this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Not a tankie, but the USSR had mostly solved this problem, despite all its other issues. There did exist some homelessness, but nowhere near the extent of current USA.
Well, I'm from a post-USSR country and a substantial part of this was the criminalization of homelessness. Can't have homeless people, if you lock them up (be it in a prison or asylum).
Then again, just about anyone, who did not conform to the party's message got locked up. Getting your place bugged at the slightest hint you might be up to something disagreeable and all that good stuff. The secret police could disappear and or beat you up without any real justification.
I hate late-stage capitalism as much as you, but coming from a country that's been through this, I am extremely reluctant to give the rotten and frankly repugnant USSR regime any credit.
Your grandma that "fled communism" lied to you. Eventually you'll understand that and stop repeating their nonsense.
At least they tried. Our homelessness is an intentional feature of our capitalist system. A constant threat and extant punishment for those among us who aren't fortunate enough to be born with a silver stick up our ass.
Sure, you could get a piece of land in Siberian tundra at any time, I would not call that housing.
Moving to a city was way more complicated than in capitalist US. You could not simply buy an apartment. You had to be allocated an apartment by the government. And you needed connections for that. Or bribes. Ideally both. If you think your local rabid Republicans do not care for little wage slave men, you never experienced USSR, it was like that but 100x worse.
Yeah that's called late stage Communism, which we have never achieved as humanity. Late stage Capitalism is currently pushing more and more folks into dangerous housing situations like the bottom right quadrant of this meme. Capitalism and Utopia are oxymorons while Communism and Utopia are synonymous.
Call me old fashion but no one living on the streets and having their basic needs met sounds pretty utopian to me.
There were still people that lived in the streets in the USSR. Also, the housing the USSR provided wasn't really that.. great... I watch a Russian YouTuber (NFKRZ) who has talked about Soviet architecture in not just Russia, but other former USSR countries and shows that yes it's good they were built, they weren't very well built.
The USSR had many problems, and bureaucracy was a big problem. I never understood why tankies love the USSR so much when the USSR didn't truly get rid of class. Those in the government lived like kings compared to the common man, who yes lived better than they had before but still not that well due to the bloated and mismanagement of the government.
Idk, the fact that they even had a centralized government like that seems like.. the opposite of communism to me.
I think what people don’t fully understand is that Marxism is meant to be scientific. That means that there will likely be many imperfect and failed attempts at building a socialist society before one comes along that is stable enough to outlast outside interference from capitalist states.
As such, most people I know who like the USSR are also it’s biggest critiques. Unfortunately, there is so much misinformation about the USSR that most discussions about it online are just about delineating truth from propaganda.
Yeah those soviets sure got rid of the homeless problem. Can't be homeless when you were intentionally starved to death.
In what communist country was housing a problem?
This is a trick question, the real answer is that there weren’t real communist countries
No true communists
It's the final refuge for tankies. That and the old "social democracy only works by exploiting the global south" canard.
Yeah, I could see finding this unconvincing if you haven't read theory, history, or were just cool with benefiting from imperialism
I'm sure there were extra houses after all those people that starved to death.
In Communist countries people starve to death because of famine, in Capitalist countries people also strave to death because of famine while still starving to death after famines are over because they cant afford groceries.
The real communist solution to homelessness was to put them in jails. True story.
From a Legislative Perspective, it is Illegal to be Homeless in Virtually Every State in the USA, Except for Two – Oregon and Wyoming I think you are confusing Communist countries with Capitalist ones. Lol, lmao even.
Woohoo both systems suck. You can actually believe that just because one system is bad, what is considered the opposite is also bad. Marx was not some omniscient doctor manhattan. He had some ideas. Some were good critiques on capitalist culture. Others were fantasy that do not function in the real world.
Notice how the folks arguing in favor of Communism have sources and receipts, while the folks arguing against it have done nothing but regurgitated Capitalist propaganda. Also note folks who are opposed to Communism and Marx's philosophy are always forced to admit that it only works on paper, because his logic is irrefutable if you address it with a modicum of intellectual honesty...
It's funny how upset it makes people when you point out the elephant in the room.
You link stuff, but ignore the actual accounts of human beings who fucking lived it.
Ok let's do some links
Holodomor
Chinese famine
Gulag
Homelessness in Russia
Continued
Love how all your sources are NATOpedia and all their sources are actual sources.
The holodomor narrative surrounding the ussr wide famine of 32-33 was literal nazi propaganda from open nazi collaborators and was used as a justification for the mass murder of jews in Eastern Europe during the holocaust.
It was debunked in the literal 1930s in the US and now it re-emerges like a zombie during an era where fascism is on the rise. Even anticommunist academics like Applebaum, Davies, and Conquest say it wasn't a genocide.
What a crock of shit. Practically every historian says it was caused by soviet policy. The only debate that occurs if whether it was due to stupidity or intentional genocide.
1
2
3
4
I could keep going. Gonna tell me how the Holocaust was a lie too?
Literally none of your sources definitively claim it was a genocide except the university of Minnesota one which cites Davies and Applebaum who later says it wasn't.
