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If you tell me that you believe in democracy, does it make sense for me to accuse you of supporting the horrors perpetrated by USA in Vietnam, all of latin Amer

If you tell me that you believe in democracy, does it make sense for me to accuse you of supporting the horrors perpetrated by USA in Vietnam, all of latin America and the middle east? Soviet union and CCP were never communist, they used the term communism for propaganda purposes. Communism stands for workers owning the means of production. Your local labor union is more communist than the CCP. The collectively owned Amul dairy(India)[1] is more communist than the Soviet union. Communism at a state level has never existed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul

harpiaharpyja 4y ago
Look, whatever it is you believe, just as a practical matter you really should find a new way to identify yourself to others, because that name has been tarnished.
mickdeek86 4y ago
From my reading of your link, Amul is a agricultural cooperative. Strictly speaking, this is not communism, which calls for State (supposedly 'the People') ownership of the means. Amul is more like Distributism, the doctrine of locality of ownership and political representation and the economic doctrine of the Catholic Church. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
- random314 4y ago
  I have already stated that state communism does not exist anywhere. In any case, a communist state is supposed to be a utopian state that MIGHT eventually emerge. The defining feature of a communist collective is that workers own the means of production. This was achieved successfully for milk production in India with legal protections to prevent financialization such as IPOs for Amul India. This is the largest example (I could find) of a collective organization successfully implementing the concept of workers owning the means of production, so successful that India went from a milk deficit state to the largest milk producer in the world leapfrogging the United states by 3X. You can nit pick on semantics, on how much the state should be involved and how this example is not valid but the "great leap forward " is etc. but the defining feature of communism is workers owning the means of production. This is well understood and is in the first line of its wikipedia definition. You can stretch the essence of the definition to include various other clauses or Soviets etc, so that you might have an angle of attack against the concept of communism. I leave you to that, but I think I have made my point. Distributism and communism seems to have considerable overlap. If you are averse to the term communism, go ahead and call it distributism. I won't be a pedant and argue that Amul is not distributism in action because no Pope/church is involved. Another example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shri_Mahila_Griha_Udyog_Lijjat_Papad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shri_Mahila_Griha_Udyog_Lijjat...
  - mickdeek86 4y ago
    The defining feature of Communism is the State owns everything in a classless society. I invite you to consult any reference. The difference is not semantic; it is a completely different system. What you are talking about is not Communism by any definition, including Marx's. You may as well have said 'coprophagia'. Distributism is a concept - not a system of government - which has been expressed for a long time through agricultural cooperatives, owned jointly by it's member farmers and workers and not 'the People' (ie the State), such as Amul, or the corn growers cooperatives in my native Midwest. It isn't specifically Catholic, it just happens to be largely Catholic workers who have participated. See the afore-cited Mondragon Corporation, larger even than Amul, or the Argentine factory workers declaring ownership of the factories in which they worked, during their financial crisis a couple of decades ago.
    - random314 4y ago
      > The defining feature of Communism is the State owns everything in a classless society. I invite you to consult any reference. The difference is not semantic; it is a completely different system. What you are talking about is not Communism by any definition, including Marx's. You may as well have said 'coprophagia'. This is absolutely incorrect. It is obvious you yourself haven't consulted any reference whatsoever. Communism aims for a stateless society. From the very first line in wikipedia "Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal')[1][2] is a far-left[3][4][5] sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement[1] whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange—allocating products to everyone in the society.[6][7][8] It also involves the absence of social classes, money,[9] and the state.[10][11][12]" And even as a colloquialism it is well known that Communism means that "the workers own the means of production". Further https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_society "Some political philosophies, particularly anarchism, consider the state an unwelcome institution and stateless societies the ideal, while Marxism considers that in a post-capitalist society the state would be unnecessary and wither away. " Your statement about Marx and Communism is clearly absolutely false. The utopian Marxist communist society is stateless. The only purpose of a state like entity in a Marxist society is to hold democratic elections to arrive at consensus, in particular the state-analogous entity cannot bear any weapons or use violence and judges and courts will be democratically elected and not run by "professionals" (aka bourgeoisie). This is explicitly described as a utopian society. > See the afore-cited Mondragon Corporation, larger even than Amul, Simple yes/no question - do the workers own the means of production in Mondragon? > It isn't specifically Catholic Of course, I explicitly said that I was being pedantic. I only said that to hold a mirror to your pedantry, where you refuse to acknowledge that workers owning the means of production is the defining characteristic of a communist collective. Instead, you go off on tangents about how marx himself said that a communist society implies centralized state power, which is clearly false. It is infact the opposite.

