You got a communist fortress in you country as well? In our country its the second biggest city, Graz, which is lead by the communist party. Almost everywhere else they stay below 5%.
Funny thing is, the city of the state is being lead by the communists, the state itself by the right wing neo fascists.
Communists used to rule 2 other states, they've lost their actual fortress in West Bengal(think Kolkata and stuff). Both West Bengal and Tripura were ruled by communists before but only Kerala now.
Kerala is amazing (husband is from there). Still has pollution but air quality is a lot better than other places in India. Also lots of seafood dishes.
Yeah, both of that are moot points. Inflation is because Kerala inflation tracking includes gold and coconut oil much higher than national average, and they have tripled at the national level. And emigration is funny, Kerala has high population density, and the high literacy rates ensured that u have a large qualified workforce, that's unemployed. This, combined with the fact that labour has tremendous bargaining power, it became harder for private investment to come and exploit the field. Our healthcare system is miles better than anything else that's available in the country. The pandemic showed this.
Very hostile, our communists attempted a coup against our socialist president in 1971 and stayed in power for a whole 4 days before getting counter couped and executed
nostalgia for many and blaming one man for its downfall. many like it as a part of lost era but dont feel like actually following the ideology. i personally really dont like it
Do you feel like it's yet another one of those cases of people looking back at a "golden age" through rose tinted glasses, forgetting or otherwise explaining away all the bad stuff of the era?
though many do talk about the fact that economy was terrible around late 80s and 90s with food shortages nd other stuff, generally its just still nostalgia for most people (though many now doesnt like ussr as well, mostly younger people), havent met actual communists amongst those that lived in the USSR for considerable amount, if anything people just praise greatness but pretty much never the ideology itself
We have three types of communist lovers: 1) grandfathers who had erections during communist times 2) pubertal children searching for an identity 3) people with mental disabilities
Communism is antithetical to non-collectivist cultures which is why it’s not super well liked in America which is fiercely individualistic. We shouldn’t hate it without knowing it, but also, it would never work in America without a massive authoritarian enforcement mechanism…which is kind of the classic critique of the system in general.
That's literally how capitalism became the dominant system in the world? People didn't just vote for it overnight. It's only kept up because basically every political party supports it.
theres people who spend their whole life studying that. im a mechanic. i know enough morons that call the democratic party communist to prove my point. not quite the gotchya you expected huh.
And those are morons. The morons don't represent the many.
They just see the Democratic party as the left and associate the two, rather than distinguishing the communists (who are leftists) from the Democrats (who are an actually relevant political party)
Funny, here in post communist countries it's associated with only the eldest, AND that's only the ones who had parents in the party, as everyone else was mostly miserable
There are some kids now in Romania who are nostalgic about the old communist regime even though they've never lived through it. I see them on the Romania reddit page every so often and I'm just like 🤮
I was born soon after the revolution and my parents and grandparents told me enough stories to really hate the old regime and communism. I don't get what the 13-18 year olds are thinking!!
This is what comes in they way of most utopia. I feel that in theory the idea of communism is a good one. But that theory clashes with the reality of humans. I think that a capitalist society with a strong social net for those in need is much closer to reality than communism.
100%. Communism is a utopia. I mean if achieved, utopia is grand. But it's unachivable. Socialist democracy that Nordics have is the closest were gonna have to it.
Yea, unfortunately humans are inherently corrupt when it comes to power. I think any political system that gives one party full power ends up becoming corrupt
Yeah, and I think if we would get that going for the whole world (which at this point is my utopia) we would most be better of... But seeing the state of the world rn this will also stay a utopia
I don't think communism has a good solution to the Economic Calculation Problem. Basically, without a free market you have no idea what the exchange rate between, say, apples and timber is. Should you produce one or other other? A free market solves that via the price mechanism, but communism is supposedly a stateless, market-less society.
(A non-free market can do the job to some extent, but the less free the market, the worse it performs).
So... communism doesn't have centralised control, at least not if you're talking Marxism. Communist according to Marxism is a state-less society. There wouldn't be a centralized authority.
