Comments by "Stephen Jenkins" (@stephenjenkins7971) on "M. Laser History" channel.

@gringologie9302 The fact it keeps getting crushed to begin with its kinda another point against it, tbh. Often new ideologies get persecuted by the old, but Liberalism thrived while Communism has always been crushed or collapsed in on itself.
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Easy to make laws that sound great, much harder to keep them long-term. The USSR early on allowed for more women's rights, but after a few decades it became even more oppressive compared to the capitalist US. That's a general trend with these revolutionary leftist governments. Anyway, no question that the Commune was leftist for its day, but calling it Communist was always weird.
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@blank_3768 Left-wing anarchists just create a new hierarchy regardless despite their claims to the contrary. So they are exactly the same in this respect. The correct answer is; "there are no anarchists". At least functioning ones that aren't hypocritical.
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@blank_3768 Not anything the size of nation-states. Small convents of like-minded individuals sure, but Left Anarchism always devolves into hierarchies and chaos. Or they just get purged by Stalinists. Either or. Besides, even then, hierarchies tend to exist even in such small communities. Unofficial ones with some people being more equal than others.
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@marxussy Americans tried this time; peace has held for a while so apparently they the US did something alright
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@davidmccormick8921 To maintain democracy, you need to vote for democratic candidates. Voting for monarchy/fascism/communism is effectively voting for the death of democracy. So that hostility is pretty obvious, yes. Just like "the people" can't vote away a minority's rights, neither can they vote away democracy. All that being said, you're referring to the Cold War, and the US did not care about democracy; it cared about crushing Communism as an avenue of Soviet influence.
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@erichl8200 US never declared Kosovo independent, it declared itself independent and the US later backed it after claims of genocide were found by the International Community. Montenegro also declared itself independent. These independent movements wouldn't spring up so often if the governments didn't so often rely on rampant ethnic nationalism to maintain control.
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@aradicalkiwi806 Marx's idea make no sense if you try to apply Communism to a nation-state. You NEED some kind of central authority to force it otherwise people will simply lash out against such a system; which means the "state capitalism" part itself is effectively embedded in the concept of Communist Revolution. Which is why in terms of nation-states, there has never really been anything except a Communist dictatorship. The oppression of the intellectuals enforcing their ideology at the point of a gun and the justified suspicion it garners.
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@aradicalkiwi806 To apply Communism in a democratic system, you'd need to significantly strengthen the central authority while suspending multiple guaranteed rights within the country. The usual story with such actions is that the government doesn't stop and just goes full dictatorship while pretending to still be a democracy. I've never heard of a State Socialist system. And nobody calls the modern first world nations a "State capitalist" system either; they usually just call them "Mixed Economies" which are still Capitalist...or they are called Social Democratic...which are also still Capitalist. For Socialism to even be applied, the means of production needs to be seized. You can't do that without immense state power; so how exactly can democracy remain under such conditions?
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@aradicalkiwi806 The term is not utilized much at all in the mainstream for a reason; this is literally the first mention of it. And using "A People's History" is about as convincing as using "A Patriot's History". They're both just very biased works functioning more on the basis of ideological boosting rather than telling the coherent tale of the growth of the US as a civilization and nation-state. Jesus Christ you listen to Chomsky? Do you also happen to deny the Cambodian and Bosnian Genocide too? Like seriously, you're waving way too many red flags for comfort here. These are all individuals who are so very biased that getting a coherent framework of reality no longer functions. In a way the free market has existed for most of human history, sure; but the free market is only an aspect of capitalism. Free market means jack all without the guarantees of property rights so private interests can build up wealth and power. A "free market" in Ancient Rome sounds fine, until your name shows up in the Prescription lists and your entire family gets murdered at the whims of the Roman Emperor. The guarantee of some basic civil rights, which was considered necessary by John Locke, was the game changer for the concept of capitalism. That means that monopolies are bound to happen to be sure since guaranteed property rights allows for the buildup of capital to extreme levels, which is why capitalism is not a perfect system. But the beauty of capitalism is how easy it is to manipulate by government power. You bring up this "anti-Capitalist Free Market", but you kinda miss the best part of Capitalism -the guarantee of property rights is precisely what allows for the build up of capital to create institutions to transfer credit to begin with. Before such things were only possible for wealthy merchants who were given the right by Monarchs to trade as representatives of said Monarchs. Now its accessible for everyone; but what is the incentive to do such a thing if it can just be taken away? More importantly; why would a Commune even bother doing that when there is no incentive to gather such wealth that is effectively belonging to the larger community and not their own small tribes/families/themselves? Patriots are fine, but they are rare. And that's just the first problem with such an idea. It can be dumbed down to "lack of incentives", but that's just one massive incongruity in this idea. Such a decentralized structure would inevitably just devolve into people creating their own personal kingdoms for protection as their wealth gathers anyway. Either that or the project would collapse because the Marxist-Leninists would purge them anyway. Either way, I am nowhere near eager to try such an experiment anytime soon.
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@aradicalkiwi806 I'm not really gonna bother to talk about the philosophy behind the difference between Anarcho-Capitalism and Anarcho-Communism. I never tried to do that because while I can, its ultimately a rabbit hole of self-aggrandizement. Whether you realize it or not, the very fact that you basically admitted that your idea of capitalism is different from someone else's is the problem; you're using different definitions for the same words in many instances. Which isn't a YOU problem, its just a problem of philosophy; thus trying to argue from that avenue is futile since first we'd have to address those differences in the first place. No, my original point was just that the end result of both ideologies, in reality, have been remarkably similar. Making attempts to build Anarcho-Communism sounds all well and good until you see how they end up; and they end up poorly for the people involved. You can blame the Marxist-Leninists for purging them, or other nations for getting involved and crushing them; the end result is the same. Misery and bloodshed without the power to stop it. And that by itself is a condemnation of ALL Anarchist/Libertarian groups. Heck, even that Rojava group that was protected by the US for a time effectively collapsed. You could say it was because the US stopped protecting them, but if you need protection for the ideology to have a decent example then at a certain point you can't defend that ideology anymore. There is a difference between the philosophical framework/justification of an ideology and the expected outcome of it...and the reality of that outcome. As you have explained with Anarcho-capitalists. The same can literally be applied to your ideology as well.
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@yotubeification Anarchism as an actual structured ideology never made any damn sense. Whether its Left Anarchism or Right Anarchism; both lead to collapse or to the waiting arms of a ruthless dictatorship.
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@bongard1000 The reality of Communism is that it can never exist at its idealized state. So the reality of Communism is the mass murder-y type we see with the USSR and China. There is a reason no transition EVER occurred. Giving absolute power to any group guarantees that it will never be relinquished.
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