this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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You're showing statues of Lenin in countries in which the Dictatorship of the Proletariat failed to cede power to the working class and establish a socialist economic structure.
When Lenin took power, Russia had nothing. It was in the middle of WW1, there were regular famines, almost everyone was illiterate, and it was in no condition to establish a socialist economic plan. So, Lenin created a temporary economic model called The Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This is a centrally planned economy designed to rapidly develop infrastructure and industry in a country that has none. Lenin was already ceding power to the worker's councils when he died. Stalin decided he liked The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and did not cede power back to the worker's councils.
Those countries never experienced Communism. They never even experienced socialism. They destroyed those statues because they hated The Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Living in a system designed for a short temporary economic boom for decades is no fun.
Oh, so like every single other place that tried to implement that deranged system? Thank you for this very important distinction.
What about all these capitalist places that fell into fascism? What about the successful capitalist states that are currently falling into fascism?
What about them? The choices here are not "what we have now" vs "trust the people that want to try communism again"
My point is about the flawed argument : "communism is bad because the attempts have failed". Well, there are more capitalist attempts that failed than communist ones, so the argument doesn't hold.
My argument is not "look how many attempts have failed" but "look, of all of these many attempts, every single one has turned into a kafkaesque nightmare". At this point it is not even clear that "successful communism" is something that can exist in our world
On the other hand, while many (depending on your perspective you might even say most) capitalist systems fail, there are absolutely some that work ok. Of course nothing is perfect in the real world. But the life of say a danish person is not only materially well off, but also free and full of dignity, which was true of none of the experiments in communism
I'm pretty sure many Chinese are well off, free and full of dignity.
It's also easier to be a successful country when you're not under ambargo just because you're not sold to capitalist companies. Did the US left even one communist country live normally?
But more importantly, how many successful capitalist countries, today, aren't going fascist at full speed?