It's actually disheartening that all communist countries become authoritarian. Theoretically with flat power structure, they should all become democracies. Maybe they ARE not communists.
I mean, what we call "communist countries" were really founded with communism as an ideal and authoritarianism as the means to supposedly achieve that ideal. turns out the people they put in power to liberate them didn't want to give up that power willingly. shocker.
Everything we’ve seen thus far is socialism with a siege mentality. Every socialist revolution in the world has been attacked by capitalism through espionage, sabotage, embargoes, sanctions leading to resistance groups, assassinations and coups. Michael Parenti explains it quite well.
Good thing that under the words communism and democracy, there are pictures that give you the context. Which allows you to understand that the actual comparison is between Marxism-Leninism (which are the majority of communist states) and representative democratic constitutional republic (which are the majority of democracies).
Okay, quick question: In your meme, would you say the picture description on the right is something advocating for democracy? (Although democracy in of itself has basically nothing to do with that wall imo)
The idea that the USSR and East Germany were anywhere close to communism is a joke. There were so many offshoots of communism that were just autocracies where the state owned all property that its meaning is pointless now. It's better to describe then as dictatorships.
As much as I agree with your communism comment the same can be said to our democracy. We are a representative democracy and choose people to choose for us.
Agreed. Most if not all democracies today are severely flawed. I'd also argue that the wall depicted here has more to do with these flaws than with democracy
Only for the presidential election. All the rest are normal. We're definitely a representative democracy. Whereas none of the communist countries are anywhere close to Marxist communism.
It's just a shitpost, bro, don't think about it, let me just make a shitpost covering a political topic, I'm not making a statement just a shitpost, bro.
Communism is an economic system, democracy is a political system. There are examples of democratic socialism and of capitalist dictatorships. Also, the word here is in fact socialism and not communism.
Those words can mean those things, but communism is also used to describe a political system. After all, part of the definition of communism is statelessness which is entirely about the politics and not the economics (source).
Also, just as democracy might be used to describe a political system, it commonly taken to mean liberal democracy, and thus in most contemporary contexts implies an economic system of capitalism.
So I just think it depends on the context what people mean by these terms. Of course you can try to define communism only in economic terms, but since the term is so abused and "inflated" it's hard to claim it has any singular or absolute meaning.
Depending on who you are talking to, communism has practically opposite meanings, for example, in public schools in the U.S. they teach that communism is when all economic activity is controlled by a centralized state, which is ironically the exact opposite of how Marx defined communism.
I replied to a similar comment in here. From the context of images, you can understand that the comparison is between Marxism-Leninism and representative democratic constitutional republic. These systems represent the majority of real world implementations of communism and democracy.
The majority of people in this comment section understand this words in the way they like and argue against something that in my opinion has very little in common with the actual meme's point (that sounds funny, "meme's point" 😅).
I feel like the poster didn't mean to infer American capitalism is so great we need a wall to slow people down from entering while communism is so shitty they need a wall to prevent people from escaping.
It's a strangely pro American capitalism meme for lemmy.
There's also the walls around most Palestinian settlements, the wall that the Dominican Republic is building to stop Haitians from fleeing their country, the walls (fences with barbed wire) in Hungary...
Yeah. My country used to be a capitalist dictatorship in the 60s-80s and it very, very much kept people who disliked it from escaping it, and then tortured them for being "unpatriotic". And as ICastFist mentioned, there are several other capitalist and even "democratic" countries out there that very much build walls to keep people from leaving, too.
I initially assumed this meme was criticizing capitalism due to pointing out how the rich plunder and oppress the poor (i.e. the US with Latin America, and Europe with Africa and the Middle East), then hoard the profits for themselves while propping up walls to prevent anyone from the places they exploited from getting to also share and experience their wealth and safety nets (i.e. America's border wall with Mexico, and Europe sinking refugee boats while fanning fascism to pin economic issues on the migrants rather than the capitalists themselves), but reading the OP's replies it seems the meme was actually made in defense of capitalism...?
Honestly, between this and the "you'd be morally obligated to vote for 99% Hitler" nonsense, neoliberals seem to be really, really bad at defending their own ideology, lol
Hear me out, Exchange citzenchip program. You can come live here if someone from this country wants to go live there. Then you exchange citzenchips. The population would remain the same and people could live in places they feel better at.
Now I'm curious on how the correlation actually lies, because it seems like it's actually correlated. When people can't enter, money is usually restricted too and vice versa, just like Russia is now. Of course there is smuggling, but it's for both money and people. Although maybe it shouldn't be money but "trade" in general.
In my opinion, oppression is coming whether we like it or not. The resource depletion and overconsumption of global capitalism is destroying our ecosystems. We can choose degrowth and a planned economy under socialism, or continued environmental damage under fascism. Our current way of living is unsustainable. We need to read up and understand the choices, or the decisions for our futures will be made for us.
What we need is a culture shift, not oppression. I refuse to believe mankind is not capable of improving their collective behavior except under threat of violence - In fact, I think such violence would be counterproductive if the goal is to live in harmony with planetary limits. Degrowth cannot be imposed. Society must want it. Stop being mindless consumers. We can't make that happen by the barrel of a gun. Peace must be included
Not the best description I have seen. Any wall that can keep someone out can keep someone in. Just have to change the system inside. The big problem, however, is that nobody understands the term communism and applies it to lots of things which are not. A totalitarian state is not communism. And a Christian nationalist state is no longer a democracy.
The big problem, however, is that nobody understands the term communism and applies it to lots of things which are not
I think it's because terms used in real life often don't match their definition. The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is not democratic or a republic. The National Socialist Party were not socialist. The Chinese Communist Party allows billionaires to privately own the means of production. Capitalist America regulates, subsidizes, and bails out corporations instead of allowing a free market.
The real world is more nuanced than the terms used to describe it. It doesn't help that terms like capitalism, communism, democracy, etc, have gone the way of "literally". It can mean "literally" or it can mean the exact opposite of "literally"; it depends on context.
Yeah but what is it trying to say? Is it just saying democracy is good because other people want to be a part of it? Why is it even comparing communism and democracy? Why is it using such a terrible example for communism? Why does it think that this observation is useful for making any kind of point even if it were accurate?