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So personally, as a Scandinavian social-democrat and union member I would like to ask this question in response to “communism is the history proven way”: show me. What examples from history do you have?
cuba, china, i really like the chilean attempt, the recent ones in africa, mexico has walked a few steps, vietnam.... theres plenty in the modern era. pick your poison, the third world is chock full of attempts to get rid of capitalism.
scandinavians come to my country to extract pollute and colonize it. very easy to be comfortable in such circumstances. stop that and keep your comforts if you want it to be impressive.
I am not sure what you are trying to say, and I am not sure why you are reacting as you are.
My only point by mentioning Scandinavia was to say I believe in social benefits, unionization, and heavy market regulation by the state. That being said, I personally know of no successful communist state (successful in the eyes of the average proletariat) from history. I don’t believe it is intellectually honest to call Cuba and China successful examples.
I do not see that getting rid of capitalism is a sensible or viable option (or that it has ever been done without famine or other such terrible side effects), but I never doubt that the invisible hand, is the invisible hand in my pocket - so it is our duty as voters to make sure that we regulate the hell out of everything and our government has the teeth to do so.
I believe you mentioned above that you didn’t vote, but you are dissatisfied with foreign companies extracting resources (and presumably your government failing to sensibly tax and regulate the practice). I’m not sure you will be able to change that without either voting or taking part in revolution.
assuming you are arguing in good faith you are, again, in a comfortable and privileged position to take when northern europe is pillaging the third world for our resources using capitalist imperialism. you don't represent the average proletariat, and thats peachy coming from the place that colonized us for centuries.
china was the poorest hungriest planet in the world before the revolution and is now an industrial world power, cuba has achieved amazing things despite a brutal blockade by the most powerful empire in history, compare it to haiti. look up why some africans are having revolutions right now.
beyond that i don't know what to tell you, you mention all the nice things you have because of the aforementioned imperialism like its a natural thing to have everywhere in the capitalist world.
here is the problem: the rest of the world can't vote imperialism away. we get invaded and destroyed, look up what happened to the elected chilean socialist government i mentioned before if you want to get an idea of what i am talking about.
I definetly did not say that at all.
I apologize for the misunderstanding- I took your statement that imperialism cannot be voted away as you not voting.
I consider the current Chinese government to be closer to fascism and imperialism than to actual socialism, and to say that the great famine was not a direct result of bad (Maoist) policy would be revisionist.
You state that imperialism cannot be voted away, but is that not what the Chileans did? Is that not what has happened in Bolivia and Venezuela? Yes the imperialists do their best to meddle, but they were in fact voted out, which is counter to your original point.
As someone who believes in strengthening the community to forment change you must know that antagonizing me for something I am unable to apologize for is no way to create more comrades. Yes, luck of the draw I was born Scandinavian and not Yemeni, I understand that there are socioeconomic consequences of that. Shame on you for not even attempting to have a friendly conversation with a unionized factory worker.
maoist policymakers tried to do the same rapid industrialization that stalin did in the ussr and failed, but it was by no means the main reason for the famine. i will remind you again that china was one of the poorest countries in the world and you don't build strong infrastructure to feed everyone reliably overnight. it was also greatly exagerated by the west, as always.
the thing is, though, that this was about 70-ish years ago? china has enjoyed record economic growth, and improvement on the lives of average citizens. of course i'm not saying its perfect and they have many Ls but when push comes to shove, its nothing short of amazing seeing what they were able to achieve in just 50-60 years. especially coming from a country that can get as poor as they were back then in some regions. they have struck a good balance between free markets and state control, and they are slowly transitioning away from capitalist free markets as it lives out its usefulness.
i find the "china bad" rhetoric of many westerners to be a bit disingenious because you can attribute similar catastrophes to most countries if you look to their past.
i asked you to check out chilean socialism precisely because their electoral system was attacked easily and quickly, with dire consequences. please check it out, its eye-opening to why voting socialism in rarely works, even if the socialist somehow manages to win with the burgeois puting their fingers on the scale. sometimes violence is the only way, sometimes it is not. sometimes going back to a parlimentary-like system like china is necessary, sometimes you can do direct elections like cuba. good on the countries that manage to do this more peacefully, but blame not the victims for trying to defend themselves.
venezuela is victim to constant destabilization attempts in the form of sanctions and attacks to its elections. it literally just happened again last year, they are unable to enact good policy and move further than the frankly kind of weird socialism they built. i wouldnt say they are managing well, nor that they have a good future ahead. their situation is closer to cuba in that the sanctions do the brunt of the damage.
i don't know about bolivia enough to talk about it without saying some wrong bullshit, so ill abstain.
i'm simply explaining to you something that you might have not noticed, judging by the content of your posts. you are right and i'm sorry if sometimes i come across as frustrated with some of this. it really is peachy for westerners to be saying "just vote! we have all these things by voting :D" to us when it goes much deeper and is sometimes related to that. europeans can keep whatever system they want as long as they treat others fairly.
with that said, socialism is a system that allows for the comforts you have, but not the excess consumption you enjoy. it is, however, a system not so dependent on exploiting poor people to keep the rich rich.
i don't actually expect many westerners to think about revolution before suffering through capitalist crisis from losing their colonies and/or not being able to grow forever.
us fascism looks to be just that, so they are trying to turn the exploitation inwards. socialism is a proven way to stop fascism, but i don't expect americans will do it until it gets really bad.
I was going to ask the same thing.
If we evict the socialist dictatures/guerillas led by marxist-leninist parties and other authoritarian flavors of communism, remains some attempts at libertarian communism, some surviving longer than other : Paris in 1871, Ukraine in 1917, Spain in 1936-1937 are short lived examples of past communist situations that brought social changes a century or half a century before they could be obtained again, for those we obtained back. Nowadays examples are Rojava and Zapatistad territoried in Chiapas, Mexico.
Thank you for answering. I appreciate the efforts of your listed examples, especially considering their attempts at establishing human rights or dignities before it was even a thing. What I do feel is a counterpoint is how short lived they all were. I also feel for the Kurds (tough neighborhood) but I am not quite ready to move to Rojava, despite their developments I also fear that in time it may be added to your list of short lived examples. Do you feel that libertarian communism is the best theoretical alignment for a modern communist state?
Thanks for your appreciation. We of course agree that they all are very very short lived. Sadly, the Kurds will effectively probably have a rough time in the near future. Zapatistas are quite an exception in here, they manage to stay steady for some years now, but of course their situation is quite unique (though in all examples I gave it was unique situations).
The common point in all those cases are that the reason for their short durations are more or less authoritarians states, in its diverse forms (Republic in 1871, Fascists+Republic in 1936, Communists in 1917, Turkey for Rojava, etc.). So i feel like if every system that has been criticized as bad all fought against libertarian communism, maybe that's a hint about how good a system it is. I'm not sure if it's the best for modern communism, maybe nowadays situation requires something else, but thanks to its versatility, I think it could adapt. So yeah, I kinda feel that libertarian communism and its declinations are the best theoretical alignment for communism in general (though it's not necessarily a state, precisely).
The whole world is a "tough neighborhood" for small states. Cuba has been remarkably successful given its adversaries.
revolution itself is 'authoritarian', countries suffering violence can't save themselves with love.
good on the countries in a better off position that can take that moral high ground.