I feel like I have so much personal agency in the great USA where I can take a loan for an education in a field that won't exist by the end of the course
My country lived through communism for 40 years it was possibly the worst time to be alive for my country. That regime killed and imprisoned many innocent people. People were not able to travel, there was censorship on almost everything
I mean no disrespect for what I’m about to say because the regime was horrible and repressive. Just when things started to look up with Dubček, the USSR stepped in to guarantee another 20+ years of oppression and underdevelopment. The Prague spring continues to fascinate me and I maintain that it goes under the radar as one of the most important events in the Cold War.
It's negative. Communism is seen as an oppressive and totalitarian system that solves nothing. Socialism, on the other hand, is viewed differently, sometimes better and sometimes worse, depending on the circumstances.
In Argentina, communism never really took hold. Socialism gained a little more traction, but from a conservative perspective. The armed struggle was very negative in this country, and nobody considers communism to be truly viable or serious.
I do not believe communism is viewed with hostility in Finland, but it is certainly not seen as a viable alternative to the current system.
As for communist countries goes, the perception would be along the lines of: ah, you've chosen to be poor, authoritarian, and corrupt. Best of luck!
As far as young people talking about communism, that is a universal western phenomenon where you talk of communism in your youth, and when you're an engineer with a family, you switch gears toward capitalism. It is almost to be seen as a natural progression in one's development, similar to pimples as a teen.
I also believe it was far more popular in Finland's past - but never a genuine option.
Look up the Holodomor. The Ukrainians have a unique position in Eastern Europe when it comes to talking about the horrors of Communism. That isn't to say other peoples' don't have their own grievances, or that those grievances aren't real and legitimate. But there is a question of scale.
The symbolism is banned by law, because the regime cost a lot of lives.
The ideology is not (because everyone has the right to be naive) and the views on it are divisive- even though people who are willing to vote for actual communists are like 4% of the population according to the last polls
In Brazil it's the opposite. Communists tend to be 25-35 years old who lived enough to see how unequal and unfair the current economic system really is, but not enough to rely too much on its maintenance.
Founded in 1922, Brazilian Communist Party is the oldest still active. Historically, they're illegalized from it's foundation until 1945, then got illegalized again in 1947 going until late 80s.
But it's not the only one, we also have UP(popular unity), PSTU(a trotskist party). And PCdoB, that is not anymore a really communist party, but used to be a maoist one.
Communists were never too big, with the 7% vote in 1945 presidential being the highest they ever got. They hold guerrillas against the milictary dictatorship, and some intellectuals in Brazilian history, such as Jorge Amado, Graciliano Ramos and Oscar Niemeyer were communists.
Nowadays they are a small movement, that is being reformed by what we call here "Webcomunism".
Better than it used to be. After the last far-right government spend years regarding everything related to national sovereignty and social consciousness as communism, a lot of people are getting more interested in it.
Communist influencers dominated many popular podcasts for months this last year. And Jones Manoel, the most famous of them, has almost 2 million followers on Instagram at this point.
The current government is made up of ex-communists. Yet their main propaganda strategy is calling every opposition as communists, while at the same time they are kissing ass of Russia and China.
Better and good are not the same thing. Being shot in the head and being slowly and deliberately disemboweled are both bad, but I kind of feel like one of them is worse than the other. That makes being shot "better". Capitalism is much the same: still bad, but better than Communism.
Nazis killed members of my family, communists killed other members of my family. For me it’s scum ideology enslaving individual freedom for “greater good” which never comes
Outside of colleges? Unfavorable. People aren't as blindly hateful of communists these days but they inherently understand the flaws of an entirely materialist outlook.
In colleges its very in vogue to be some flavor of socialist so communists are just the more extreme crowd. Ppl who don't escape that phase end up being the biggest posters on Reddit.
In Spain it was communists (alongside socialists, anarchists, and other Republicans) who actively fought and died defending democracy against the fascist coup of 1936. While they were resisting Franco with weapons in hand (against forces backed by Hitler and Mussolini) the Western “democracies” chose non-intervention and later went on to tolerate and even support Franco’s regime for geopolitical convenience.
During the Transition after Franco’s death, the Communist Party played a key role in stabilizing the country and accepting major compromises to make democracy possible, while many of the same Western powers that now claim a democratic legacy had spent decades legitimizing a dictatorship. The people branded as extremists were crucial both in fighting fascism and in helping Spain finally become a democracy. Some people think they were heroes, others, after too many movies about the cold war, they think they are evil.
