Interesting US Communist Party Poster from 1932

[Professor Emeritus]

Capitalism, socialism, and the physical quality of life - PubMed​

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I can definitely see it if you're merely talking about economic quality of life. Just look at Cuba and how vastly better off their poor are than their neighbors. Education is better, health care is better, basic needs are met, and that's despite a massive US-led embargo that blocked them off from most of the world. They produce more doctors per-capita than we do.

But to be a successful system, you need more than just economic quality of life. State communism has always tended to be too bloated up top and too restrictive of human rights down low to last indefinitely. I'm not a Marxist, but even Marx knew you have to eliminate that power structure once you're established or it will just replicate the old order.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

This is always a pretty funny viewpoint considering “rich liberal college kids” are liberals - not socialist, communist or anarchist.

Which is why the college democrats are vastly larger than local DSA, PSL, or CPUSA college chapters.

It’s a stupid viewpoint from people who are so far divorced from any meaningful relationship with political actors or activists that they rely on third hand accounts from conservative media. Like you.

Exactly - I've met way more socialists on the streets of LA than I did going to an elite PWI. Even the socialists you do meet in college are largely the people from lower middle class and working class homes who scraped to make it there, not the trust fund babies. Rich college kids are looking to become part of the system, not overthrow it.

 

[Paper Boi]

the coli is a funny place sometimes

 

[Professor Emeritus]

This is a great thread. I’m enjoying listening to both arguments.

Here’s a question though, I rarely see it mentioned fully in plain language.

(American) Capitalism CANNOT work without an underclass. From slaves, to dirt cheap eastern labor and everything in between…there always has to be a loser. A huge part of our foreign policy ensures there’s always a loser. Satan couldn’t have come up with that though right?

As more countries globalize and hold their own nuts, you’ll see the cracks appear even more. The world is running out of people to exploit.

THANK YOU.

It's gonna look scary too when people refuse to be the exploited class, so the capitalist class just turns to AI and robots and says "fukk you then", to the point where wage-earning jobs aren't even present anymore unless you're willing to work for pennies.

Same goes for natural resources. Capitalism thrives off of continuously exploiting resources without concern for sustainability or renewal. The money-loaned-at-interest system of money creation ensures that the system will collapse without constant growth, and there's no systemic way to prevent that growth from being achieved via resource consumption. What happens when you've used it all and there's nothing left to exploit?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Communism in practice becomes undemocratic because there's still a power structure. Communism is really supposed to be a transitional form of government and the ultimate destination should be anarchy (democratic work places, no state, all decisions arrived on by voting and decisions made by elected councils who fall under the same restrictions as everyone else. They have no monopoly on violence.)

Communism historically just ends up as a dictatorship because the central problem(concentration of power in a few hands) isn't eliminated. Power is an EXTREMELY addictive thing and communism (on paper) promises to decentralize that power but in practice all that happens is the work places are just run by state representatives instead of private owners and you have no legal recourse if the manager wants you to do unsafe labor or wants to fire you without cause. To oppose the state representative is to oppose the state so you just end up swapping one dictatorship for another.

Which is what Animal Farm is all about. Too many superficial people thought it (and 1984) were anti-communist books, when in reality they were anti-power books, written about how both State Capitalists AND State Communists become addicted to power. That's why the communist exploiters became friends with the capitalist exploiters at the end. Idiot right-wingers get all excited about George Orwell books without realizing that "collaborating with the capitalists" can't be evil unless you're already assuming the capitalists were evil in the first place.

Snowball, the obvious true hero of Animal Farm, was a committed socialist and opposed by both the capitalists and the communists because he interfered with their desires to rule over others.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Paul Robeson was a communist, too. Fought for civil rights but rarely mentioned because there is a push for capitalism

One of the greatest men in American history.

https://www.thecoli.com/threads/is-paul-robeson-the-greatest-renaissance-man-ever.851064/

It's crazy how terrified the American system is of socialism, they will NOT allow a single American hero to be socialist in our education system.


Hellen Keller was a hardcore communist and revolved her life around the struggle....kids are taught all about her but the communist part is always left out or quickly glossed over.

MLK Jr. was a committed socialist and anti-capitalist.....kids are taught he's the greatest Black American hero, but his socialism is always left out or quickly glossed over.

Albert Einstein is the most famous scientist ever and propped up as one of the most intelligent men ever....but his socialism is never talked about.

Paul Robeson was one of the greatest Renaissance men ever....totally ignored in history classes because he was too overtly socialist.

Same goes for Mark Twain, W.E.B. DuBois, Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, A. Phillip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, George Orwell, Jack London, James Baldwin, Angela Davis, Oscar Romero, Nelson Mandela.....they either don't teach about them, or where they have to teach about them, they conveniently forget that socialism was among their guiding beliefs. Or, like Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Fred Hampton, they make them out as some scary villains.


The average person educated in the American system doesn't have a fukking clue how prominent socialist thought has been or how many of their historical heroes were sympathetic to it.

 

[2 Up 2 Down]

@Rhakim came through and crushed the buildings

 

[EndDomination]

Can you name some things.

And specify which communist group did them.

You could easily look this up.

