• EatYouWell@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    Communism is a system where the means of production are owned by the state. And is the exact opposite of capitalism. China is not communist.

    Communism isn’t a synonym for a bad government.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      Owned by the people not the state

      Communism doesn’t really have government because that would put people above others

      • Soggy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        11 months ago

        That’s an over-simplification. Marx’s stateless society was a prediction of the natural outcome of a post-capitalist world and is probably the most utopian aspiration of the philosophy.

        Communism does not mean “no government”. You need a government. Or rather, whatever system of decision-making and distribution emerges is the government. Any form of cooperation and collective agreement is government. Don’t tell the anarchists, they won’t get it.

        It doesn’t have to be heirarchal in the same way but ultimately if you live in a society then at some point someone is going to tell you what to do.

        • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          You have people with expertise come up and say x would be best

          But no one is bound to it

          • Soggy@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            11 months ago

            And then three people say to the fourth, “stop driving your car through this garden” and there aren’t laws or courts to handle the dispute so instead they use violence or intimidation.

            People cannot self-police on a societal scale.

            • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              11 months ago

              The state can’t police on a societal scale either because it will be more concerned with protecting itself than it’s people

              It’s why we call it late-stage capitalism instead of capitalism

              It’s why the flaws of late stage are the same flaws that it tried to fix in the Mercantilist systems

              It’s the same flaws Moses tried to ban

              It’s not a feature of Communism and your argument that it has to be because people can never tried Communism doesn’t work. It just means that communism doesn’t work because people can never implement it

              • Soggy@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                11 months ago

                If I’m honest, your point is being let down by your grammar.

                The state polices on a societal scale to the benefit of the public all the time. Environmental and safety regulations on businesses is one of the most obvious and successful. We can see historically and currently that, without the credible threat of legal consquence, people will just leave their trash wherever or over-harvest fish and game or accidentally set fire to a forest. Like, it happens anyway all the time but on a smaller scale.

                Late-capitalism mostly describes how everything is commodified and owned by a handful of multinational megacorps. It’s got nothing to do with the specifics of Bronze Age mercantilism, nor much to do with the definition of government nor heirarchal systems within society. Regulatory capture is a big problem but that’s not unique to the current system. Without the current governments these corporations would just be cyberpunk Corporate States at best or warlords at worst.

                Anarchist communism, in my opinion, doesn’t scale well beyond the neighborhood and is rubbish at the kinds of efficiencies needed to sustain billions of people.

                • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  11 months ago

                  Environmental and safety regulations on businesses is one of the most obvious and successful.

                  That’s not Capitalism

                  Also in practice it just offshores the damage

                  • Soggy@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    11 months ago

                    You’re saying that we shouldn’t have environmental regulations because all it accomplishes is polluting somewhere else? As if industry doesn’t exist in places where they aren’t allowed to dump all their waste in the nearest river?

    • Quokka@quokk.au
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      No.

      That’s closer to socialism.

      Communism is a stateless, hierarchy-less system where the people are in charge.

      The state owning anything or existing is antithetical to communism.

      China is without a doubt not communist, it’s purely capitalist with a strong dose of authoritarianism on top.