this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Why a lot of people on Lemmy like communist so much? As a person who grow up in a country which is almost destroyed by the communist party in the past I don't know what to say just why?, capitalist or not it's depends on your own country's government, at least you still can talking shit about them without getting arrested and torture to death, have we not learn from the past or other communist country, why don't you live in North Korea or China and see how've you like it
I'm going to take your question as genuine and answer in equal.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Most leftists will agree with you, the USSR and other Eastern Europe countries that were communist did a lot of damage and most likely more harm. They committed atrocities. They were authoritarian. It was disgusting.
The leftists who still prop those countries up on their shoulders are what many call tankies. Today they sing praise about Russia, China, and North Korea, but your observation is correct, they won't ever move there. These are individuals who repeat propaganda and are, ultimately, just red fascists. When you actually dig into their ideals they parallel and sometimes mirror Nazis.
I believe leftism cannot have an authoritarian element to it. I think most social hierarchies need to be destroyed. I think the only way to have a socialist society is through democratic means. Democracy in the workplace and national level. I think most of us can agree workers need higher wages and there is a wealth gap that needs to be dismantled. I think most of us believe healthcare needs to be universal, food and shelter and water, education, information (internet), speech, and much more should be free and readily available. There is this element of freedom that needs to be achieved that isn't found the countries that are "communist".
I don't want to explicitly say those communist countries wasn't "real communism", but fascists, authoritarianism, always appropriate from progressive movement. There is no freedom, especially of workers, under a dictatorship. If workers are starving, dying, being outright black bagged and killed, i don't think that can be considered communist.
In the "capitalism did better than communism/socialism" debate i still feel a great lack of historical context. Eastern Europe has been largely destroyed by the Nazis. China has lived through brutal Japanese occupation and a genocide of 10 Million people. Korea has been subject to a war emplyoing terrible new weapons such as Napalm to bring great destruction.
Meanwhile the US homeland has been faring without any destruction, France surrendered quick enough to avoid most damage and the UK sucessfully fended off the Nazi attacks so the damage was limited.
Purely economically speaking the Western allies were off to a much better start than the Eastern countries. So i would argue that for the economical question, it remains impossible to claim capitalism to be superior to socialism. Otherwise authoritarianism is always to the detriment of the people.