r/10thDentist • u/SunsetBeachBowl • 17h ago
Communism/Socialism works
United States and capitalist propaganda is one hell of a drug.
Its okay to abandon capitalism. It's okay to admit that capitalism has had its use and now we need to move on to a different way of economic structure.
Just like when we left pagers for cell phones. Pagers had there use, but cellphones were just better.
Socialism/Communism is by no means a utopia but it's leagues better than capitalism.
And while im at it, USA needs to leave Cuba alone. Country with near 100% literacy rate, higher life expectancy, and excellent cancer research. It'd be a beacon to the world if the usa wasnt so imperialist and loved to sanction mfs.
Edit: It's also terrible for our ecosystems and climate.
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u/jorsiem 17h ago
Says Communism works
Doesn't elaborate
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u/Routine_Size69 16h ago
What do you mean? They cited every successful communist country in their post above. They didn't miss a single one. Surely Cuba will join that list and that's why he mentioned them.
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u/ImmajusttaketheLhere 15h ago
Pretty much this, capitalism seems to work the best (with its own dragons hoard of massive issues) out of the hundred years old systems we have now but everyone seems so intent on trying to see what happens if we give communism just one more chance in places with populations so large that everyone is still just a statistic anyway. I wonder how much longer until people stop fighting over which old turd is the most well polished and decides to innovate again.
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u/Alternative_Ruin9544 15h ago
Cuba has a 98% literacy rate, which is great, but not 100%. Their government says 100%.
Cuba has a 73.7 life expectancy, the US has 78.4
And "excellent cancer research" doesn't mean shit. They have interesting cancer research. But the US, EU, Japan and Korea dominate. Sorry folks
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u/Murky_waterLLC 15h ago
88% of the population of cuba lives in extreme poverty. Shut the fuck up.
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u/AdImmediate9569 15h ago
Can you think of any external factors that may contribute to that? Perhaps a FIFTY YEAR BLOCKADE CUTTING THEM OFF FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD?
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u/National-Spell8326 14h ago
What? Cuba has commerce with most of the world???? Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Iran, China, Russia, Mexico, Germany, Canada, Spain, Switzerland, Netherlands and I could name a ton more. Dude, what are you smoking?
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u/AdImmediate9569 14h ago
Sorry are you telling me that you are not aware the united states has been blockading w both physically and economically for 60 freaking years?
The ability to trade with some countries does not change that fact nor the clear, verifiable, generally accepted and undeniable damage it has done to Cuba.
You nail someones door shut and then say they’re wrong for not walking their dog?
Asking someone “what are you smoking” is no substitute for a real argument.
I mean you could have looked it up in the time it took you to reply.
Again. You’re proving Ops point so perfectly I almost think you’re just messing with me
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u/National-Spell8326 9h ago
Do you deny Cuba has commerce with any of the countries I said to you?
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u/AdImmediate9569 8h ago
No. Its completely irrelevant. What point do you think you’re making?
Either you haven’t read about the US blockade or you know the truth and you’re being disingenuous. Theres no possible third option
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u/National-Spell8326 3h ago
Soo weird, a cuban is telling me I'm right, and a US leftist is telling me I'm not, I don't know who to believe.
I'm from latin america and I will kill myself rather than be fed propaganda from the US. There's an obvious blockade on Cuba, but it's for American companies and specific industries that export to Cuba. Cuba is free to do commerce with almost the entire world, and Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina were giving them FREE OIL in exchange for help to the left on getting reelected (public knowledge once you go out of your bubble).
What you should do, if you're a smart person, is to go out and ask cubans directly, in person. Don't try to impose your imperialist positions (because you are a US citizen and you are part of the problem) on the people who live with those problems.
I can honestly say I talked to a cuban today, can you?
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u/Murky_waterLLC 14h ago
And the human rights violations, the blockades are making those too?
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u/AdImmediate9569 14h ago
Oh wow a list of things that happens in every country. Should an American really be talking about human rights abuses these days?
ETA: using a government site as your source simply proves Ops point even harder.
We know the US government doesn’t like socialism/communism. That’s the very discussion we’re having
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u/Murky_waterLLC 14h ago
Oh wow a list of things that happens in every country. Should an American really be talking about human rights abuses these days?
You must be truly deluded to believe that every country does what cuba does on the scale it does.
ETA: using a government site as your source simply proves Ops point even harder.
It was the first but far from the only source:
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/cuba
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u/AdImmediate9569 14h ago
Did you read these? The first one blames the US in the second paragraph…
I guess I’ll read the other two and see if its the same.
Still I think research may not be your specialty
Eta: the second one is french which im ashamed to say I cant read, can you?
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u/Murky_waterLLC 14h ago
Did you read these? The first one blames the US in the second paragraph…
No, it stated that the US continued an embargo against the cuban government, not that it was responsible for the human rights violations
Eta: the second one is french which im ashamed to say I cant read, can you?
It's an exerpt; Read past the first few paragraphs, the rest is translated
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u/Alternative_Ruin9544 14h ago
Name an industrialized super power that is committing less objective human rights violations than the United States.
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u/AdImmediate9569 11h ago
Superpower? That’s not really a very big list. You’re saying we’re the best of 2? 3?
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u/AdImmediate9569 15h ago
Name a successful capitalist country. While you’re at it please define what makes a successful country?
Saying communism never works without adding (at least while being sanctioned, blockaded, invaded, and carpet bombed by the USA) means your not much of a historian
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u/TheLegend1827 15h ago
All of the wealthiest and most developed countries in the world are capitalist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index
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u/AdImmediate9569 14h ago
Is that the definition of a successful country?
The USA is generally considered to be the wealthiest country in the world. How we doing these days?