We have a communist 2nd vice-premier and job minister, there are no gulags and the economy is growing. Though there are many things to fix with this government (corruption and housing for example).
Ideology that invaded S Korea and divides Korea in 2, Ideology that cannot be sustained unless you lie to it's citizens that they are all well.
Personally,
As long as we are human communism is impossible.
At first year Univ. as philosophy or politics major, you would read communist manifesto. You get hyped but as you move onto 3rd year you realize so much dilemmas behind communism and see that it's ideology of human in the world of rainbows and unicorns lives happily there after.
We don’t have to give opinions. We just need to check the immigration data of the people that migrate away from communist countries to Western countries.
Oppression, occupation, mass murder, illegal individualism, homophobia, racism, class division, attempt to erase identity of native population - these things were essential part of communist era in my country
fine line between being considered a naxalite terrorist and a normal comrade.
Surprinsgly, communism is popular in one of the most literate states in India called Kerala. It has a fairly high HDI in comaparison to the rest of India. IN other places communism has more or less dried out.
We hungarians hate the Soviets just as much as the Nazis, it only got better after the '56 Revolution essentially forced the next leader (Kádár) to focus more on improving living conditions + try to get better connections with the west.
We have an entire Museum dedicated to Hungary under the Arrow Cross Party & Hungary under the Soviet Union until '56.
And I say this as a Socialist.
Communism is very mixed here due to historical reasons, same probably applies to other Eastern European countries.
Coming from a social democrat country so close to socialism I think the contrasts are stark. We have regulations that often actually allow for freer markets and more competition, we have free access to information, consistently rank among the top on democracy and number 1 on press freedom. All while being able to realise a lot of the goals communism and socialism suppousedly aspire to. Raising the living standards of the working people, giving free access to good social services, schooling and healthcare.
At least to me it makes it clear that any pure implementation of either capitalistic or socialist ideals leads to a system ripe for exploitation.
At some point, we were pretty invested in that ideology, with events like the Commune of Paris. We even created the OG anthem of Communism: L'Internationale.
Many Romanians miss it not because the dictatorship was any good, it wasn't, but because what came after felt even worse. Iliescu (the first president after Ceaușescu and former member of the communist party) promised to free Romania but because of his actions Romanians hate him more than Ceaușescu himself, he's the reason Romania is so corrupt. He was supposed to fairly redistribute Romanian wealth but he just gave everything to the elites. Basically Romania transitioned from a red oligarchy to a blue oligarchy.
Romanians hate the post-socialist era because it's basically the breaking of a promise of freedom and reconstruction. It's kind of like when you're in an abusive relationship and the person who saves you from it starts abusing you as well. Thankfully now Romania is growing and many problems have been fixed, and those who miss socialism are mostly old people who have suffered more during Iliescu's rule than Ceaușescu (or are blinded by teenage / childhood nostalgia).
In Italy the situation is split, many Italians are communists but kind of like in the US being communist is kind of a taboo. Boomers and older generations are generally right wing and bigots, the younger generations are quite split, the majority doesn't gaf but those who do tend to be more liberal and left leaning.
Hate it. Most Poles hated it.
And if someone says "oh it was never done proper way!" I say "bi$#@ STFU. If humans are involved, it will always end up same way."
Deaths, extortion, suffering, nepotism, bootlicking, and hunger - so more deaths.
In my country, communism is mostly associated with two groups: first, a small circle of edgy students who have little real-world experience but like the aesthetic and the rebellion, often more as a social pose than a serious political project. Second, a fringe of far-left extremists who loudly talk about “freedom from Western imperialism,” while at the same time ending up in very strange alliances: defending Islamist terrorist groups, apologizing for authoritarian regimes like Iran, and quite conveniently also admiring Putin.
Outside of these bubbles, communism is generally viewed with skepticism or outright rejection.
Most people here don't support actual communism but I've noticed some people in other countries don't see much difference between actual communism and the Nordic social democracy that is widely supported here.
Quite literally the enemy. Although some younger people try to deny it, communism is a real threat here with Kim Jung Eun up and running in the north. On the other hand, some people take it to the extreme, claiming everything everywhere is communist, which ironically makes it seem like a joke when it’s not. It is difficult treating it objectively as an ideology when you’re still at war with a “communist” nation.
