Or during Rome lol.

Republics don’t work. They always just end up authoritarian.

There isn’t really a single form of communist government, same as there isn’t a single way to do democracy or capitalism. Every country does it different, experiments a different way. For all we know, the perfect way to do it is just waiting for us to discover.

For example, I’d say the US’s form of liberal, bourgeois democracy is one of the worst ways to implement it, but it was also an early experiment with it and deserves credit for at least trying it and helping us learn what to do and what not to do.

And we haven’t even bombed you to the stone age yet to take all your oil! (or coal? Whatever Australia has) Imagine it would be even more after that lol.

Same, man, same lol. I’m still patriotic during the Olympics, but if we’re going to be funding genocides, assassinating leaders, and starting wars and shit, fuck it, I hope we lose them all lol. Let’s just start over on the whole project.

I invite US balkanization at this point so I can go hang out in the new sovereign state of whatever CA, WA, and OR will be called. Hawaii can come, too.

You should compare countries of similar development. That’s a good thing. People always compare the richest capitalist countries with the poorest communist countries, but by doing that always ignore the mass amount of poor capitalist countries, ones that are poor specifically because of capitalism.

Russia, for example, was extremely poor and behind. Comparing them to other majority agrarian societies during the Tsar makes way more sense than comparing them to countries that had been post-Industrial Revolution for awhile already, like Britain, Germany, or the US. That wouldn’t make any sense. They were trying to catch up but they were still only just getting a proletariat from their burgeoning heavy industry and rail industries when the Revolution happened. They were way behind the West otherwise. Yet in a short period of time they managed to catch up.

China even more so was basically all peasants. Vietnam, Cuba, Korea, etc all the same, extremely poor, small, or both. So they should be compared with countries of relative equal development, which tends to be the countries in the global South, like Africa or Latin America.

Then there’s the fact that they are kept at low development through purposeful exclusion from global markets, via sanctions, propaganda like the “Radio Free” programs, coups, support of separatist or terrorist groups, taking of national resources, being kept in debt by the IMF, and so on.

The USSR had to deal with a civil war, rising up during WWI and being sabotaged by the Germans, more civil war, foreign meddling, and all while being the first successful communist revolution. Yet they still managed to raise literacy, raise health outcomes, raise average life expectancy, gender equality, science and technology, end the cycle of famines (after the first one or two they had when they were still building up), had faster growth during that period than any capitalist country (except maybe the US, which was doing imperialism at the time and the biggest hegemon), all while helping sustain other socialist countries, like Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea.

Yup. We’re in an extra normal time and people are still clutching to decorum and civility as if it matters anymore.

I love it!

Oh Yay! Admittedly, I didn’t try it recently but I remember seeing an article that was down. If it’s back up, I’m glad to hear it.

Is torrent galaxy still down? That was my go to and sounds like I have to find another. I am a little worried if they keep bringing down the big ones like that, that we’ll be left with less choices and it’ll be more difficult.

There’s hypothetically a bunch of different version of communism for everyone. The thing is, Marx described the problems with capitalism, and some vague sense of what socialism could be, some guidelines of what it should aim for, then kind of left the details up to each individual society to get there how they think is best based on their individual material conditions. He gave his own guesses, but didn’t think he could predict that part fully, it would be up to the people of the future to figure it out and build on. A third world country, rural serf based near fuedal society, like Russia, would have completely different needs from some post-industrial country, like if Germany turned communist, for example. If the world’s sole superpower, the US, turned communist, it would probably be a lot different than communist countries that had to transition under siege neighboring imperialism, like Cuba, North Korea, or Vietnam.

This is just to answer your last question. Don’t think this really addresses your other questions, but just wanted to explain that part, as I’ve had it explained to me before. But I generally agree with you. There should still be some form of democracy but it might look different than what we are used to here in the US or liberal west.

Literature Cafe also looks like it has a community for that if we want to spread things out from world a bit. (Which I think we should at some point.)

!writingprompts@literature.cafe

Sorry, I’ll fix that.