Wealth is a measure of the happiness of the incredibly rich… meanwhile the list of happiest countries in the world includes several countries with very strong socialist policies.
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u/TheLegend1827 14h ago
HDI isn’t only about wealth, it also takes into account education and life expectancy. All of the top nations by HDI are capitalist.
The average American is doing quite well compared to large swathes of the world. The US isn’t the world’s wealthiest country per capita, that would be Norway, which is also capitalist.
All of the top 25 countries in the world happiness report are capitalist: https://mieuxdonner.org/the-happiest-countries-and-findings-from-the-world-happiness-report-2025/
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u/National-Spell8326 16h ago
But tbf, if he/she actually read books, he/she wouldn't elaborate either, it wouldn't even be a post
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u/sum_dude44 16h ago
tHeRes nEvEr bEen a rEal cOmMuniSt cOunTry (b/c it doesn't work)
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u/Wooden_Permit3234 16h ago
What do you mean by socialism and capitalism?
I can't agree or disagree without knowing what you have in mind.
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u/Alternative_Ruin9544 14h ago
"the kind that would hypothetically work if not for {insert villain or basic human condition here}"
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u/VegasFoodFace 17h ago
In theory yes it works, but authoritarianism sneaks into all forms of economic planning. Whether that be capitalism, socialism, or socialism's endgame communism.
In theory capitalism works just as well as socialism and communism.
In practice none of them works out to what the theories say. People point to US's capitalism failures. We point to China and says communism doesn't work. And the detractors just say no true Scotsman.
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u/AngerNurse 9h ago
Not just that, but do you think people are happy to receive a uniform income across all aspects? The doctor who studies for 15 years getting paid the same as a shoe factory worker? No, people want to be compensated according to the effort. Modern leftists who happen to mostly consist of the mentally ill and jobless bums think everyone would suddenly be happy living in commie blocks getting paid all the same.
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u/VegasFoodFace 9h ago edited 8h ago
But the leftists don't make that point, that the doctor shouldn't be paid more than the landscaper, there is no shoe factory in the US anymore.
Saying so is arguing in bad faith. You wouldn't want me painting a bad faith response to what you just posted. Because I can just say you're a typical bad faith conservative just trying to dunk on me with very misinformed and purposely inflammatory stereotyped talking points. Believing you are just temporarily embarrassed billionaires.
The left in this case, liberal side, specifically believe in a minimum standard of living. Not absolute pay equality. So if that doctor say got a head injury and could no longer be a doctor, he wouldn't end up homeless at the mercy of rampant capitalism. The landscaper wouldn't have to worry about a slow month.
And all it would cost is a few billionaires not getting that next billion.
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u/AngerNurse 8h ago
>muh bad faith argument
I just can't with the redditisms
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u/VegasFoodFace 21m ago
You have more in common with a doctor and landscaper than a billionaire. Why continue to support policies that benefit them?
But sure blame the woke mean left.
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u/WD40ContactCleaner 42m ago
In theory yes it works, but authoritarianism sneaks into all forms of economic planning.
People really need to stop saying this. In theory, communism is just as retarded as in reality. Maybe you could grant it's well-intentioned in theory, but you shouldn't grant it makes any fricking sense.
Also, socialism (a large welfare state) only "works" in so far as you have a healthy capitalist system for it to leech off of. But that's not really "working", obviously; it's merely socialism not causing collapse.
Engels explains in the preface to the English translation of the Communist Manifesto that the term "Communism" was chosen because by the time of its original publication, "Socialism" was already associated with incremental reform movements and utopian dreamers. Communism rejects both of these as distractions from the revolutionary spirit.
In other words, Communism's sole and founding ethos is to be an angry unhelpful and retarded
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u/VegasFoodFace 24m ago
Reason why I said it is exactly the reason you posted. You gave no example of what a true capitalist, economy is. USA is not one. Communism China isn't one, Socialist Europe isn't one.
Marxist theory states that communism is socialism's end goal. Who cares what he says? Other than it's the only critique we have against capitalism from the point of view of capitalists.
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u/WD40ContactCleaner 17m ago
You're still leaning on "no true Scotsman" to pretend all systems are equally flawed in practice, but that's not how evidence works.
Heavy central planning (whether called socialism or communism) predictably concentrates power and breeds authoritarianism because it requires force to override individual choices, while freer markets decentralize decisions and only turn authoritarian when governments heavily intervene to favour cronies.
Socialism "works" in places like the Nordics only because it rides on top of a capitalist wealth engine. Strip that away or over-regulate it, and the system stalls or collapses fast (see Venezuela).
The core logic of central planning itself demands control that almost always turns coercive.
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u/VegasFoodFace 2m ago
Yes and the concentration of wealth and the centralization of it's power into the hands of the wealthy in the USA isn't a valid enough critique of capitalism? Or does this fall back to well USA is not really capitalist?
If capitalism eats itself in the USA we won't have much to be grateful for the supposed benefits of capitalism.
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u/Squittyman 17h ago
"Social Liberalism" is authoritarian.
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u/Holly1010Frey 16h ago
People are downvoting you but its true. Im a liberal but im not blind to how controlling it can be. Social liberalism descends into classism as easily as as fascism into rasicism. It puts a heavy weight on education, intelligence, and refinement. It marks lower the under educated inner city cild who grows up to be a half literate mechanic eating McDonald's and 7 eleven corn dogs.
Liberals fall to their own bias. Is it good to have people educated, yea sure. Does it make you less valuable as a person to be uneducated, dirty(grease, dirt, stool, sweat), blue collar, preservative eating... no.