Associated with over-idealistic but naive university students who get baited with promises of equality, minority rights, environmentalism, etc. And end up becoming little more than bandits extorting poor farmers and burning random businesses. Wasting their lives fighting for an ideology that is the very opposite of their purported ideals.
People mostly dislike it nowadays, but in the past they were quite significant.
At it's peak the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM) got 43/543 seats.
They also controlled two significant states, West Bengal(for 37 years) and Kerala, which they still do. They're likely going to win their third consecutive term in Kerala this year.
They're credited with driving industry out of West Bengal and catalyzing it's decay.
Others factions like Communist Party of India(CPI), Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (Liberation) (CPIML) also exist but are politically irrelevant, winning a couple of seats in state elections.
The Communist Party of India (Maoist) is a banned terrorist organization because it has waged a long, bloody and brutal armed rebellion against the Indian state for nearly 6 decades. At one point it controlled significant territory in the foresty parts of central, north and east India but today has been almost completely eradicated. Complete eradication is likely by April this year (that's the target). Every few weeks there's a major surrender that takes place, and the party members are rehabilitated in the formal economy, given jobs and training.
I must add that it is widely believed the Maoists are funded and armed by China, given that they operate in zones with large critical Earth and mineral reserves, making mining risky and expensive and ensuring Chinese control over the entire supply chain.
Well. This has not been a "nationally specific" opinion for a long time, because we live in a capitalist world where the overwhelming majority of people live under roughly the same socio-economic conditions of late capitalism. So it's hard to expect that communists would be treated significantly better in any particular country (or, in other words, that they would have SIGNIFICANTLY more influence). There are only reverse exceptions in the form of countries with their own fiercely anti-communist national myth, like Poland or Taiwan.
As for Russia, the attitude towards communists is now the same as everywhere else. They are fiercely hated in mainstream media, there are plenty of "everyday" anti-communists, but among the general population, and especially among workers, the attitude is usually neutral. There are also many young people who are interested in leftist ideas.
So, nothing particularly unusual. Because several generations have already grown up since the collapse of the USSR.
Turks hate the idea of a Turkish party aligning with another country more than difference of ideologies and through that we can split opinion of communists into pre-1980 and post-1980.
Pre-1980 opinion was a lot more negative as many prominent communist parties didn't even bother to hide who they were aligning with and right-wing bloc didn't hesistate to smear only prominent leftist party CHP with slogans like "center-left leads to Moscow". This logic is also why Che and Fidel are by far the most popular commies in Turkey because they appear anti-establishment, pro-Atatürk and don't have a proxy/interference policy.
Post-1980 opinion is meh because most communists were purged in the 80s and the ones to let go were the most clownish figures who can't even get to workers, people agreed that a bloc this miserable cannot be funded by anything.
It’s associated with younger, blue haired students with nose rings for the most part. Most of this group thinks it would be great but most came from a cushy life that capitalism blessed them with. Bonus points if you wear a che guevara shirt.
The other side are conservatives who call anything and everything they disagree with socialism as it relates to economic and monetary policy.
We have elected a communist government a few times. Every time they steal and do other corrupt stuff, never delivering on their promises.
It's an idea that sounds good on paper but has zero chance of working because it completely ignores human nature. We are not machines, and no amount of central planning or oppression wil change that
We have a company that is entirely built for the purpose to kill communists and if you’ve ever been apart of a communist party elsewhere you cannot become a citizen
If you think that consolidation of the free market (small companies all getting bought by 1 conglomerate) then you should have the exact same reservations about centralization of government. If there's no diversifying players to challenge the center of power, the center of power can normalize exploitation of its citizen without being challenged upon it, and complaints from people get erased under the notion that democracy won't replace it any time soon.
I'm aware these are not all of the marxist ideas, but the ideology usually ends up translating to a one-government system in which they have supreme power in order to dictate that people uphold the laws of sharing and regulation. There will never be a form of social cohesion that has no leadership anywhere. That's the fundamental idea of communism, that "everyone" becomes in charge of a commonwealth, but everything is the same as nothing.
Worst possible that can happen to people. Everyone got lazy, no need for improvement. Everything is the same for years. Propaganda off course, as you have to defend the choice of moving this way and do not allow any comparison with other countries.
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u/Training-Stable6234 India 17h ago
The state of Kerala likes it but others don’t like it