“Democracy sustains capitalism. Capitalism thrives in a democracy. And, right now, we are dealing with, as I called him at my speech on the Ellipse, a tyrant,” she said, referencing her rally last year on the White House Ellipse in Washington. “We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That’s what we’re dealing with right now in Donald Trump. And these titans of industry are not speaking up,”
Except they have actually started seizing parts of businesses. Is that not literally communism? Honest question. Because if it’s not, I don’t know what it is.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini
Although along those lines, The Soviet Union (ie Bolshevism) was alot more fascist than many Leftists are willing to admit.
Short answer is no.
Long Answer: Communism is an economic progression from capitalism where things aren’t produced for profit/money, but for it’s use value to fulfill needs, where private property and capitalists as a class are abolished.
(Partial) State ownership is something that would happen in a period of transition after workers have took over the state and toppled the capitalists (in US case it’d be all the political parties, government and organs serving it), with all of their private property being repurposed to building up the production - it’s what’s called state capitalism or transitory period, not communism or socialism, as things are still being distributed for money, which means markets, etc.
However, capitalist liberal democratic countries can just own stuff. Mussolini’s Italy for instance had owned a large share of factories, countries such as US/UK had nationalized industry during ww2, there’s tons of EU countries right now that have partial ownership in private companies or have complete national ownership of certain companies (mostly transport or broadcasting).
In other words, it’s heavily contextual, not unique to the building of communism, and Trump’s acquisitions if you look a closer look at them are less of “we control you now” and more like US becoming a shareholder like a private individual (they don’t even have the seat at the board apparently) so none of the explanation was relevant and it’s just a weird way of managing some crisis (probably).
It’s communism when the workers seize the means of production. The thing is, this is not a workers’ government.
So the split hairs is that technically it’s not communism because it’s not helping the workers?
This really feels like “no true Scotsman”. The government that workers chose, seized the means of production. This is communism.
It’s not even under the illusion of communism you nonce. So no, it’s not communism.
Might as well call Trump the real “woke librul antifa” if you don’t care about the meaning words.
I guess what @[email protected] is trying to point at is that worker’s don’t truly control the government and so when the current government seizes the means of production it’s closer to a change of hands between different groups of capitalists than anything envisioned by communists.
I’d also like to say that although the government has “seized” 10% of Intel shares for example it has no control over Intel’s decisions. Those shares only provide dividends.
THIS ISNT REAL COMMUNISMM REEEEEEEE
-no shit Sherlock we know it’s not an imaginary classless utopia because I’m still poor
I’m happy you do, others might not be so wise
I’m sure if you guys circle jerk enough of upvotes, maybe you can defeat the authoritarians who are literally openly planning to throw you in a wood chipper.
Question was the history of the USSR what you envisioned as communism because that’s what we’re comparing this to? You understand no one’s thinking about your belief in what communism is right? We are using the term communist to refer to the USSR related propaganda we enjoyed as children. No one cares what your vision of communism looks like and how it compares to the Trump administration ffs. How many of you are going to embarrass yourself stating this strange sentiment
I guess politics is a touchy topic for some.
I don’t know why you are insinuating I’m:
I was just attempting to clear up what OC was getting at, no need to get all worked up over it.
To answer your questions.
Feel free to point out anything I might have gotten wrong, cheers
No that’s totally fair, especially the part about being hard to define. Even Marx struggled with at. USA clearly defined it by its propaganda. Kamala is calling upon that definition. Apologies if I misread your post or your intent
Yeah, I totally get why she said it, just don’t think it’s a good idea to invite red scare tactics into the 21st century.
Btw your civil reply to my comment truly made my day, hope in humanity slightly raised
Look at it this way, she is not inviting it, she is repurposing it. The Republican Party has done a lot of legwork to fearmonger their voters with that term. It is an incredibly powerful and accessible label with the target audience. It’s not like she’s building a new Red scare with this comment, it it’s already here and if you don’t take control of the narrative and the label, the Nazis are going to run circles around us
This is state capitalism. Words have meaning, it’s not “no true Scotsman” simply because you’re using the wrong word.
It’s not “no true Scotsman”, you just have a completely blurred concept of what communism even is. Literally happening under a capitalist economy, with a dictatorship of the bourgeois.
This is part and parcel of fascism by the way: the muddying of discourse itself so terms become meaningless. Everything becomes everything, and nothing all at once. Education is the cure. I’d recommend reading communist texts if you want to learn more of the difference.
It can feel that way when communism isn’t really understood. It’s not communism because it’s still capitalism, explicitly. 10% of shares makes the government insider capital, nothing else, and definitely not communist.
And an honest answer for you: no.
Communism speaks of “seizing the means of production”. The means of production aren’t solely “business”. More core than that, communism speaks of a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Since we are still evidently in a dictatorship of the bourgeois, this move isn’t “communism”. These things don’t get us closer to working people having real power in this country.
State stake or ownership in companies isn’t new by a long shot. Fascist regimes of old also fused and blurred the line between state and private enterprise.
So long story short: this is another muddying of the waters from the two major parties that serve the same interests - profit at the detriment of all else.
My hypothesis is this is Kamala signalling to fascists that she’s not a real enemy, because now she’s calling them something other than what they are, while also aligning herself with the fascists against anyone who’s more left than her politics.
A king in medieval times faces an economic crisis, blames and expels the Jews and seizes all their assets (as was their typical, go-to response).
Is that communism, in your eyes? The government is seizing parts of businesses, after all.
I mean, that’s what I’m asking.
No, it is not. “The government doing stuff” (including seizing property) is not communism. Lots of governments seize property for all sorts of reasons. Another example, when the US was building the transcontinental rail system, there were times when it seized land that was in the path of the planned railway and gave it to the rail companies. If that made a person or system communist, then I don’t think I could name a single non-communist country in all of history.
A communist system can mean either a classless, stateless, moneyless society, the ideal that communists pursue, or it can mean a system run by communists in practice, since most communists would say that such a system cannot be implemented overnight. There is no universal, standard set of policies that makes a system communist, because communists (at least, Marxist-Leninists) believe that policies should be developed based on an analysis of a country’s specific material conditions.
Trump is not seizing parts of businesses because he’s applying some kind of Marxist analysis to conclude that that’s the best way to advance the interests of the proletariat. He’s just taking shit because he wants it and nobody can stop him. At that point, it’s like pointing at two wild animals fighting over a kill and calling them communists.
Communists may be known for nationalizing corporations but that does not mean that anyone who nationalizes a corporation is automatically a communist.
Communism (at least the USSR kind) calls for the state to (among many other things) seize all business, not just a small part of it. Also the government is buying stakes in businesses, not seizing them without compensation. State intervention in the economy isn’t necessarily or even usually communism, and for example it’s something fascists like to do.
So the buisness they seized are now distributing the money earned by the company equally to all its employees?