this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Also adding to the list of nice things - a picture of the current dictator on all public offices and classrooms. Work and school weeks from Monday to Saturday and a Sunday in which you had to do mandatory free time activities, like go to communist youth clubs, participate in parades for the glory of the state, or plant flowers or do random maintenance work in the park.
I've noticed the arguments tend to center around the notion that 'that wasn't true communism' and that the notions presented by Marx et al. were not properly implemented.
Fair enough, I can agree with that, but I'd wonder what makes us think that we would do it better next time? How do you actually prevent consolidation of power in the hands of the select few (in any system, for that matter, not just the ideal communism)?
Obligatory capitalism is bad too (but at least I'm in less danger of getting vanned in the middle of the night for insulting random great leader - attemtping to undermine the social order or whatever they called thoughtcrimes).
Capitalism requires the limits imposed by a strong, functional democracy, otherwise it drifts into horrifying tyranny.
Unrestrained capitalism can give communism a run for it's money in terms of genocide.
Edit: typo
Maybe you are, currently, in the United States of Europe. But this is really more a function of liberal democracy than capitalism. You could get vanned for saying the wrong thing about the great leader in quite a few capitalist countries. You'd be in high danger of having pretty terrible things happen to you for saying the wrong thing in the US until pretty recently, and the US has been capitalist pretty much since its inception.
That's fair I guess, I was a bit shocked to read about aheists having to conceal their true convictions and go to church and such for actual fear of being harmed. Now I read this on that other site a while ago, and still not sure whether it's true or not.
Of course, those are people who left. Might not be a representative population if you compare to people who still live there.