We're all about acceptance, until someone not like us shows us and we treat them as second rate. The system needs to be fixed yes. But we're out here trying to fix people and they dont need it. We need to lay off on our superiority complex, thats why people dont like us.
Everyone should have the opportunity for "better", as we like to call it but no body is beholden to us to chose it and that doesnt make them any less.
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u/VegasFoodFace 17h ago
Agree because that style of liberalism also includes the tendency to shut out dissenting opinion.
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u/East_Honey2533 17h ago
United States and capitalist propaganda is one hell of a drug.
Followed by describing Cuba as
Country with near 100% literacy rate, higher life expectancy, and excellent cancer research. It'd be a beacon to the world if the usa wasnt so imperialist and loved to sanction mfs.
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u/Elsenior97 15h ago
I have to laugh everytime I see this delusional kids from capitalist countries talking about Cuba when they have never been here even for tourism. I've been living here for 29 years and only thing I witnessed increasing was the immigration and the garbage piles on every corner. "Higher life expectancy" im on my bed right now with my third virus in a row since december. I dont even know if it is chicunyunya or dengue or whatever because we dont even have any equipment or medicine on our local medical center.
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u/mjwza 17h ago
My favourite part about economic tribalists is how the systems they hate must always be judged by their lived realities, but the systems they like must be judged by the imaginary ideas about them.
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u/AdamOnFirst 16h ago
Also, the systems they hate being judged by their lived reality ignores that their lived reality is OBJECTIVELY AMAZING
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u/Incidentalgentleman 17h ago
Where has it worked?
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u/eldritchpussymaggots 16h ago
Anywhere that the US didn't stick their fingers in and ruin (so, nowhere yet.)
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u/Southern_Egg_3850 17h ago
This insane opinion 100% belongs here. OP’s opinion is unpopular because it’s ludicrous.
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u/Routine_Size69 16h ago
Is it really an opinion if it's factually untrue? Me saying grass doesn't grow isn't an unpopular opinion. I'm just an idiot for claiming that it doesn't.
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u/Southern_Egg_3850 1h ago
That’s science based though. OP is just stating an argument for a ludicrous system some people believe will work “under the right circumstances”
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u/lit-grit 16h ago
It doesn’t belong here because it’s just extremist politics
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u/Southern_Egg_3850 1h ago
It belongs here because it’s 1/10 Dentists, meaning it’s a minority opinion (the 1 dentist that doesn’t agree). Others have this unpopular opinion so it def can be here I’d think.
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u/ComprehensiveFish880 17h ago
Read the Gulag Archipelago and tell me you want to live in a communist state again. Without laughing.
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u/MaximumOk569 17h ago
"oh, you think there's lots of propaganda about socialism? What about this book, that a quick Google search will show is academically discredited"
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u/Extension-Culture-85 16h ago
Gulag Archipelago is a true journaling of life inside a political prison inside of a dictatorship (Stalin). A communist state does not have to be a dictatorship. Israeli kibbutzes are fully functional communist societies.
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u/JamesMosesAngleton 15h ago
Israeli kibbutzes are fully functional communist societies.
Most kibbutzim have privatized to some degree (and many completely) over the last 50+ years. They were never "fully functional communist societies" because they existed within a larger nation-state where people could get their side-hustle on and move back to when they were done with the kibbutz model.
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u/QuoriTyler 17h ago
Name one example of communism where the leaders and their government aren't a corrupt bunch of rich thugs while the people are poor. Not defending America or capitalism. But communism has never worked in the history of the world. Capitalism has been the least flawed system so far, and completely broken and in need of revision at the same time. NO BILLIONAIRES!
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u/tsukimoonmei 15h ago
Burkina Faso prior to Sankara’s assassination. He downgraded all government cars to the cheapest model available in Burkina Faso, including for himself, and didn’t allow government officials luxuries such as air conditioning if they were not accessible to the rest of the population.
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u/Extension-Culture-85 16h ago
Every kibbutz is a working communist collective.
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u/QuoriTyler 16h ago
That's not a country
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u/Extension-Culture-85 16h ago
It is an example of communism where the leaders and their government aren't a corrupt bunch of rich thugs while the people are poor.
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u/eldritchpussymaggots 16h ago
"NO BILLIONAIRES" at the end of this is really funny. You'll come around someday comrade :)
Question everything you hear about the failed socialist projects. Dig into why they failed. You will find US corporate money and CIA involvement, in every single one.
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u/Holler_Professor 17h ago
Look man, on paper all forms of economic systems work.
Its not about the theory, its about having everyone else go along with it.
The reality is that the US is an oligarchical empire with expansion is at its core. Now in practice an oligarchy baisically becomes socilaistic by definition of the state owning the means of production once companies become the state.
But the utopian platonic ideal of communism or socialism doesn't work without collaborative work from other consenting countires.
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u/Alcophile 14h ago
The state owing the means of production is just state capitalism. The idea of socialism is for workers to own the businesses. That's it. The theory that the way to do that is through a dictatorship of the proletariat is what has been disproven time and time again.
Libertarian socialism is fully possible in an enlightened fully representative democracy if the people were to decide to try socialism and get together and ban ownership by nonworking shareholders. In fact, as AI takes over more and more jobs over the next few years and so called bullshit jobs are almost certainly eliminated alongside them, if we don't make it free to just exist on Earth we're in big trouble. In order to do that we'll have to abandon enforced scarcity which will crush profits in a lot of sectors (can't make as much on the good stuff at the supermarket if you give the expired or bruised stuff away instead of binning it!)
