this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Most people don't become Marxist-Leninists without doing a lot of reading, in my experience.
The biggest flaw with communism is that you have to actually read instead of trusting a propaganda mill blindly and uncritically to become one.
some utterly propagandized capitalist will read this and think we're the propagandized ones, hilariously not realizing all they have is strawmen they didn't even come up with themselves and things they didn't fact check even the tiniest bit.
There’s propaganda on both sides
yeah in the same way that there's guns and shootings all over the world but they're almost all concentrated in one place... american schools.
either way, communists are vastly more prepared to deal with propaganda because in capitalist societies critical thinking is destroyed by nearly every institution that can teach it.
if you go by this thread one side has nothing but propaganda. There was not one valid argument made on the capitalist side when I read this thread, I could've better argued for capitalism, it's pathetic.
closest they got was china is mean to uyghurs, but capitalists do genocide every 5 seconds so that's hardly a pro capitalist argument. At least the chinese, if they are covering it up, have the decency to cover it up, capitalists brazenly and openly happily do it, and support it!
Your main problem is that you’re saying capitalism = USA. There are a lot more other countries that aren’t involved in genocides
The only arguments I’ve seen in this thread are "but USA corrupted them so it’s entirely their fault" and "but somewhere in the world some people had worse living conditions"
I think we’re all suffering from confirmation bias in this thread
I have to admit I don’t know a lot about communism and geopolitics overall, but so far I haven’t seen a successful implementation of it that would make me want to live there, and the main countries that approaches its definition are a huge red flag to me
The Western Capitalist countries that you'd likely consider "good to live in" depend on Imperialism. In short, they act as landlords in country form. Socialist countries like the PRC are making huge strides in comparison without depending on Imperialism, genocide, etc to sustain themselves.
If the only arguments you've seen in this thread are along the lines you've described, then you've either blocked people or otherwise are defederated from instances like Lemmygrad.ml.
If you want to learn more about Communism, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. It's designed for complete newcomers, the first section is designed to be self-contained in that it gives you a broad overview of Communism in theory and historically, then it goes through the essentials of Marxist-Leninist theory and practice in the latter sections. There are audiobooks linked as well for most works.
Its that French instance.
Yep, lol. Always the same.
No, all capitalist countries that are nice places to live are guilty of imperialism, colonialism, genocide, or some combination of the three. No exceptions. All you're noticing is that they have successfully exported their suffering at best.
Communist countries have a massive uphill battle, they have to gain wealth without imperialist exploitation AND fend off the US, who has the same military budget as the rest of the world COMBINED, this combined with the fact they usually started poor makes this a wildly unfair comparison. Only authoritarians can hold onto power when faced with all of these things.
the mere fact that in 75 years china has gotten where it has and the only issues you can really point to are matters of policy rather than fundamental failures of communism tells most of the story, communism can be essentially identical to what china does with freedom of speech, no censorship, and no genocide very easily, as none of those things have anything to do with whether a country is communist or not, with all of the benefits.
in other words capitalists can't find flaws with communism that don't apply to capitalism, only issues with particular implementations, the issues communists talk about are mostly fundamental to capitalism.
I disagree that China is committing genocide, but ignoring that for now I think it's interesting to tackle the concept of "freedom of speech" in the PRC.
Fundamentally, you cannot allow Capitalists to have free-reign in the world of speech if you want to have a long-running and successful Socialist system, because Capital has the ability to push whatever it wants, regardless of truth, and dominate all platforms if they are given control. Speech will be controlled, whether that be through the government or through the flow of Capital is a decision to make.
In the instance of a proletarian-controlled government, it is better for it to restrict the speech of Caputalists than it is to let them go unopposed. The Soviet Union's later reforms showed how quickly liberalism can take root if you have dedicated hostile actors pushing propaganda from the outside.
I consider this restriction of speech a necessary one, as long as the Working Class feels and is represented. In China, polls show that that is indeed true, so while we can critique aspects of their system, ultimately it seems to broadly be on the right path.
I agree that it is necessary in the current world, just making it clear that this isn't a fundamental issue with being a communist, it's a matter of policy.
Whether or not that policy makes sense right now is different, and I agree that it absolutely does in the current climate, but once there are more socialist countries, I think it'll become a non-issue. Like I said, only authoritarian methods like controlling speech can allow socialists/communists to hold onto power in the world right now.
Fair enough. I guess my central point is that the fact that the PRC's model exists is not proof that a system that takes away tools like control of media can also exist. I would agree that eventually, when more Socialist countries exist and especially the US Empire crumbles, this may be able to weaken, but I would also say that this depends on internal development as well, ie the Bourgeoisie must no longer exist anywhere for control of their speech to no longer be relevant, and this is abolished through development, not simple decree.
Really, it's getting into the weeds and being nitpicky over theory, your comment was generally good, but I wanted to highlight that there are Material reasons for the PRC's control of information.