Comments by "R" (@rdrrr) on "Why Eastern Europeans HATE Communism" video.

A Russian saying: "Everything the Soviets told us about Communism was a lie, but everything they told us about capitalism was true".
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 @dannylojkovic5205 The short answer is no. Centralisation of ownership of the economy will always lead to centralisation of state power, thus authoritarianism.
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@ They absolutely do boil down to "autocratic state and command economics" because that is the result in practice every time. You can feel free to educate us on the wonders of socialism when Marx's theoretical magical stateless Communism actually comes to be, okay?
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@ Criticizing capitalism is fine. It's Marx's ideas - and worse, Lenin's ideas - that do not work and should not be taken seriously in the modern era. The inevitable result of socialist revolution is an autocratic, censorious and brutal state that tramples on human rights. But next time it'll all work out just fine, I'm sure.
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@ Every time it's been tried it's gone the same way. It's a utopian ideal that fails every time in practice, but people keep believing in the ideal regardless
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@ Short version: Vanguard party must guide the revolution, seize control, get rid of opposition, collectivize economy. Once this happens the state will somehow "wither away" and give up control as Communism is achieved. If you know anything about power, bureaucracy and human behavior then you'll see why this hasn't happened and will never happen.
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@ The USSR engaged in massive "social engineering" projects, deporting minority nationalities by the millions. It also behaved in a colonial fashion in the Baltic States and Caucasus, effectively continuing the Russian Empire's policies.
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@Abcdefg-tf7cu States are violent by nature. Without a monopoly on legal violence there is no state. I'm an anarchist, by the way. I'm aware it's a dreamer's ideology.
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@Abcdefg-tf7cu "Left" and "right" wing lose a lot of their relevance when we're talking about authoritarian states because they behave pretty similarly, they just back different satellite states and use different imagery in propaganda
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@ The "dictatorship of the prolitereat" is dumb. Give the state autocratic powers and it does stuff like crush independent unions and arbitrarily abuse the people out of paranoia. Powerful governments never treat people well. Marx's theoretical magical "withering away of the state into true Communism" is impossible. Marx was a dreamer, not a serious political theorist. Basically everything he said about Communism was wrong, including his assertion that it was a natural evolution of Capitalism that would occur in all industralized states (socialist revolutions only succeeded in agrarian economies).
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@ Stalin's actions, particularly his policy on national minorities, certainly qualifies as the F-word. Gotta love how all of the teenage Redditors have turned out in force to defend a failed ideology! Like clockwork. The far left are stuck in the last century. They haven't even adapted their vocabulary, let alone accepted that Marx's predictions were all wrong (industralized societies don't have socialist revolutions. Agrarian ones do.)
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@ Marxist-Leninism supposes that the Revolution must be guided by a "vanguard party" which will set up a "dictatorship of the prolitereat", suppress opposition, hunt down "counter-revolutionaries", seize the means of production and collectivize society to "prepare the way for Communism". The impossibility here is the idea that somehow you can set up a dictatorship that will just magically "give way" to perfect Communism once the right conditions are met. If you know anything about power, you know powerful people like to hold onto power and bureaucracies exist to justify their own existence. Governments will never willingly give up power, ever. This is why Marx's magical perfect worker's paradise can never, ever, ever become a reality. Marx's theories suppose that human beings will act contrary to human nature.
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@ The short version is Marxist-Leninism says the Revolution needs to be guided by a "vanguard party" that will take control and centralize power - but that somehow, once conditions are right, opposition is gone, collectivization of the economy is complete etcetera, Communism will be achieved and the state will "give up" its power and no longer be necessary. If you know anything about power, bureaucracies or human nature, you know this will never happen.
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@ I'd love to explain further but my comments keep getting deleted. The short version is Marxist-Leninism says the revolution needs to be "guided" by a vanguard party that will set up an all-powerful state, but also this state will somehow "wither away" once Communism (Marx's utopian ideal) has been achieved.
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@ Explain the deportations and other ethnic engineering projects the Soviet Union indulged in, then. The Soviet Union routinely targeted minority groups, claiming it was necessary to do so to eliminate "reactionary elements". The USSR also behaved in a colonial fashion, importing Russians into the Baltic States and the Caucasus and treating the locals as second-class citizens. For example, in Lithuania, it was typical for the workers in a factory to be Lithuanian, but the managers were all Russian, and talking to your colleagues in Lithuanian was "nationalism", which you would be punished for.
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@ No state ever has or ever will achieve Communism. So the vanguard party sets up an all-powerful state which is supposed to magically "wither away" once the conditions for Communism are achieved? If you know anything about power, bureaucracy and human behavior you know that will never happen.
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 @Nick-ge7ug The USA has socialism for the rich; bailouts for banks and failing companies like General Motors. But capitalism for you, the working class.
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@ And yet every socialist revolution happened in underdeveloped countries and none happened in industrialized capitalist economies Marx's ideal of Communism is an unachievable pipe dream and Marxism inevitably results in autocratic state capitalist regimes. Turns out the whole vanguardism/give the state absolute power and expect it to magically wither away over time thing is horribly misguided This does not stop some people from insisting trying the exact same strategy would somehow produce a different outcome next time around
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