more specifically, Russian supremacy) where the labor and resources of minorities was taken away and funneled back to white Russians, where ethnic politics was used to divide people and sow discord to benefit Russians, then you don't know the first thing about what life in the Soviet Union was like. (And that's not even getting into the politics of Russianization enforced by Soviet authorities, to the detriment of pretty much all minorities in the USSR but to the particularly horrific detriment of indigenous Siberians, many of whose languages all but went extinct because of Russianization policies.)

I'm not "whatabouting". Whataboutism is when you try to deflect away from a problem by pointing out someone else doing the same problem, which isn't what I'm doing; I'm refuting your claim that systemic racism cannot exist without capitalism by giving a counter-example, of racist societies that were not capitalistic.

It's frankly insulting to suggest communist nations don't have systemic racism. I can't even let that one slide as ignorance because the mistreatment of Jews in the Soviet Union is very, very well-documented. And if you want a non-Soviet example, just look at how the Uighurs and other minorities are treated in China (hint: the Uighurs are being genocided in ways not dissimilar to Jews during the Holocaust -- yes, it's that horrific). And before you "China isn't true socialism", well, you can also look at how disenfranchised black Cubans are.

There's something to be said about how capitalism can exacerbate institutionalized racism, sure. Here's a great video that highlights how the oppression of black Americans not only came to be, but continued to be perpetuated, largely due to economics (it also addresses the looters, so hey, anyone whinging about looters, please watch this):

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CBCFj9EH49F/

...But yes, the idea that the two issues are inherently directly connected and cannot exist without the other, or worse, that communist and socialist societies are somehow free of systemic racism, is some fallacious far-left nonsense not worth entertaining.

I wouldn't quite phrase it like your paraphrasing of my post, since it kind of makes it look like a "not a true Scotsman" view. In marxism, communism is the goal which emerges with the withering away of the socialist state as it becomes obsolete.

In the case of China, like I said, I don't think their being capitalist is due to a change in governmental policy. China were doomed to capitalism due to the maoist view on contradictions, that they can change order of importance to the point that the contradiction between work and capital is lowered from its position as the principal contradiction. It's more like this explains the various changes in governmental policy, rather than those changes being the root cause to Chinas being capitalist.

In the case of the USSR however, I'd say they were on the road to communism, however far, but then revisionists changed to the road back to capitalism. And I'd say this change happened after the Stalin era, not during it.


Marxists by no means try to think their way into anything. Marxism advocates scientific socialism and is materialistic, as opposed to utopian socialism which is idealistic. According to marxism, humans are shaped by their environment but also shapes their environment. I recommend reading about historical materialism.

"Not only do the objective conditions change in the act of reproduction, e.g. the village becomes a town, the wilderness a cleared field etc., but the producers change, too, in that they bring out new qualities in themselves, develop themselves in production, transform themselves, develop new powers and ideas, new modes of intercourse, new needs and new language."
-Marx, 'Grundrisse - Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft)' (1857–61):
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... e/ch09.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... /index.htm

I agree that greed isn't the root cause for the behavior of capitalists. But capitalism cultivates greed by the connection between wealth and power. Increased wealth in relation to others increases your power to live according to your will, both actively by action, and passively by refraining from action. The more wealth you have, the more it takes for an external factor to be a problem. Poor people can't afford to say no to awful conditions at the work place, which is why the capitalist benefits from the poverty of others, from increased inequality, as long as they have enough to keep on working. This is why capitalists fear a united, class conscious working class and actively divides it, including racially.

It's in communism (after the withering away of the socialist state) that people are the most free, since they no longer have to adapt their work to the needs of neither a capitalist nor a state. And there's much more to be said about the level of democracy in various socialist states. It's not as simple as the will of some elite.

There's also difference between feeling oppressed and being it. Throughout history, oppressed people have defended all sorts of things, like colonies, traditional slavery, absolute monarchy. This is were class consciousness comes in, and it's why the ruling class put so much effort in preventing the working class from becoming class conscious. One way to prevent that is dividing them, including racially.

Also, people may feel a need to audit this or that, but not have the means to do so in time, energy and knowledge. Alot of people are busy working for their livelihood, and tired from it. Not to mention the education system, run by the ruling class, don't reward critical thinking, logic, class consciousness or political awareness in general, outside the framework of capitalism and the Western versions of freedom, justice and democracy.


Capitalists benefit from systemic racism because it divides the working class, which weakens it, which makes it less of a threat to the ruling class, which consists of capitalists.

That Disney example is quite confused... Partly because of where you seem to place Disney in society. But also you say they introduced a character who's skin color is the key feature for people to identify with him, but you see that as something that go against the ruling class benefitting from working class division? I haven't read or watched The Black Panther, does he advocate class struggle for the purpose of overthrowing capitalism? I doubt it...