Not to mention removing features, like Netflix removing the ability to download media.

I mean, you can use that same logic on the US government, even Democrat run ones, which have supported genocides in the past and even current ongoing ones, and have tried to stomp out left movements, been racist, sexist, and homophobic. But people have still supported the US and the Democratic party and called themselves leftist. The point is, I assume as I’m not a CCP Stan myself or anything, is to give critical support to back an actual socialist project and give a counterweight to a pure single superpower world (esp. When that superpower has destroyed or undermined almost every left project it can in the world). Critical support meaning you pick out the good from the bad, supporting the good and criticizing the bad. China actually puts a leash on its billionaires = good. But they seem to be forcing some cultural integration of Uyghurs = bad. But they’re providing lots of housing and cheap EV’s = good. But they can have bad working conditions = bad. But they’re helping support economies and infrastructure in the global South with the Belt and Road project = good. But they keep doing that shit with territory in the south seas = bad. But they seem to have a long-term plan for implementing communism that they are actually following = good. And so on. I do think some people go too far in being CCP supportive, but I also think some people on Lemmy go too far the other direction, and think everyone that gives the slightest critical support to China or analyzes some US propaganda on China a bit before swallowing it is a CCP troll.

In the end, it’s a mixed bag, but I do think there is some worth to not having a single hegemonic superpower in the world, so other leftist countries or colonized global south ones have alternative access to allies, trade, and support without bowing down to the US and their often reactionary policies. Cuba for example was doing pretty good until the Soviet Union fell and basically the only market became the western, US-controlled one that they had been mostly sanctioned the hell out of. I wish it was a better country than China, but hopefully they improve their social issues as they improve economically, which tends to be the pattern. I just wish they’d stop doing the aggressive maneuvers near the Philippines and Vietnam.

I didn’t know there are community challenges. What a cute idea. Can’t wait to do some voting! Is there a megathread anywhere where I can look at past community challenges?

That organized part is the hard part. Everyone is so atomized.

Oh ya, I should have guessed. There are a couple Baltic states that did increase in living standards and make some rapid industrialization improvements, but they also made some definite mistakes with handling some things there and trying to do some Russia centralization. It made some of those places very right leaning, which is unfortunate.

At least it generally shared technologies improvements and such with those places. It doesn’t make the USSR worse than the US, for example, which ruined basically all of South and Central America even worse than the USSR did for its neighbors. I want to emphasize that it made some big mistakes, but for some reason people contribute those mistakes to communism, when the US and other capitalist countries had even worse occupations with even worse exploitation, but for some reason that never leads to people saying capitalism is terrible and awful, etc. The world is just too propagandized by the West. The difference is that imperialism and exploitation is basically required by the capitalist system, while it’s a side effect of militarization under a siege mindset for communism. It happened, and will probably continue to happen as long as communism requires capitalism characteristics to jumpstart production, but it’s not a constant requirement of the system like capitalism’s necessity for the line to go up leading to always finding new markets and resources to take.

The USSR did good things and bad things but reactionaries like to pretend it was all bad. There are hard numbers about life expectancy increasing, better life for women, research achievements, general quality of life and happiness metrics, and more that increased. There was lots of bad parts, but same in the US.

There were anti gay laws on the books for the US, and towns you couldn’t even walk in while black. Hell, there are still some sundown towns in places in the US. If you just point out that stuff, or if you lived in such a horrible area or had family who did spreading their stories, then it will just come off as a hell hole. The US does suck, but it’s not just Skid Row, the projects, lynch mobs, coups, wars, etc. Same for the USSR. There were good things we can save and build on, and bad things we need to avoid for future socialist projects.

It’s not like the first attempts for democracy went well, either. But I wouldn’t diss it in the Middle Ages and say we can only do monarchies, the pinnacle of political achievements, just because " it never succeeded. It fell in Greece and the Roman Republic and every other time it’s been tried, and has never worked ever and thus is always doomed to fail."

And a lot of attempts have also been great at raising the standards of living for the general population, as well as for economic development in a relatively quick amount of time.