The Convention People's Party under Kwame Nkrumah Africanized the civil service of Ghana, broke down the European-backed tribalist system, created a universal primary and secondary education program, mass opened women's education programmes, implemented parliamentary reforms to ensure women would hold power, developed independent Ghanian energy programs, large scale vaccination and medical system expansions, took windfall profits from resources and reinvested them in national infrastructure programs. And that's just Ghana.

Read Hammer and Hoe by. Robin DG Kelley or Gerald Horne's history of the American communist and social parties for an idea - they formed sharecropper's unions, funded the legal representation for families of lynching victims, of Black men falsely accused of raping white women or killing white cops, of Black women who were raped by white men, paid for pre-Brown appellate litigation to expand rights, local health clinics, to educate Black men and women willing to travel to the USSR or Cuba, etc.

And that doesn't even touch on the Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army, African Blood Brotherhood, latter SNCC, The Civil Rights Congress, etc.

 

[HarlemHottie]

Robin DG Kelley

Very smart man, we chatted over drinks a few times.

 

[EndDomination]

Communism in practice becomes undemocratic because there's still a power structure. Communism is really supposed to be a transitional form of government and the ultimate destination should be anarchy (democratic work places, no state, all decisions arrived on by voting and decisions made by elected councils who fall under the same restrictions as everyone else. They have no monopoly on violence.)

Communism historically just ends up as a dictatorship because the central problem(concentration of power in a few hands) isn't eliminated. Power is an EXTREMELY addictive thing and communism (on paper) promises to decentralize that power but in practice all that happens is the work places are just run by state representatives instead of private owners and you have no legal recourse if the manager wants you to do unsafe labor or wants to fire you without cause. To oppose the state representative is to oppose the state so you just end up swapping one dictatorship for another.

The central problem is a product of the consolidation of power for protection - a component you've missed in your analysis.

Its universally recognized that every leader who declares himself/herself a socialist or a communist, or is elected in a socialist country is now a target for assassination or of being deposed by Western powers and their lackeys.

We openly tried hundreds of times to kill Castro, deposed Chavez, assassinated Sankara, and Lumumba, exiled Nkrumah, assassinated Allende, assassinated Bishop, assassinated Palme, etc.

When nations in opposition to your polticial-economic system are hellbent on destroying it - it becomes difficult and in many ways - unwise - to run things as openly as would produce more trust. Its not the power that leads to the breakdown in democracy, its the protection that it offers.

 

[Will Ross]

superior system = resorting to assassinations, funding militias, lies, blackmail, coups and propaganda.

why can't the superior system ever lead by example? why does it need to resort to all of the above to become superior?

you guys act like the Soviet Union did not exist.
They did the same shyt as the United States.

 

[LiveFromLondon]

Weirdos talk about us more than they talk about fixing their home country. How is this not weirdo shyt? "WHAT ARE THE BLACK AMERICANS DOING????!!!" GODDAMN

And these same posters live in western countries like Canada and England lol. None even live in Africa or their native countries



Mfs benefiting off cacs and descendants of slave traders as well

What type of arguments are these

 

[Professor Emeritus]

The central problem is a product of the consolidation of power for protection - a component you've missed in your analysis.

Its universally recognized that every leader who declares himself/herself a socialist or a communist, or is elected in a socialist country is now a target for assassination or of being deposed by Western powers and their lackeys.

We openly tried hundreds of times to kill Castro, deposed Chavez, assassinated Sankara, and Lumumba, exiled Nkrumah, assassinated Allende, assassinated Bishop, assassinated Palme, etc.

When nations in opposition to your polticial-economic system are hellbent on destroying it - it becomes difficult and in many ways - unwise - to run things as openly as would produce more trust. Its not the power that leads to the breakdown in democracy, its the protection that it offers.

Trained and funded the Contras to act as full-on terrorists to disrupt socialism in Nicaragua.

Dropped more bombs in Cambodia than we had dropped in all of WW2 combined in the process of orchestrating the coup that overthrew Sihanouk.

Used economic boycott followed by a coup to overthrow Mosaddegh.

Supported the coup that overthrew Torres.

Backed the coup that overthrew Goulart.

Sent troops into the Dominican Republic to prevent Bosch from coming back into power.

Used the CIA to overthrow both Velasco and Arosemena.

Used both military and economic interventions to block socialism over and over in Guatemala.

Completely fukked over Zanzibar in order to keep socialism from taking hold there.


We could go on and on. One study found that between 1946 and 2000, the USA interfered in at least 81 elections and made at least 64 other attempts at regime change. And then you could go back even further to the Bananas Wars and so one.


Capitalist leaders have been so frightened of socialism taking hold, they have done everything in their power to stop it over and over again.

 

[Nkrumah Was Right]

Weird homoerotic novels. For a broke boy Canadian Nigerian, the reaching is pathetic

You started a whole thread on me. You’re obsessed.

Given your low income status, you should support communism.

 

[Nkrumah Was Right]

What type of arguments are these

My enemies are usually driven to nonsensical ad hominem attacks because they have nothing substantive to say.

They’re usually too afraid to tag me in their posts because I make them look stupid