Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

We should just treat these so called communism as monarch communism, because every practical communism end up being having a monarch.

This is different from ideal communism or let's just call it fantasy communism. Because the ideal form of communism where everyone is equal and nice never happened and will probably never happen



[flagged]


> In other words, if you tried to "do a communism", you'd either be carpet bombed (or more likely have a fascist coup funded against you) by the US, or you'd be made an offer you can't refuse by the Soviet Union. The inevitable outcome of this was that the only "communist experiments" that were able to grow in that era of history were ones that instantly aligned with the Soviet Union or that were sufficiently non-threatening and irrelevant to both sides (and thus likely never showed up on your radar).

This isn't true, and many communist countries were openly hostile to the USSR. Yugoslavia went it's own way, China split with the USSR and had a war, Albania sided with China against the USSR, the Khmer Rouge were hostile to the USSR, North Korea tried to position themselves between the USSR and China. Even many countries that were aligned with the USSR weren't controlled by them (for example, Vietnam and Laos).


Saying "this isn't true" and then listing a bunch of countries which either explicitly sided with China, were aligned with USSR "but not controlled by them" or that literally have Wikipedia articles called "$Country-Soviet split" is a bit silly. I never said that they were vassal states. I said they instantly aligned with the Soviet Union or had to be irrelevant to both sides. Albania, China and Yugoslavia are "counter-examples" only in that they were initially aligned with the Soviet Union but then deviated from it.

The Sino-Soviet split pretty much occurred because the Soviet Union itself deviated from Stalinism and Mao didn't like that. China only got away with that because like the USSR it was extremely large and powerful. It literally split off to become a third superpower and its ideology was functionally indistinguishable from the Soviet Union with regard to its ability to achieve the supposed outcome of communism and its insistence on giving all power to the state in the meantime.

Albania initially sided with Mao in order to split from the Soviet Union because much like Mao, Hoxha disagreed with post-Stalinist reviosionism in the USSR. Its split with China in turn was the result of China's embrace of liberal market reforms under Deng, i.e. another round of revisionism.

Yugoslavia only survived its break with the Soviet Union because it (like China post-Mao) opened itself up to the US. However Yugoslavia's "communist" origins are directly tied to the Soviet Union, it's still downstream from Marxism-Leninism.

The Khmer Rouge were also downstream of Marxism-Leninism and directly funded by China. Vietnam is probably the most ridiculous example you could have thought of given that the entire Vietnam War was a thing (and Ho Chi Minh Thought is also of course downstream from Marxism-Leninism). Likewise North Korea with the Korea War and it nowadays pretty much only existing at the behest of China (its only serious ally).

I'm not sure what you were going for but if you wanted to disprove "if you tried to 'do a communism' you had to align with the Soviet Union or be bombed by the United States" the only thing you've accomplished is adding the nuance that you had to either align with the Soviet Union or, post Sino-Soviet split, China. The point remains that unless you were somehow compatible with Marxist-Leninism in one of its many forms, you were on your own against the United States and its economic geopolitical interests.


> A state exists to enforce private property claims by the few against the many.

And to defend the state's citizens & territory against outside threats. And to enforce some system of justice against those who break the group's laws & taboos (e.g. murder).


You don't need to do a state to do either of those things.

Arming and teaching every resident how to defend themselves and each other and how to organize a resistance against invaders is entirely sufficient to "defend against outside threats" and requires less firepower than a standing army capable of achieving the same (especially against, say, the United States). Of course having a geography that makes a land invasion difficult is a plus, historically.

You don't need a carceral system or police force to "deal with" internal problems either. It might be worth looking into the concept of Transformative Justice (which is distinct from Restorative Justice). I recall a historical example of a culture in which when a "crime" happened, the community would gather and instead of expressing their grievances and the harm of the criminal's actions, the group would give examples for positive things the accused had done in the past. The idea being that the act must have been an aberration, not a defining trait of their character. It was then the offender's mission to demonstrate they were the better person they had been in the past.

Of course a lot of "crimes" that exist in legal systems only exist because of hierarchical control (e.g. most offenses committed out of jealousy/impotence), desperation in inequality (e.g. most offenses commited for financial benefit) and lack of support structures (e.g. most drug-related offenses). "Murder" doesn't really exist in isolation and it's absurd that we should treat it as such.


> Lastly free market economies evidently favor monopolisation

Not really. The "monopolies" aren't, unless the government props them up by outlawing competition.


[flagged]


I'm literally an anarchist. Calling anyone left of the US Democrats a "tankie" makes you sound like the person annoying helpdesk by continuously referring to anything with a cable on it as "the computer".

Heck, you could have read the first sentence of the Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

> Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to communists who express support for one-party communist regimes that are associated with Marxism–Leninism, whether contemporary or historical.

I also literally gave you examples for "fantasy communism materializing" (of course none of them meet the strawman of "everyone is equal and peaceful" because that's not in any definition of communism outside maybe a PragerU video).




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: