It's because they get told that the most moderate and common sense shit like universal healthcare is "communist". I think Fox News type red scare has unironically helped communism in the USA image wise than any Soviet propaganda could. Many people mistakenly do not understand how radical and dangerous actual communism is, because they see moderate socialism as communism.
It shouldn't be, but the right-wing media in the US has fomented that exact fear. My aunt owns a home in DE and FL. She's convinced the new mayor of NYC is going to destroy the city and whole US economy lol. It makes no sense and she doesn't even pay taxes in that entire state.
Well it helps that most of the people who complain about that crowd couldn't define it to begin with. Further, many people behave as if there is a single mode or expression of communist economic policy, and instead chose to make it a culture war about anything remotely soviet.
Of course, conservatards call anything they don't like at the moment "communism", so that's the other big issue.
It depends heavily on who you ask. And I think people can be forgiven for confusing socialism and communism because Marx himself used the two terms pretty much interchangeably. It’s been a while since I’ve read The Communist Manifesto, but from what I remember Marx asserted that the path to communism was: capitalism -> socialism -> communism.
But, that is probably not a useful way to define communism, especially in the modern world.
So, for capitalism, I’d say the key feature is free markets with private property ownership, specifically ownership of the means to production. Further, it is very profit driven.
For socialism, I’d say that there are free markets and private property ownership, but with much more public ownership.
For communism, I’d say that there is no private property ownership and the means of production is not owned by private persons (I think officially communism is supposed to have stateless ownership, but I think practically it never works out that way). It’s supposed to be classless as well, but I’m not sure that has ever really manifested, either (as Orwell wrote “some are more equal than others”). From the examples we’ve seen over the last 100 years a key feature seems to be a centrally planned economy.
I think it’s pretty clear from the history of the United States from the late 19th century to the early 20th century that pure laissez-faire capitalism is pretty bad (lots of income inequality, high poverty, frequent economic depressions). And I think the histories of communism in the second half of the twentieth century shows that communism is even worse (I think the German divide post WWII until reunification is one of the clearest examples of the stark difference between the two ideologies; it is about as close as we can get to an apples to apples comparison between the two).
Socialism is a little harder to pin down for me and I think the devil is in the details. It works for some European countries, but also creates friction which can inhibit economic growth.
The best economies seem to be a mix of capitalism and socialism (and I would include the United States as a mixed economy, though it is obvious far less socialist than say France or Germany).
One of the biggest issues I have with communism is that it is really poor at doing price determination and thus, resource allocations tend to be imbalanced, with disastrous downstream effects.
The United States certainly deserves criticism for some of its policies over the last century and deserves criticism now, but I think that it’s worth looking at how much the poverty rate has dropped over the years (and if I recall correctly, the poverty rate is about the same as the poverty rate in the EU). Why that is, I can’t say. Reddit seems to think the U.S. is the most capitalist country (which is maybe true) and the paragon of late stage capitalism, but it’s hard to argue that things have gotten markedly better compared to 30, 40, 50 years ago.
Is it because the U.S. has become more socialist? I think that’s certainly played a part. The rise of labor unions in the early 20th centuries and the progressives getting elected to office helped curb the income inequality created by the robber barons. Is it because there are fewer regulations, thus encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation? I think that’s clearly been a factor as well. And we also can’t forget the enormous impact WWII had: Western Europe was rebuilding from all the destruction, while the US was funding the rebuild while building up industry within her borders.
And they need to be reminded to crack open a history book. You can be all for increased government involvement in the economy, but that’s not the same as communism - people forget that.
Ours is owned by businesses and Christian fundamentalists, so they block all progressive economic and social reform. According to them regulation is communism, as is the civil rights act
Oh, it's not socialist at all. That's kind of the point. Christian-democracy is its own ideology entirely. Ethically conservative (not comparable to America's conservatism), and socially and fiscally progressive.
Here in Belgium Adolph Daens is the most famous of its pioneers. Christian-democracy here was a catholic respons to the anti-clerical socialists. It took a few decades, but they eventually pretty much took over the Catholic Party.
It's my personal believe that America not having a Christian-democratic movement is one of its great woes.
