I come in peace, no point in arguing. Just a different perspective.
Now you could argue you always need somebody in control, fair point (though some anarchists would argue with this). BUT as Tony Benn said,
"In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.
Karl Marx denied being a Marxist. He mostly called himself a Democrat. His inspiration for his whole PHILOSOPHICAL analysis was, the Paris commune where directors of the means of production were elected and D selectable by the people.
Russia was never communist, possibly socialist (socialism, some argued, was a period of transformation from the capitalist society, a society where the means of production are controlled by the top 1%, be that the bureaucratic Russian top 1% in the USSR or the privately owned 1% in the West. In either case there is still 1% at the top of society who own and control, or just control as in the case of Russia, the means of production, that the people "cannot get rid of".
It is taught in schools that Russia was state capitalism,
the West has private capitalism, but at the end of the day they are both capitalism, and neither is communism. Communism, is a transformation in what Marx called "the social relationships". And it was fundamentally for Mark about whether 1% control society, or society control the 1%. Or at least in the modern day, the direction in which the 1% drags us.
Whether this is possible or not is another discussion. I don't think it is, I think the right-wing have won all the arguments and the left virtually doesn't exist any longer. But, the right-wing have won the arguments fighting straw men.
If you really want to attack communism you have to attack democracy.
Another thing that needs to be pointed out in any truthful discussion is this;
Is state capitalism completely inferior to private capitalism? The USSR inferior to the USA?
In the period of the birth of the USSR, Russia went from a backward none capitalist monarchal society that couldn't even put laces in the boots of soldiers, to the world number 2 superpower. The 1st 1 into space. China, is a massive economic superpower.
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