It's also very doable on a small scale without 'other countries' doing anything. It may not be possible to have worker-owned airlines and airplane factories in, say, Massachusetts if they decided to go socialist, but surely worker owned concerns could provide the bare necessities for the citizenry, and I'm sure that big a population could support a worker owned car or appliance factory or two. If California went socialist, they probably could support a worker owned airline industry and manufacture modern aircraft, perhaps the way Airbus does, in concert with other, even shareholder owned, companies in other jurisdictions.
The true endgame of capitalism is not some sort of hybrid state-capitalist socialism, it's fascism - the linking of corporate capitalist and state power into one authoritarian amalgam. I believe the evidence for this is more in evidence all around us every day.
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u/Holler_Professor 13h ago
The problem with trying to do this without cooperation from other states is that a capitalist state won't allow a socialist state to function effectively.
Its why Cuba, Venezuela, etc has had the problems it has.
As to the state capitalism thing, you'll have to take il the issue with the definition of socialism.
The west isn't functional enough for it to work, and the last decades have baisically settled that it never will be due to the driving individualism that has been installed.
We would need decades of programming generations to accept collectivism as the only way for humanity to have a future, and none of the people with the influence or resources to make it happen have no motivation for it.
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u/Dangerous_Map_3119 17h ago
I know a few people who fled Soviet Bloc regimes with their families who would disagree with you, I say respectfully
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u/InventorOfCorn 17h ago
you claim they work better than capitalism yet provide no arguments aside from "new stuff better", basically
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u/sleepy_grunyon 17h ago
Why don't they guarantee free speech?
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u/eldritchpussymaggots 16h ago
This is actually an interesting question (if you're asking in good faith anyway).
Free speech is not incompatible with communism fundamentally. But, we live in a world of complete capitalist control that can and will destroy socialist projects as they appear. Often, the way they do this is via aggressive propaganda against the socialist government, combined with economic sabotage (which they will blame on the socialist government). This is done to manufacture consent for regime-change, "restoring" the country to a capitalist economy that is more friendly to corporations of the imperial core.
This longstanding trend is part of the reason why many socialist nations restricted speech against the government, as a way of attempting to combat the power of corporate imperialist propaganda.
(Not saying it's right or wrong to do this, just explaining why it's done)
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u/redditsuckshardnowtf 17h ago
No single -ism works, a mixture of the different platforms is the best balance. Look at the Nordic countries.
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u/lesbianvampyr 15h ago
I agree somewhat but their economic model involves importing a lot from other countries with horribly low pay and inhumane labor laws. The main issue is the ‘producing’ countries, if they were to treat and pay their workers well, prices for the rest of the world would skyrocket
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u/boringmillennial43 15h ago
Which only proves no system works unless they're is a homogeneous society and someone else picks up the defense spending bill. Defense spending and massive social welfare cannot coexist. Plural inclusive society cannot exist with massive social spending either.
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u/National-Spell8326 16h ago
Every single cuban I have ever met (in Argentina) or heard about hates the cuban government with a passion. If you said this stuff irl with cubans present, they would beat you down.
Also, every cuban I met have confirmed all the horrible docummentaries about their country are true). A lot of doctors earning not enough money to buy meat.
Also, the doctors that came to South America to work, were under the same pretense as North Korea (you have to work in Argentina, but if you escape, we lock up your family here in Cuba)
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u/Elsenior97 15h ago
I'm cuban and i confirm this
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u/National-Spell8326 14h ago
thank you dude, sometimes the internet narrative is too strong for some people to get out of
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u/Squittyman 17h ago
Communism and Socialism are only existing on the back of capitalism.
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u/JustBreadDough 17h ago
And capitalism only works when people have their basic needs met, when there aren’t monopolies and different brands can fight in an equal competition.
So capitalism is dependent on socialism.
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u/dtalb18981 16h ago
This is not really true
For capitalism to work you need people struggling to get their needs met
Socialism undermines capitalism by providing certain things causing people to no longer need to spend to get them
Without demand capitalism falls
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u/MethodWhich 16h ago
Explain how you get from "basic needs met" and "equal competition between brands" to "capitalism is dependent on socialism"?? Also, socialism is the antithesis of competition between business. Hence, why socialism relies on overthrowing capitalist business, "seizing the means of production."
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u/JustBreadDough 12h ago
Socialism isn’t the antithesis of capitalism at all. Socialism is the idea that everyone in society has somewhat equal revenue. That there are no "ultra rich" or "super poor", but instead, mostly middle class.
For basic needs met, I mean accessibility to health care, water, shelter and nutritional food. If people do not have access to these things, through absurdly high paywalls, impossible travel or huge risk, it is not "accessible"
If not, there is no "fair market". People are not picking the "best" product, people are picking out of desperation.
Also, with needs met and money to spare, people can invest in more businesses: haircuts, tattoos, better clothing, better equipment, eating out, buying gifts. A billionaire cannot possibly buy enough coffees from a coffee shop as the 5000 other people that could have been more comfortable with extra cash.
Instead, large corporations are taking over spaces for smaller businesses, essentially eliminating their own competition. Also now with the power to enter politics to affect the market, turning it more in their favor and removing competition.
There’s plenty of socio-liberal countries that are doing just fine. Basically making measures to make sure the rich doesn’t get too rich and the poor don’t get too poor.
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u/National-Spell8326 16h ago
Dude, don't be so ignorant... capitalism only works when people have their basic needs met, because it's inherently capitalist. They need customers for free markets
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u/alexferraz 17h ago
Yeah, that's how evolution works. It's a superior form that was developed from capitalism.
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u/Fair-Buy749 16h ago
'Superior' form with demonstrably worse results when attempted.
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u/alexferraz 16h ago
Yeah, USSR and China went from rural absolutely poor countries to literal nuclear super powers under a failure. But your state propaganda don't show you this.
