Too bad the libs will continue to attack socialism in lockstep with their fash allies.
Never gonna hear this explanation from a democrat. Maybe Bernie paying lip service.
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2025
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Considering that the capitalists got us to literally pay for the glorified goon squads that represses us while protecting their precious private property for them out of our taxes, I'd say that it's them that's getting all the "free stuff."
glorified goon squads that represses us while protecting their precious private property for them
Yeah, this never ever happened in human history before capitalism.
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End welfare; kill the rich.
And ICE
Okay, the rich and their enforcers ¹.
¹including ice. Yes.
Socialists and Capitalists both think you shouldn’t be able to freeload off the back of other people’s work. They only disagree on who exactly it is that’s doing the freeloading.
The whole point of capitalism is that the capitalist doesn't have to do any real work. They have employees who work, and they just sit around and look smart, doing nothing.
(Also, it tends to come up a lot in these types of discussions, but commerce is different from capitalism.)
The thing about socialism is that it's about the social aspect of life. (it's right there in the name). You see an old lady and you take some time from your day to help her cross the road. You have 2 apples but only need one so you give one to a person without one. We're all people and it's not about OUR stuff or OUR time. Fucking share a little and be equals.
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i know people who im not sure what they are, that would love free stuff and not have to work for it. mind you, these are the same people who put "become a millionare" in their dairies that play the lottery every day.
Yep one the main points is to stop the theft of labor value by the bourgeois.
Problem there is a lot of communism fails because leaders become corrupt and the wealth still gets funneled to the few. Which isn't a problem with communism specifically. Communism would be sound if human beings were actually honorable. However, they're mostly not. In fact, generally speaking, humans are pretty shit, and a utopia of any sort simply isn't going to happen because of that. Human nature is too messy to allow it.
The problem here is that socialism is not communism. Under socialism compensation is based on individual contribution to work. This doesn't imply an equal share.
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a lot of communism fails because leaders become corrupt and the wealth still gets funneled to the few
This is literally empirically false. Wealth inequality in, say, the USSR, plummeted to the lowest levels the region has ever seen. The top 1% in the USSR only had 4% of the total income, in modern capitalist Russia this number has risen at least to 20%. The top earners in the USSR were also not "le evil bureaucrat politicians", but university professors, artists, and other members of the intelligentsia. Income inequality actually evolved downwards during the existence of the country. Your analysis is not based on real data, it's based off vibes you've gotten from CIA propaganda.
a utopia of any sort simply isn't going to happen
I agree, but us communists are not utopians. Utopian socialism died in the mid 1800s, and Marx and Engels famously talked about Scientific Socialism as opposed to Utopian Socialism. The debate has been settled for almost 200 years: Marxists are not utopians.
The top 1% in the USSR only had 4% of the total income, in modern capitalist Russia this number has risen at least to 20%.
You're commiting a type of McNamara fallacy here by accounting for financial income and ignoring the ability of people in charge of a command economy to, well... command.
If you are in charge of people, you don't need to pay for their services. You can command them to get things done. Imagine paying a company to asphalt 10 kilometres of road to your dacha. It would cost millions, but could be organised by most second-tier bureaucrats. Even now, Vladimir Putin doesn't need money. He can ask for anything he wants and if some people die for that, it's okay.
The top earners in the USSR were also not "le evil bureaucrat politicians", but university professors, artists, and other members of the intelligentsia.
And yet, the intelligentsia often starved, because they had little to offer to the shadow economy. Even the people with thousands of roubles in their drawers had very little that money could buy, you could walk to a store with a full wallet and leave with nothing. And if it had anything, you would wait in a queue for several hours. People would queue up without knowing what they are waiting for.
It was far more important to have friends that can command some stuff your way. A cashier at a store or a cook at a cafeteria could get you the best food. A sailor could get you import magazines and electronics. A machine worker could get you tools and make you spare parts.
To a western person, this might seem obscene, but it's how those economies have operated for decades and something people have to actively unlearn.
Ok, what you described with so many words is "corruption". Corruption exists in any system, not specially in communism. Now you have the burden of providing numeric evidence that corruption was more widespread than it was in comparably developed countries at the time, and that it was big enough to generate differences in access to purchase power comparable to the ones we see nowadays.