Just for the record, there are also books talking about Khrushchev in such terms and argue for Stalin's views being more in accordance with marxism-leninism. But of course what's interesting is the arguments they put forth, not that there are books...


Correct. White supremacy have been cultivated and fiercely used by Western capitalists throughout history, in various ways, but capitalism itself doesn't depend on it.


In capitalist countries, those tools of power are used against the working class for the benefit of the tiny minority that make out the ruling class. In socialist countries, they are used against that tiny minority and its underlings for the benefit of the working class. Off course socialist countries aren't immune to mistakes, corruption, and infiltration from the capitalist forces.




Both the Ukraine article and the Wikipedia one are repeating standard anti-communist propaganda, derived from authors like Robert Conquest and Timothy Snyder, who are also main sources in tons of documentaries about the communist movement. I suggest looking up books debunking these pseudo-historians. For example Blood Lies, which counters Snyder's Blood Lands. But there are also many non-communists and even anti-communists who have spoken against many common ideas about the USSR for example. For example, the idea of Stalin and the Soviet government intentionally starving innocent people ("Holodomor") is ridiculous. That area had centuries of recurring starvation catastrophes, and that one in the early days of collectivization was the last one. But since it occured during socialism and not the preceeding system, capitalism, off course it was intentional... Not to mention the vast variations in numbers and how one and the same author can change the numbers from one edition of a book to another without motivating it.

And if China isn't capitalist, then why are capitalists so prone to moving their business there?

But also, regarding every type of revolution in every country, the change doesn't happen overnight. Off course socialist countries will have a degree of racism in them since it's been there for centuries. But capitalism benefits from a divided, racially or otherwise, working class. Socialism is weakened by it.

Here's an idea, let's hijack a thread about a racist murder with conspiracy theories denying racist murders.

I don't see any difference between this and some crazy right wing libertarian saying that we should completely dismantle the government. It seems to come from a wildly optimistic view of humans that we could all live harmoniously with millions of people without ever having any sort of government enforcing the social order, which is exactly why communism never worked in the first place in any country that's ever attempted to incrementally create such a way of living.




You're suggesting that China was doomed to be capitalist because of a Maoist viewpoint on contradictions, that the soviet union went towards a capitalistic society because of revisionists. However, you later turn around and say "marxists by no means try to think their way into anything". According to you, said revisionists and maoists "thought" their way into capitalism, not that capitalism and trade and the general supply and demand of market based economies are emergent from the social structure created by the biological fundamentals of human beings. And that, lo and behold, allowing human beings to act according to those fundamentals is the best way to ensure maximum prosperity.

This was precisely my point- social structures are emergent from the animals that create it, and those governments and systems of trade are created by the social structure. Even if you try to forcefully move into a different direction, you will always result in either

A) A slow return back to the original emergent social structure that existed in the first place or
B) A highly authoritarian regime which greatly limits the freedoms of people to act according to their natural state.

I don't know how you can have a view of marxism that somehow doesn't think it's human beings forcefully taking control of their own social orders by thinking their way into a new one. That's exactly what people are doing when they worship at the altar of Marx and Engels- it's nothing but "these guys have REALLY good ideas on how society should arrange itself". It's a viewpoint on how humans ought to live, not how they can live.



Yes, but like you said, you need a socialist society as a transformation state in order to then realize a full blown communist society. And because everything you stated about the cultivation of wealth and power through capitalism also exists through governments of a socialist society, that transformation will never fucking occur. Those governments will incrementally have greater authority over people. You haven't dispersed the power in your society, as a capitalist society does. You've concentrated it into the hands of a single centralized system. That's incredibly dangerous.


Disney is just an example of a company that wants to broaden its marketing demographic so it can maximize its revenue. By being more inclusive to a larger group of people, they have more people that have good will towards them and are more willing to buy their shit. Same could be true about amazon or any other company that decides to publicly state their support for racial/sexual/cultural/gender diversity. It's a win-win for them. Sure- by only talking about these issues, they move people away from talking about class issues, but that doesn't mean they somehow benefit from selling racially charged or sexist messaging/content. It's bad business.



"Please read the books that help my confirmation bias"

While I agree that that socialism would be generally weakend by a divided working class, realize that there is little outside motivation to help minorities or other marginalized groups in a socialist society. So long as the society generally works for the majority, those others will lay by the wayside with no one to help integrate them into the social order.



Yeah, some of the posts have gone off the rails on this thread. But its because there's people here that can't discern class from racial issues, thinking that there is a one-size-fits-all to all the problems everyone ever suffers on a societal level, and that the solution to it is to simply overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize the means of production.