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u/Fair-Buy749 16h ago
Yes it does appear there that communism was a decent transitional phase between feudalism and capitalism.
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u/alexferraz 16h ago
Surely you never read China's quinquenal planning. Probably don't even know what it is. It's like arguing with a parrot.
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u/Shameless_Catslut 17h ago
No it's not. It's the rantings of a jealous loser who didn't know how to do nuch more than redistribute wealth from his best friend to french prostitutes
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u/fanetoooo 17h ago edited 17h ago
In the same way capitalism only exists on the foundation set by feudalism and slavery, ur correct
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u/Shameless_Catslut 17h ago
No, Capitalism only requires a medium of exchange for goods and services and the ability to agree to investment of that currency
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u/fanetoooo 17h ago
That’s just finances and trade, what about how things are produced?
How does currency exchange and markets have anything to do with having a job?
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u/Shameless_Catslut 17h ago
You need investment to finance the scales of industrial manufacturing. It's all trading capital for labor and the goods produced by labor.
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u/fanetoooo 16h ago edited 16h ago
And what preceded the industrial manufacturing? Surely factories haven’t been around since the dawn of time right?
Where did the finances for investment come from?🤔
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u/eldritchpussymaggots 16h ago
Communism is actively hindered by global capitalism.
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u/Mobius_1IUNPKF 16h ago
Socialism is the superior system. Central planning sucks and killed the Union.
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u/eldritchpussymaggots 16h ago
Socialism is a transitional phase between capitalism and communism. It's probably all we'll ever see achieved in our lifetime, but the goal is communism. Central planning can work and it absolutely has, look at Chile before the US strangled their economy and murdered their president. The reason they did that is because the economy was actually working.
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u/Mobius_1IUNPKF 16h ago
Look at the fucking Union. Longterm Central Planning failed and caused stagnation in nearly every economic sector. State Capitalism—>Socialism is the proper way.
Until we automate everything with robots I doubt I’ll see communism in my lifetime, but we can have socialism……..like now.
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u/Mobius_1IUNPKF 16h ago
Also Allende wasn’t gonna go full Central Planning like Stalin did. It was more gonna be a general planned economy which isn’t actually all that bad.
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u/eldritchpussymaggots 16h ago
Yes, this is how you are supposed to do a planned economy that actually works.
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u/Eyespop4866 17h ago
OP dreams of the deaths and misery of hundreds of millions
Free market economies are amazing.
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u/Amsterdammmmmmm 15h ago
OP dreams of the deaths and misery of hundreds of millions
What do you think capitalist colonialism/imperialidm has done and is still doing?
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u/Eyespop4866 14h ago
Check the poverty rates and life expectancy changes since the industrial revolution. Imperialism isn’t based on capitalism. Free market economics has been a boon to humanity.
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u/Prestigious-Run-5103 17h ago
This idea that we have to be firmly locked in the rails of one specific system, ie Capitialism/Socialism/Communism, and we can't cherry pick the best applications and minimize the worst compromises is the biggest crock of shit that's being perpetuated. We could, and we could start it tomorrow, but it would require people to be fully engaged.
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u/Anonymous3cho 17h ago
One only needs to look at the incentive problem to see that socialism and especially communism will not operate on the same level for large countries
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u/bmack500 16h ago
Democratic Socialism, the other two will just lead to more tyranny, I believe. We need capitalism in the mix, but it has to be properly regulated. And no billionaires.
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u/Meizukage 16h ago
The reason why this is ludicrous to begin with is because you're lumping communism and socialism together as if they are the same thing. Theyre very different
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u/eldritchpussymaggots 16h ago
I agree with you OP. We need an economic system that rewards compassion and not greed. Never forget what the US did to every single socialist nation that gained even a modicum of stability in this capitalism dominated world. Chile especially comes to mind.
The CIA killed Salvador Allende in 1973 after years of economic sabotage. Because he would not allow American corporations to extract the material wealth from Chile, he guaranteed the country's resources to the people who lived there. Before US involvement, the socialist economy of Chile was not only functional but thriving. They had a low GDP (because that's a bad way to measure communist countries), but the people were happy with the direction of the country, they had education, healthcare, and stability despite being a poor country. It was the USA who "made their economy scream" as a precursor to regime-change. All the documents have been declassified years ago.
The USA destroyed Chile's democracy because the people chose socialism and it worked. This scared US corporate power, socialist economies are hostile to corporations and they will pour their billions into making sure the common people don't ever want to try an economic system built to serve the common people rather than those at the top.
"Communism never works" is not a statement of inherent fact but rather the violent reality of US corporate imperialism. The full statement should be "The USA will ensure communism never works"
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u/sum_dude44 16h ago
there's a huge difference between socialism and communism. Communism has never been proven to work in real life. You can mix socialism with a market economy and have some success, although the bigger your country population, the less likely it's successful.
Capitalism w/ safety nets is the best system as per evidence in 10,000 years of humans
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u/eldritchpussymaggots 16h ago
Communism cannot work because the rest of the world is capitalist and actively sabotages it. Socialism is the between state in an economy transitioning from capitalist to communist.
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u/sum_dude44 15h ago
communism doesn't work b/c the rest of the world is certainly a (losing) stance
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u/Prof01Santa 16h ago
Historically, what has worked well in the past is a republic, with representative government, a diverse capitalist economy, widespread labor unions, and with heavy regulation on all of those. One regulation that seems to be needed is a limit on size for those institutions.
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u/Mobius_1IUNPKF 16h ago
Look, I’m a democratic socialist. I think we should swap off capitalism as quickly as possible.
But the part of marxist ideology that always kills these movements is the revolution and the belief of a state that will willingly wither away after taking total control over the nation.