harpiaharpyja 4y ago

Look, whatever it is you believe, just as a practical matter you really should find a new way to identify yourself to others, because that name has been tarnished.

mickdeek86 4y ago

From my reading of your link, Amul is a agricultural cooperative. Strictly speaking, this is not communism, which calls for State (supposedly 'the People') ownership of the means. Amul is more like Distributism, the doctrine of locality of ownership and political representation and the economic doctrine of the Catholic Church. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

random314 4y ago
I have already stated that state communism does not exist anywhere. In any case, a communist state is supposed to be a utopian state that MIGHT eventually emerge. The defining feature of a communist collective is that workers own the means of production. This was achieved successfully for milk production in India with legal protections to prevent financialization such as IPOs for Amul India. This is the largest example (I could find) of a collective organization successfully implementing the concept of workers owning the means of production, so successful that India went from a milk deficit state to the largest milk producer in the world leapfrogging the United states by 3X. You can nit pick on semantics, on how much the state should be involved and how this example is not valid but the "great leap forward " is etc. but the defining feature of communism is workers owning the means of production. This is well understood and is in the first line of its wikipedia definition. You can stretch the essence of the definition to include various other clauses or Soviets etc, so that you might have an angle of attack against the concept of communism. I leave you to that, but I think I have made my point. Distributism and communism seems to have considerable overlap. If you are averse to the term communism, go ahead and call it distributism. I won't be a pedant and argue that Amul is not distributism in action because no Pope/church is involved. Another example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shri_Mahila_Griha_Udyog_Lijjat_Papad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shri_Mahila_Griha_Udyog_Lijjat...
- mickdeek86 4y ago
  The defining feature of Communism is the State owns everything in a classless society. I invite you to consult any reference. The difference is not semantic; it is a completely different system. What you are talking about is not Communism by any definition, including Marx's. You may as well have said 'coprophagia'. Distributism is a concept - not a system of government - which has been expressed for a long time through agricultural cooperatives, owned jointly by it's member farmers and workers and not 'the People' (ie the State), such as Amul, or the corn growers cooperatives in my native Midwest. It isn't specifically Catholic, it just happens to be largely Catholic workers who have participated. See the afore-cited Mondragon Corporation, larger even than Amul, or the Argentine factory workers declaring ownership of the factories in which they worked, during their financial crisis a couple of decades ago.
  - random314 4y ago
    > The defining feature of Communism is the State owns everything in a classless society. I invite you to consult any reference. The difference is not semantic; it is a completely different system. What you are talking about is not Communism by any definition, including Marx's. You may as well have said 'coprophagia'. This is absolutely incorrect. It is obvious you yourself haven't consulted any reference whatsoever. Communism aims for a stateless society. From the very first line in wikipedia "Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal')[1][2] is a far-left[3][4][5] sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement[1] whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange—allocating products to everyone in the society.[6][7][8] It also involves the absence of social classes, money,[9] and the state.[10][11][12]" And even as a colloquialism it is well known that Communism means that "the workers own the means of production". Further https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_society "Some political philosophies, particularly anarchism, consider the state an unwelcome institution and stateless societies the ideal, while Marxism considers that in a post-capitalist society the state would be unnecessary and wither away. " Your statement about Marx and Communism is clearly absolutely false. The utopian Marxist communist society is stateless. The only purpose of a state like entity in a Marxist society is to hold democratic elections to arrive at consensus, in particular the state-analogous entity cannot bear any weapons or use violence and judges and courts will be democratically elected and not run by "professionals" (aka bourgeoisie). This is explicitly described as a utopian society. > See the afore-cited Mondragon Corporation, larger even than Amul, Simple yes/no question - do the workers own the means of production in Mondragon? > It isn't specifically Catholic Of course, I explicitly said that I was being pedantic. I only said that to hold a mirror to your pedantry, where you refuse to acknowledge that workers owning the means of production is the defining characteristic of a communist collective. Instead, you go off on tangents about how marx himself said that a communist society implies centralized state power, which is clearly false. It is infact the opposite.