Also lol, you use Wikipedia, a random university of Minnesota webpage, KellogInsight, and I dont even know where you got your last source but it literally cites Wheatcroft and Davies amongst others who do not argue it was a genocide after examining the soviet archives.
No, the holocaust is a well documented historical fact, unlike the holodomor. The soviet wide famine of 1932 and 33 is a well documented historical fact, it is also not considered a genocide by mainstream anticommunist historians, who argue to what extent soviet policies and which policies worsened the famine.
Also ironic that you ask "do you also deny the holocaust" given the holodomor myth was used as justification to kill Jewish people during the holocaust and was later used as justification for collaboration with the holocaust.
Here is a well respected Jewish historian and activist on it:
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
Wow the lengths commies go to deny actual genocide.
We all know communism is an ideology strictly for the uneducated and violent, why try so hard to make it seem like something else? The countless sexual and ethnic minorities murdered by communism due to its inherent hateful nature is something only the nazis on the other end of the fascism-spectrum rivaled.
The lengths liberals will to go to buy into fascist atrocity propaganda that was used as justification for the mass slaughter of Jewish people by nazis and nazi collaborators
You're literally doing fascist propaganda. Here is a liberal Jewish holocaust historian and activist writing on it:
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
Fascists kill minorities, wow, who would've thought. It's amazing how many commies pretend to label themselves as anti racist and pro trans rights, yet just so happen to advocate for an ideology based on murdering people on the basis of their ethnicity and sexual/gender orientation. Coincidence don't you think?
Communist countries have historically been less violent to minorities than bourgeois democracies.
Also read the fucking Jewish holocaust scholar's writing and absorb it for a second.
This is simply not true. Every communist regime in history has started off with a systematic slaughter of minorities.
Started off? Which minority was slaughtered in Cuba? What about Korea? How about Afghanistan? China? Vietnam? The USSR? I mean at the start. The USSR did do some legitimately bad things to minorities (particularly German, polish, and Korean) in the lead up to and during ww2) but that was later on and those paled in comparison to the crimes of their capitalist contemporaries.
I think you're talking out your ass.
Please read upon actual history before pretending to know any of it. Every nation you mentioned slaughtered their minorities, it is intrinsic to the ideology, a core foundation. Communism without unchecked violence, aggression and ethnic cleansing isn't communism.
Also loving the token Whataboutism™ at the end, sign of a true tankie lmao, y-y-yes all communist nations have cleaned off their trans folk b-b-but there are some liberal nations too that did it, even though liberalism is the only ideology that has the capability to support a non-violent society lmao get fucked transphobe.
Could you give me a recommendation on history books that go over the slaughter of minorities in Cuba, Vietnam, and Korea then? Since you know so much about it.
Oh, that is what I thought. Have you considered actually talking to Cubans, either people who live there or cuban immigrants who arent aggrieved about their grandpa's plantation?
Fuck I gotta tell my local commune that they aren't really communist
Fallacy fallacy. If we are judging ideologies on how many atrocities they commit, you have to judge them against other ideologies.
Lol 20 million people die a year of starvation or lack of clean water under liberal hegemony.
The archetypal liberal state shoots thousands of black men a year, and creates conditions that mean 40 percent of homeless youth are lgbt. It has the largest prison system in history, and has killed millions of civilians in wars of aggression over the last 20 years. You're projecting the crimes of capitalism onto communism, consider criticizing communism for what it actually did wrong.
Aight bet
Trail of Tears
How British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in 40 years
United States represents about 4.2 percent of the world's population, it houses around 20 percent of the world's prisoners
1 in 5 children in America worry about their next meal.
2,000,000 to 60,000,000 Africans died in the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Dude this is pure what aboutism
You're claiming communism is so great and when presented with links you just go "WELL WHAT ABOUT ALL THIS HUH" and then completely ignore the above. It's ridiculous. Actual text book definition of what about ism. Seriously stop and think for yourself for two seconds without restarting to this tribal shit slinging mentality.
Yeah, capitalism is bad, we live in it, we can see that happening around us, but you're eating literal propaganda about communism and ignoring actual verifiable evidence. This isn't a capitalism vs communism debate, there are more than two fucking systems you smooth brain chud
So what's your solution? And what verifiable evidence are you talking about?
Bruh, almost every old person I've heard talk about Communism that lived under it talks about it fondly. Lmao
I have a whole fucking family, who lived through the USSR. Not a single one of them misses it. Being spied on every step you take, my grandma has the "you never know who's watching" mentality to this day.
That's not to say they don't hate the current regime, but it's nothing compared to the absolute atrocities of the USSR's secret police.
The joke is that Capitalism DOES NOT have a solution to homelessness because there is zero profit motive to solve it. And facts dont care about your feelngs, you cant refute Marx's philosophy while being intellectual honest. Capitalist Economists study Das Kapital because Marx was so fucking spot on.
As someone who has been homeless before, I've never been arrested for it.
That's what a lot of red states are doing now. Make homelessness illegal. Arrest the homeless. Make them do slave labor in jail. Profit.