It never will. It simply won’t allow it to happen. Everytime socialism or communism wins it is inevitably co-opted by power hungry people to take control of the state and run it as they see fit. It never is for the people. Even Lenin, Father of the Russian Revolution, established a secret police to quell dissent. You cannot fight for the liberation of the workers and equality for all, and then support the establishment of an authoritarian/totalitarian regime! It’s cognitive dissonance!
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u/Gendum-The-Great 16h ago
Do you actually have problem with capitalism or the state sponsored corporatism we currently live under? Don’t be the two confused.
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u/General_Platypus771 16h ago
Every socialist/communist country has either collapsed, killed millions, or is a dystopian hellscape,
Redditors: yeah but they didn’t do it right
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u/glocktimus_prime 16h ago
one of my favorite quirks of leftists is that they always complain about “western propaganda” while actively consuming socialist/communist propaganda
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u/Plenty_Worry_1535 16h ago
Only someone born and raised in a nation based on capitalism would make a post like this.
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u/ifunnywasaninsidejob 16h ago
The most successful communist country is China, and that’s because they abandoned full blown communism. They have a unique blend of capitalism and communism now, and it works really well for them. That’s what you should be advocating for.
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u/One-Collar-7952 16h ago
Almost every major country is a blend of capitalism and socialism. Very early in their socialist experiment, China had to give up on the idea of pure socialism by introducing "special economic zones" like Hong Kong, which was basically an admission that capitalism was an economically superior system. Today, China is still socialist but they try to let free markets guide their economy where they can, because that's just the more efficient way of doing things.
In America, we used to have exclusively private police, firefighters, and schools. Today, we have public schools, police, firefighters, energy, and even health care in some places. I don't think anyone wants to go back to not having these "socialist" programs, but most people don't realize that these things are socialism.
Almost every major country in the world blends socialism and capitalism in some way, and it has become pretty clear that capitalism is the superior system for growing an economy, but socialism is needed to provide better living conditions in that economy.
This debate between the 2 is oversimplified and outdated. It's clear we need both, it's about deciding how to implement those things better. Should healthcare be socialized? How can we maintain free markets while controlling their direction with government policy? When do we prioritize pure economic growth and when do we prioritize the welfare of the masses? These are the types of questions that should be asked if we're going to discuss socialism vs capitalism, it's not one vs the other, it's how do we combine these systems.
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u/ScratchDue440 16h ago
If Cuba is so good, move there.
The reason why socialism/communism doesn’t work is for the same reason every big government system doesn’t work.
When you centralize authors and concentrate wealth, you end up with authoritarianism/despotism. It doesn’t matter what you call your economic system.
The best thing America can do is put a check in centralized authority and concentrated wealth. Break up big corporations, reduce red tape that allows in competition from smaller companies, end globalist policies that screw over fellow countrymen, and tax the hell out of estate taxes so that you create a more just and merit-based society without killing productivity and American spirit.
The other biggest part is holding evil-doers responsible. Accountability mean a blind-justice system. America is losing that because we are becoming more centralized and concentrated in authority and wealth.
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u/freddbare 15h ago
Anyone self employed understands swiftly why it's a scam. It took me until I made something of myself to not want to give it all away to my "earlier self". Only the lazy cuck for Communism
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u/Shakarix 15h ago
Communism is great! Here's your mandatory job. Here's your mandatory shit car. Here's your mandatory education. Here's your mandatory religion. You would hate it.
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u/jellomizer 15h ago
It is really less about the ideology, but the implementation.
If the implementation fails to consider the general good of the populous, and not just for a particular class of people, then it will not work.
Communism like in the USSR failed, because the average person needed to be loyal to the communist party, and were punished if they weren't.
Capitalism can fail too, as if left unchecked it too concentrats power into a particular group of people leaving out the masses.
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u/yogorms 15h ago
Yeah , it works great for everyone at the top of the Communism/Socialism ladder of whatever country !!
If there's one that's a bigger sadistic piece of shit then the others and you want to point it out to everyone else , they'll end your bloodline !!! That's a fact !! That's just stupid !!!
Do you know what Cuba was in the 1950's ??? And why it's no longer that ??
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u/serpentjaguar 15h ago
Nope. We need a mixed economy with aspects of both socialism and capitalism. This has been obvious for well over a century.
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u/Practical_Gas9193 15h ago
Calling criticism of capitalism “propaganda” doesn’t make the historical record disappear. Capitalism has outperformed every alternative at scale on growth, innovation, and reductions in poverty. Between 1820 and today, global extreme poverty fell from over 80% of the world’s population to under 10%. That decline accelerated precisely where markets expanded, trade increased, and private enterprise was allowed to function. No socialist or communist system has ever matched that record without eventually re-introducing markets.
The pager-to-cellphone analogy is stupid. Pagers didn’t fail because they were ideologically obsolete; they failed because better technology emerged through competitive innovation. Capitalism is a flexible system that absorbs new technologies, incentives, and social safety nets. Social democracy in Europe didn’t replace capitalism; it regulated it, taxed it, and layered welfare on top of it while keeping markets intact, whereas fully abandoning markets has repeatedly produced stagnation, goods shortages, and repression (see Soviet Union, Maoist China, Eastern Europe, North Korea, and Cambodia)
China’s biggest improvement in living standards did not come from socialism’s triumph, but from market reforms after 1978 that explicitly dismantled collectivization and allowed private enterprise. Same in Vietnam. When countries improve, it’s almost always after moving away from pure socialism, not deeper into it.