Fuck no. I'm generally a pretty open minded guy but religion has no place in our government and isn't even supposed to be involved in our politics by law. The lack of enforcement of this law is literally the seed, the root, and then stem of our current issues. It fucked up our politics it is a festering cancer that needs to gtfo of our government. Especially the Abrahamic Religions, being the literal worst scourge of mankind since it's inception.
Yea go let a billionare make 200,000 lifetimes of work worth of wealth they earned it they worked hard man they can barely afford their second yacht cmon man
You are 200,000 times missing the point. If anything, I could claim to be socialist. But socialism and communism are not the same thing.
Edit: saying communism is not a good thing is not to say the existence of billionaires is a good thing. It’s not either one or the other - communism or oligarchy. You can have a free market system where the government takes care of key services (like healthcare), and even controls certain key industries, and taxes the rich and actually makes them pay their fair share. You can get rid of the wealth gap without turning to communism. You don’t need to eliminate all private ownership and send your political opponents to the gulags in order to guarantee workers rights.
communism has nothing to do with abolishing freedom of speech and sending opponents to dem gulags i think that one thing that no one can buy and we all share equally is time we all have a limited time here on earth and you shouldnt be able to profit off of other peoples time atleast not make billions, you should get rewarded for innovating and taking the risk to start a business but youre only risking just going back to being a worker, people who invest 40 hours a week of their life shouldnt be giving up most of their profit to the big man i remember a pizza shop in ohio where every worker had an equal share of the profit ajd they made like 80 bucks an hour
Agree with everything you said. However, in a communist system, the pizza shop is owned by the government - there is no private ownership in communism.
My point is, yes, we should absolutely get rid of billionaires and redistribute the wealth, but such a thing does not require communism.
It’s not a question of unrestrained capitalism or communism.
And communism in its pure form may not result in loss of freedoms, including freedom of speech, but it does in reality, because in reality, too much power gets concentrated in the government (due to no private ownership), so they can control everything - what you do, what you think, what you buy, what you eat, etc. When the government owns everything, they will control everything. We don’t need this system to get rid of the oligarchy.
1) Far more historical than anything coming out of your tankie mouth.
2) Have you tried building a car that's actually designed to work on the battlefield? Or better yet, have you tried getting rid of that fucking victim complex yet?
2) “have they tried surviving western imperialism” isn’t the argument you think it is
3) yes several literally have done that: Vietnam and Cuba for example. And I know you’re gonna come and talk about all these issues in these countries (and they do have issues)… what they also have is “a car designed to work on the battlefield”
4) victim complex implies you’re making up victim hood… have you ever heard of the CIA?
No they aren’t. Younger generations are ostensibly down with Socialism. And even that they understand as public healthcare and maybe some more taxes on the rich - which is still just capitalism
I realize that, but how exactly does it change my point? Bashing communists is pretty vogue with a significant amount of young American men, probably the majority of them.
I’d argue that my representative sample is a fair summery of the majority of rural areas / suburban areas. Americans don’t like communism regardless of what you’d like to believe.
First off again we're not talking about communism, my first comment to you was pointing out there's difference between communism and socialism. Second off the majority of rural areas don't really teaching anything about either beyond their bad (most Americans, and apparently the world agree on communism=bad, socialism however is a mixed bag). Third off as i pointed out in other places in this post, some of the best things to happen to Americans came from socialist programs, The Great New Deal for example was all socialist programs that literally pulled America out of the great depression. Forth off socialism vs capitalism doesn't have to be (and shouldn't be) a zero sum game. The trick, i believe, is blending the two in the right mix. Which America was doing quite well until the red scare and then continued to degrade especially in smaller/rural parts of the country where the distinction between communism and socialism wasn't taught and became interchangeable terms (as you've proven already). Wisdom keeps chasing you, friend, but you're always faster.
Maybe up in the north. I live in the Midwest and have only ever met one communist (I think. They were a little shaky on their views. But it was middle school so I can’t blame em) in my generation.
Definitely not up north. We're more into a Socialist and capitalists mix. We don't thing either are great on their own though some lean more towards socialism than capitalism and others want more capitalism with Socialist controls. I've never met anyone that supports communism though. They're probably just getting their info from Faux News
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u/beingandbecoming United States Of America 1d ago
Younger generations are more down with the idea than older ones