Dembo is a pleasure to me reading you.



Being on topic too, this reminds me the anthropologic work done by Kaiser, it also takes up what Marx established (this is the word that goes by my head now) abolishing all kind of "primitive" or that "savage" visions (this word from savage to primitive changed to make the white conqueror look a littleee less cruelty from century to century /16 to 17 if I recall correctly<.......), for example, human beings begin to addapt themselves withing the enviorment, there is not such thing as "uncultured people" like it keeps prevailing really strong in humanity's thoughts, there are 3 things that makes culture.
- Language, there is not ANY tribe or any town, or any single folk on this world that have not went though language.
- Religion, there were not any single culture that haven't had any deity, this include all forms of deities, polytheism, monotheism, etc etc etc..
- Division of work and organization.

So, all those slaves and colonies had their culture, they lived in society long time before Colón arrived with the boats, long time before the Berlin's congress distributed all african territories between the strong europeans countries, the fun (creepy) fact is that it were made by the hand of people that nowadays want the world to be like that...
Capitalism started to grow when humanity abandoned their nature roots going far away from the naturity, sorry for my language barrier..



In the first paragraph I don't find crazy dismantling the government, is even more crazy think that 1% of the poppulation have the money of the rest 99% (which is basically what's happening)
Well, Lenin in 1920 presented the project GOELRO in the Soviet 7th congress, a total electrification for Russia, so EVERY people could have energy (mostly peasantry), Lenin put Krzhizhanovski to the led of this project. We could say that Russia was electrificated thanks to Lenin, that's a huge way of living imo.

I'm tired to keep typing but tomorrow I'm gonna read you all dudes, ohh nice..

Imagine the reaction if this sentence had been posted somewhere in-between the Soviet hagiographies above. That's the reaction some of the screeds on this page deserve.



Oh it's much worse than that. The author of the book he recommends is a literature professor who for some reason has made it his life's work to deny Stalin ever, ever did anything wrong. It's the equivalent of citing Ernst Zündel.



[edit: typo]

It's typical denier tactics. They won't come right out and say it, but they'll gaslight by "questioning the narrative" and speaking in generalities that make people feel stupid for accepting historically established facts.

Also, back on topic. This is a race issue. The black men and women (with those who sympathize with them) demonstrating and rioting are not doing it because of the internal contradiction of capitalism or the failure of neoliberalism or whatever theoretical one-liner that fits your ideology. It's because they as a group of people feel unjustly treated in a system that privileges white people over them.

The persistence of anti-semitism in Russian society, with it's 1000+ year history predating communism, is not equivalent to systemic, state-directed and state imposed white supremacy, an ideology that literally did not exist prior to the rise of capitalism. Nor does the targeting of specific, ultra-orthodox Jewish communities for their anti-democratic non-compliance with Soviet law amount to systemic racism. Jews were never targeted by the Soviet state for being Jews; they were targeted because they refused to obey the laws of Soviet Union, placing their religious creed above loyalty to their state and country. If that's where their consciences led them, so be it, but there are and should be consequences in a democracy when folks refuse to abide by the will of the majority.

Some may call it too little, too late, but I think it's a good thing the NFL finally recognised that the ban on Kaepernick protests was a shit move and will not ban it any longer.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52945934

All this Soviet conjecture is pure cringe. Russia was an agrarian, profoundly poor country (could barely even be called a country) that industrialized to compete on a global scale in an unprecedentedly compressed amount of time. Lots starvation and injustices and all-around horrors naturally followed. Even still, compare the USSR to any of the Tsarist fiefdoms that preceded it; I'm sorry but scary communist Russia was a markedly more just society than the one they abolished.

If you're going to talk about a decent leftist country that put social justice far ahead of anyone else for its time, and grew out of an industrialized, resource rich area, see the Weimar Republic. Talking about the injustices of the USSR and comparing it to modern socially liberal countries is the apotheosis of tediousness. We are a Kulak and "Holodomor" mention away from a fucking Robert Conquest propaganda piece .

Let me get this straight - American racism bad, but Communist anti-semitism all fine and good ? What kind of twisted up logic is that ? "The jews had it coming" is exactly the argument that the Nazis used, and is exactly the argument that racists in America are using right now about black people.

I know that left-wing anti-semitism is beyond cliche by this point, but it always shocks me to see it laid out so clearly.

Edit - and DEMOCRACY ? In Soviet Russia ? God almighty




Imagine the response to "the idea of the police and civic authorities intentionally murdering people is ridiculous" - in fact I don't have to, because people are getting hounded across all of the major social media channels for just that attitude, as they rightly should.

Honestly. The ends of the political spectrum get very close together when it comes to picking out a group to hate.