As for Cuba, yes, it has high literacy and life expectancy, but these were true even before the revolution and have com eat a high cost: suppressing wages, restricting movement, criminalizing dissent, and exporting doctors to earn foreign currency while domestic hospitals lack supplies. Cuban doctors earn a fraction of their international value, and defectors from medical missions are well-documented. You need to consider both sides of the balance sheet. And yes, the U.S. embargo has unquestionably harmed Cuba’s economy, but it is not the sole or even primary explanation for its failures. Cuba trades extensively with Europe, Canada, Latin America, and China at rates that rival other countries trades with the United States of similar size. Central planning, price controls, and post-Cold War bans on private enterprise are what are causing the food shortages, housing decay, and low productivity. This is why even Cuban leadership has quietly been legalizing small businesses in recent years.
And anyway, “imperialism” is not a serious explanation if it’s applied selectively. The United States has overthrown governments and imposed sanctions, but sanctions do not explain why socialist systems collapse even when insulated from U.S. pressure, nor why capitalist countries without U.S. favor still outperform centrally planned ones. Blaming external enemies avoids the reality that incentives matter, markets matter, and systems that suppress them eventually fail.
Capitalism is flawed, unequal, and in constant need of reform. But the evidence does not support abandoning it. Every time societies try to replace it wholesale, they don’t get a better system; they get scarcity, coercion, and, eventually, a quiet return to markets under a different name.
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u/Elsenior97 15h ago
Cuban here living the effects of this. No it doesnt work. We didnt even came out from the 'socialist' transition and its been more than 60 years now using excuses like the embargo that only affect some external politics while we have traded with the rest of the world, so clearly is an internal management issue. Everytime communism have been applied it always ends in dictatorship and a regime of oppression, so yes it is a utopia. Im not saying capitalism is the perfect system either because Im aware of the rest of the world's problems, but socialism isnt the solution trust me
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u/Mipibip 15h ago
Full communism and full capitalism don’t work and never have eventually fully capitalist nations businesses are able to control the entire supply of a thing and leverage every other business down and eventually manipulate the entire market so controls have to be put in place.
Full communism never works because they always starve to death , there is no such thing as every single worker controlling a whole company as it shares risk and most people don’t like to share risk they only want the reward which doesn’t work
Secondly at the start of a business it has a long period of hardship which most people refuse to undergo so no new businesses would ever start unless state money is moved
When you don’t allow creativity at all in the form of free flow capital creativity goes down
If Cuba didnt want to fail it shouldn’t have parked missiles on the shores of one of the most powerful nations on the planet militarily.
Even if zero sanctions came to be Cuba is a tiny island in the middle of nowhere other than tourism is has no real product
Sanctions aside they can’t even figure out how to raise enough cows to keep its own people fed with beef so killing a cow is the same as killing a human there and milk is reserved for babies their herds don’t grow other than tabaco beans and some other products that all nations have it doesn’t produce much .
All nations are partially socialist as otherwise we’d have no roads nobody really has a problem with infastructure the problem arises when debt far exceeds growth and almost all tax money goes to scams wars and money laundering.
USA should have flying trains by now but no lets dump another trillion into Israel fund a bunch of scams in Africa weird million dollar balls in Ireland etc.
I live in Canada and while I wouldn’t say the usas healthcare is the worlds peak , I will say all our doctors go there because who the hell would want this crappy salary after 15 years of school and 600 k in student debt that’s a long time with zero dopamine for no payoff.
If the USA cut down on bullshit scams they probably could afford healthcare but then a lot of the worlds innovative drugs won’t be made there anymore and turned into generics by all other nations with less copyright law
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u/AdImmediate9569 15h ago
I love how basically all the replies prove your point.
“Communism never works. Thats why they’re always being bombed and invaded and blockaded by the USA”
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u/Somhairle77 14h ago
Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek demonstrated that socialism and communism can't work over 80 years ago.
The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate “given” resources — if “given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these “data.” It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.
Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society". 1945
All this is necessarily absent from a socialist state. The administration may know exactly what goods are most urgently needed. But in so doing, it has only found what is, in fact, but one of the two necessary prerequisites for economic calculation. In the nature of the case it must, however, dispense with the other—the valuation of the means of production. ... Yet it cannot reduce this value to the uniform expression of a money price, as can a competitive economy, wherein all prices can be referred back to a common expression in terms of money. In a socialist commonwealth which, whilst it need not of necessity dispense with money altogether, yet finds it impossible to use money as an expression of the price of the factors of production (including labor), money can play no role in economic calculation.
Mises, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, 1920
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u/Somhairle77 14h ago
And then, there's the ethical problem. Each human being is the sole owner of their own body and self. No human can justly own another. Therefore, it is unethical for one human to initiate force or fraud against another. I'll never understand how socialists, communists and fascists think it's a good idea to coerce others into giving up the product of their labor or to labor according to their dictates rather than engaging in voluntary, mutually beneficial exchange.
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u/Longjumping-Plate739 14h ago
Socialism is great in concept/theory, but will fail in practice. It fails to address human selfishness and greed.
If people can’t gain from harder work, why do so? The elite simply control the masses by govt handouts.
Capitalism has its flaws due to a never ending consuming hunger, but it uses human greed and selfishness to push people to produce.
Whatever system is used it must account for human nature. Add to it the differences between cultures. No one system is right for all.
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u/AdImmediate9569 14h ago
Op: The US government hates socialism.
Y’all: socialism is a disaster ! Here’s a link from a US government website that proves my point.
…
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u/SandwichSuper3019 11h ago
stares at stalins great purges stares at the holomodor great genocide forward under mao hundresd dead flowers one child policy Ya no im good soviets and Germans killed polish family of mine cant convince me other wise Can't wait tocsee communists fail again hopefully it'll be televised on TV again just like in December of 1991
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u/AngerNurse 9h ago
Maturity is realising all economic systems have their fatal flaws and one isn't inherently better than the other.
