• jaybone@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    10 months ago

    But what will Lemmy communists say when you point out USSR and China?

    • force@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      To be fair USSR after communism was leagues better than USSR before communism ever could have been. But it’s not exactly proving much pointing out that an extremely unequal authoritarian regime is worse than a more equal but still authoritarian regime.

      I don’t think the comparison works anyway because this is a true example of exactly what most libertarians have wet dreams of, while with communism people try to use e.g. the USSR and PRC to discredit leftism as a whole (especially socialism) even though any leftist worth their salt would realize authoritarianism is bad and creates a dangerous hierarchy, which is why Marx and Engels specified their ideologies to be democratic.

    • MadhuGururajan@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      I don’t think China succeeded because of communism. They succeeded because Rich Industrialists in the west did not want to share their success with ordinary people and hence shifted all their work to China where the government ensured a steady supply of cheap labour. Of course, this only worked because the Chinese population was so poor that what were considered bad wages in the west was significantly more money than they would get back home.

      Now this kind of outsourcing of labour is what lead to countries coming out of poverty: what made them poor in the first place? Rampant colonialism by EU nations. You can see this in Africa, South America, Asia.