It's not just corruption when most people engage in it to some extent. You would literally see factory workers bring stuff from their work without hiding it en masse and nobody would get fired. And then you would trade or share stuff you stole with your friends who stole from their jobs. Try stealing stuff from your own job openly every day, see how well that goes.
Now you have the burden of providing numeric evidence
Yes, because there is an easy way to measure how much everything costs in a system where monetary value means next to nothing. How much would a sirloin steak cost if somebody offered it to you on the street? What if your friend gave it to you? What if no steaks were available at a grocery store? Would you trust any estimate of a price when money is mostly meaningless?
Asking about purchasing power is also meaningless, you either knew someone who could get you stuff or you didn't. In a weird way, Soviet shadow economy ran like a prison: if you know a guy, you can get stuff, if you don't, you make do what is given to you or lie, cheat and steal to get what you need.
Also, official statistics would lie and as the lies travelled upwards, they would stray further and further from the truth. So no reliable statistics are available or possible. But you take what numbers you can find, ignore any you can't get, and claim that Soviet Union was somehow a paradise, thus commiting McNamara fallacy:
But when the McNamara discipline is applied too literally, the first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. The second step is to disregard that which can't easily be measured or given a quantitative value. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.
Damn, that's a lotta words to say "I have no evidence to support my claim of inequality in the USSR". Your entire analysis is vibes-based so it can be entirely disregarded.
It's not just corruption when most people engage in it
So what is it, was it only the party leaders commanding everyone at their will creating huge inequality, or is it everyone engaging in it? Because the original claim was the former. If everyone engaged in it, it's not a mechanism for inequality.
Yes, because there is an easy way to measure how much everything costs in a system where monetary value means next to nothing
Literally yes. You can measure so-called baskets and translate the goods and services to international prices. The fact that you can't source up this data simply means you're making it up, not that it's not possible. If everyone had access to free healthcare, education to the highest level, housing costing 3% of the monthly income, there was no unemployment, and as you say a huge chunk of consumption was heavily subsidized, all of that points to inequality being low.
In capitalism, if you're richer than your neighbor and you pay for a car they can't afford, that's legal and creates inequality. In Soviet communism, if you are owed a favor by an official and you get placed earlier on the list of car recipients, that's illegal and it creates inequality. The entire point that you're making, apparently, is that while in capitalism the mechanisms that lead to inequality of consumption are legal, in the USSR they were illegal. That's not pointing in the direction you want it to point, and you're only looking ridiculous because you're clearly not speaking from data but from vibes.
Also, official statistics would lie and as the lies travelled upwards, they would stray further and further from the truth.
Unlike in capitalism, where companies deciding how to do their own accounting without external supervision are surely not lying to anyone (wink wink) that's why we constantly have banking and financial crises because banks and companies constantly lie about everything and anything which leads to huge bubbles and bursts. Don't be ridiculous. Just admit you're going off vibes and let it go.
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Okay, cool, so the USSR was, by your words, less prone to creating a wealth disparity. And lets just not talk about the several million that died under Stalin. Now, the USSR may not have funneled wealth, but in the end, it still collapsed on itself. It did not last, and this was largely due to internal affairs.
As per the second part, sure, I'll concede to you the pedantic semantics of the word utopia. My point still stands. Don't get me wrong, if someome were to ask, "Would you rather live in a functioning capitalist society, or a functioning socialist society," I would choose and tell others they should join the socialist one. My point is that, at some point, that government is still going to go to shit, just because people are people. Though, please do not take this as any sort of statement like, "don't even try," because a better life is a better life. If it's feasable, go for it. It's just that the core problem (human nature) isn't going to be solved by a political ideology, rather, human nature will eventually fuck that ideology up.
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Communism would be sound if human beings were actually honorable
Just say you don't have the foggiest clue what political ideology is all about - there's no reason to dress it up like this.
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If there's leaders with enough power to manipulate things to their own end, it never even got as far as communism.
Its also not about "honor", it's about empathy. About caring enough about your fellow beings to enjoin efforts to raise everyone up, not just yourself or those you deem worthy.
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ROI
?
“Socialism” things like healthcare and education being available to every citizen without a fee at the time of use is an investment in the country. And it’s been shown these all have excellent return on investment. Often times creating more tax revenue than is spent.