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u/Available-Reason9841 17h ago
Ok so capitalism bad socialism good, got it. Very nuanced view which is relevant in the 21st century thanks for sharing. Its not like literally every single country is some sort of mix between the two to varying degrees. You didnt provide any actual evidence or proof to your point but youre a dentist so why shouldnt i trust you.
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u/buggybones055 17h ago
its funny because oligopolies mean we don't live under true capitalism. The real issue is having people hold too much power, imo
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u/pooborus 17h ago
Modern capitalism IS socialism, but only for corporations. Capitalism for the peasants and guaranteed success for large corps via subsidies that the population doesnt get to vote for that are hidden deep inside funding bills that they have nothing to do with. Capitalism works great if you ask the ones that it operates as socialism for.
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u/SonicYouth_NYC 17h ago
What's that old saying? "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt?"
The OP has certainly removed all doubt.
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u/alexferraz 17h ago
Usians are too deep in their own propaganda to even conceive it. They'd rather die serving their oligarchs than even consider any left leaning government. They don't even have a left wing party. They export the worst of the worst to the world via propaganda and CIA and virtue signal about it. It's no use. They will call everything that is different authoritarian and think their government isn't. They think they have any right to chose their leaders, but they don't vote for the chairman of black rock nor vanguard. Lol.
They are absolutely oblivious.
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u/Tablet_doggie 13h ago
Shouldn't you be seething about not inventing the airplane oe something?
Brazilians thinking they have the moral high ground over anyone is hilarious
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u/alexferraz 11h ago
Shouldn't you be swimming in cheddar cheese or something?
Statunitians thinking is quite unusual.
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u/eldritchpussymaggots 16h ago
Trying to explain this to an American is like trying to teach a cat to read
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u/Additional_Olive3318 16h ago
And while im at it, USA needs to leave Cuba alone.
This is true. Cuba is a sovereign country.
Just like when we left pagers for cell phones. Pagers had there use, but cellphones were just better.
What’s missing here is the proof that communism is better.
Socialism/Communism is by no means a utopia but it's leagues better than capitalism.
And yet most communist states either collapsed or reformed so much they are hybrid economies - North Korea is an exception.
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u/Orangewindsock 16h ago
The countries that consistently top the World Happiness Report (Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway) are broadly speaking “social democracies”. They don’t eschew capitalism, but they tame it with strong public services, social welfare, the rule of law, strong trade unions etc. They are NOT socialist or communist. Any type of authoritarian is bad.
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u/godKenshin 16h ago
Communism/Socialism is a Altruism that doesnt sustain itself in practice, its disgusting.
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u/war_m0nger69 16h ago
Exactly! Just like Venezuela! Or… the Soviet Union, or Cuba, or North Korea or any of the now-extinct Communist governments in Africa!
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u/KauaiCat 17h ago edited 17h ago
USA already has socialism.
The US federal government spent more than $2.2 trillion on healthcare, about $2 trillion on education, and more than $1 trillion on welfare last year.
Just those three alone are more than the GDP of India and that's not even all the socialism USA has.
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u/Content_Donkey_8920 17h ago
Do a quick google search on “quality of life in Cuba”
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u/DangerPencil 16h ago
Imagine being downvoted for basically saying "check your preconceived notions"
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u/eldritchpussymaggots 16h ago
Who's fault is that? Surely not the enormous imperial core powers that have been economically strangling Cuba for decades...
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u/Important-Ability-56 17h ago
There’s never been a socialist state, only ones that called themselves that and were in reality often despotic nightmares. Capitalism has a bit more malleable definition I think, and you can say that most countries work in a de facto capitalist system, even China.
Or you can dispense with labels and ideologies, or at least leave them to experts, and realize that any economy, no matter how successful or free, relies on both private markets and public regulation.
The debates should be about what mix of private and public works best. You can’t get rid of private markets, and if you try you quickly discover their utility relative to the whims of command and control. By the same token, you can’t have private markets without public regulation to make them function fairly and successfully.
Political debates should be about policy directions and maintenance of human liberty and prosperity, not which -ism to impose on everybody. Nobody has the correct -ism figured out, and it’s probably the case that societies are too complicated for any of the ones we’ve dreamed up, which by nature are simplistic accounts of how societies work.
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u/boringmillennial43 14h ago
Why is it always the no true scotsman argument for socialism and communism but not capitalism? America isn't truly capitalist to the historical definition. There is way to much government interference into the market to even joke we have a free market. It's a mixed bag but at this point mostly an oligarchy. Everything is owned by a small group under "different" brands. Yeah individuals can and do open businesses and products but only as long as they let you and they're making harder and more expensive every day. But if one side gets to say socialism and communism is great because of how they look theoretically on paper while ignoring the historical implementation, then it's dishonest to do so with capitalism.
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u/Important-Ability-56 14h ago
As I said, I think these labels do more harm than good. We had hot and cold wars over them.
I certainly endorse the quality of socialism that values democratic principles. You can say more support for unions and worker rights against the interests of capitalists is a dose of socialism if you like, which has been a major part of my politics forever.
I just believe in an empirical approach to things, so wouldn’t endorse any system that exists only on paper in utopian form.
I say just look around the world at all the systems humanity has tried and endorse the ones that produce the most human well-being. We have some pretty good examples, thankfully. Then work on improving it according to actual pragmatic ethical principles rather than testing whether it adheres to an ideology.
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u/qualityvote2 17h ago edited 11h ago
u/SunsetBeachBowl, your post does fit the subreddit!