• Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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    3 hours ago

    I feel like capitalist propaganda is so effective because it resonates so well with the basic human instincts and the part of humans that wants to be better than others and is greedy. The monkey brain is competitive and hierarchical. Socialism requires a level of empathy and intelligence a lot of people don’t have. They not only reject it because of media but also because they wanna climb that social ladder. No fun, if it doesn’t exist.

    This is a massive confusion. Capitalism doesn’t “appeal to human nature,” aspects like greed are more expressed under it as they form the superstructure that reinforces the base. The base is the Mode of Production, which creates and reinforces aspects like ideology, politics, art, culture, etc which reinforce the Mode of Production in turn. Capitalism isn’t natural, humans don’t have an inherent draw to hierarchy, and Socialism doesn’t requore empathy nor intelligence to implement.

    The leaders of most socialist countries though, seemed to not stop at the anti socialist critics. Even other socialist voices that they didn’t agree with got silenced (Mao, Pol Port, Xi Jing Ping making all his ministers disappear).

    Pol Pot explicitly rejected Marxism, and was stopped by Vietnamese Communists. Your ideas surrounding Mao and Xi Jinping are also unsupported.

    Also please don’t misunderstand me. I am not arguing against socialism. I am trying to find a form of socialist society that relies on as few authority and violence as possible. I always wondered why the socialist countries struggle so much with keeping their people in, while most refugees try to get into the capitalist societies.

    You’ve already found them, it’s AES countries. They use what they need to survive in a world currently dominated by Capitalism. Over time, the state will wither away more and more, but there’s a reason that there are very, very few largish scale Anarchist projects.

    • Malidak@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Have you ever visited any of the AES Countries? They have a few rich and powerful families running everything and sucking up to daddy china. I have visited Laos and Vietnam and talked to the working people. They are suffering, barely making ends meed and are fed up with the people in power taking everything for themselves and living in luxury. And if they talk too much about it they get “visitors”. These people in power over there are not working class. There is also absolutely no basic healthcare. If you get sick you die. I am sorry but for me a socialist country does not have an elite living on luxury and it doesn’t have people dying of poverty and lack of healthcare.

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        3 hours ago

        Look at trendlines. This is a figure for the USSR, which often also gets slandered as you have done.

        Vietnam and Laos are Socialist, and remain to be so. Socialism isn’t defined as “everyone is pleased,” it’s a transitional state to Communism. Look at metrics over time, don’t analyze immediate snapshots.

        • Malidak@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          What are you trying to say with this graph? That distribution of wealth is better when it is distributed amongst less than 1% of the population of they call themselves proletarian? Or that it is somehow better if standard of living goes down for everyone just because the then nonexistent ressources are shared equally?

          In a perfect world a whole cake is shared equally by all 8 people. But if you smash half the cake, give a quarter to one person and the remaining quarter to the remaining 7 it is not better than 2 ppl having half a cake and letting the other 6 have the other half. Maybe not the best example but I hope you get my point.

          If not having equal but good standard of living, what is it we are strivong for?

          I suggest this link as a good read. Because I think just strictly defending the existing socialist countries is actually hindering progress towards a both fair and high quality of life society.

          https://queer-bolshevik.medium.com/the-aes-doctrine-wrong-then-wrong-now-a8666de371da

          • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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            57 minutes ago

            What are you trying to say with this graph? That distribution of wealth is better when it is distributed amongst less than 1% of the population of they call themselves proletarian? Or that it is somehow better if standard of living goes down for everyone just because the then nonexistent ressources are shared equally?

            Where on Earth did you get those ideas? I am saying AES countries have dramatically reduced wealth inequality and have been very progressive forces. Read the graph.

            In a perfect world a whole cake is shared equally by all 8 people. But if you smash half the cake, give a quarter to one person and the remaining quarter to the remaining 7 it is not better than 2 ppl having half a cake and letting the other 6 have the other half. Maybe not the best example but I hope you get my point.

            You’re right, that isn’t the best example, because it’s entirely non-applicable and horrible for representing the reality of AES states. Even then, the idea that resources should be shared equally is anti-Marxist, Marx specifically wanted resources distributed by needs in upper stage Communism, which is an extremely advanced form of Socialism. You’re fighting ghosts.

            If not having equal but good standard of living, what is it we are strivong for?

            We are striving for continued improvements for the Proletariat. Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

            I suggest this link as a good read. Because I think just strictly defending the existing socialist countries is actually hindering progress towards a both fair and high quality of life society.

            This link is left-anticommunist nonsense that is utter idealism.

            You’re coming off as an ulraleftist that doesn’t understand Historical and Dialectical Materialism, I have no idea what you’re advocating for nor how you plan on achieving it.

            • Malidak@lemmy.world
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              44 minutes ago

              Funny how you just disregard the information without actually going into it at all.

              Coming off as someone blindly following another form of oppression by a bourgeoise elite claiming to be proletarian.

              I was hoping for some actual insights.

              • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                41 minutes ago

                Nothing you said had any substance. Can you explain exactly what you mean by “another bourgeois elite claiming to be proletarian?” What do you believe makes someone bourgeoisie? You have no analysis and lack critical understanding.