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I definitely used to say "it sounds great on paper but not in practice" and I didn't actually know why I was saying that
I vividly remember everyone saying this almost in unison in econ class in high school and being confused because it didn't really make any sense. If something is good in theory but bad in practice, you change the theory a bit to make it work, or you explain how the theory clashes with reality and can't be changed to make it not clash. You don't just leave it at "good in theory, bad in practice".
I always had it explained (note I don't believe this now just sharing an additional step some people are given to help them stop thinking) that people are too greedy and will thus fuck up a perfect system. I literally had my HS econ teacher say "Communism would be great, if we were all Spock" lmao.
Makes it real frustrating when people throw that dumb line at me now. Like yeah I used to think that too, then I actually read books.
People who say this have never looked at either the paper or the practice
Not scared, but angry. I grew up with the reality of post-communist Eastern Europe, and with the stories of my parents and grandparents and so on on how idiotically oppressive and broken and corrupt the old totalitarian regime was. It took me a very long time to decouple that from the idea of communism, and to really internalize that someone (a person, a regime, whatever) can say something, use a certain language, but in reality not have much to do with it. Unlike a lot of y'all western kids here, the totalitarian regime has had impact on my life. I still low key get angry when people around here defend some of the worse sides of the USSR and adjacent countries, just so they can show how communist they are.
I've never had any actual conversations about this with her, but my sister-in-law grew up in the aftermath of communist czech and has said that she hates people that are anticapitalist bc they don't know the reality of communism. I'm not really sure what to say to her, but I do feel like you can't judge communism by what it's like after it falls y'know? anyway I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about this
Given how deeply pervesavie and ingrained propaganda used to be, it is very, very difficult for people to separate communism from whatever the regimes back in the day were doing. With the fall of communism, and the advent of capitalism, we did get some things that are pretty important - the freedom to listen to whatever music you want to, to wear whatever clothes you want to, to move around freely, to say bad things about the ruling class, etc. things like that, that it turns out are pretty important for people, and even though by the late years of the regime, the material condition of people wasnt very good, capitalism brought a sense of hope and improvement. People also often fail to undestand how reactionary and conservative these regimes were, lgbtq rights were nonexistent, and being gay or trans seen as mental illness that would require being put in an institution. With all the talk about liberation of women, women were still expected and pushed to do their full on wifely and home duties in addition to working, and sexism, love for hierarchy and so on were (and still are) deeply ingrained. Having someone live through this, have their closed ones taken by the secret police and questioned, cause they watched the Terminator on a bootlegged VHS, or something, having your career path ruined cause a party official didnt like you are things that will sour your experience of the system. And then suddenly being allowed to do all the things you were forbidden. Seeing the objectively greater freedoms the West enjoyed, definitely made it seem like capitalism is much better. The dark side of it would only become apparent later on. And at that time, and to a large extend today as well, these freedoms are seen as inherent to the capitalist system, instead of as actually the results of pushback by the left against it. So the key becomes figuring out how to make someone understand, that secret police, basic rights, jeans and pizza are not things that are inherent to one economic order, or the other, but to the way different bureaucracies work. And it is important to show, that those things were not particular, or inherent to the socialist regimes, that capitalist regimes are using them just as much...
it's still there for sure, it's been ingrained since before we can possibly remember communism = bad, evil, danger
My old History Textbook had a chapter called "Life in a Communist and Fascist State" where they directly compared the two.
yeah, also the phrase "great in theory/on paper bad in practice" echoed through my childhood
yes everyones favorite flawless system that leaves everyone feeling happy and fufilled
the USSR still existed when I was born
same here!
for 9 months anyway
IDK if scared is the right word, but I'd always been told it was "eeevviiillll" and didn't give it much thought, until I did and decided maybe Jeff Bezos head should lose its shoulder and neck privileges, so here we are.
My dad had a copy of the manifesto on our bookshelf. I didn't know much about it and had few preconceptions about the word. Obv there are exceptions, but I think a lot of american people of color don't grow up with the standard anti-communist indoctrination
Forreal, like I don't really know a huge number of black and brown Communists, but the average POC doesn't react violently at just hearing the word "communism".
Dad fled the Soviet Union to the States before I was born, and as such has right wing opinions on pretty much anything except maybe gay people and abortion, buying into the stuff Republicans sell hook line and sinker. Raised in a wealthy place and surrounded by either conservatives or rich liberals, you can imagine how I was brought up. Communist was synonymous with pretty much any historical evil that has happened in the past, and since everyone was comfortable there was nobody around me that challenged that assumption at all.
Took a bit of time to realize my dad, while he had some legitimate grievances with the administration of the late USSR, wasn't as wise as I thought. He acepted the American Dream to the point he refused to believe anyone in the US was disadvantaged in any way from achieving it, even though the only reason he could pull in a decent income was because of a free college education courtesy of the Soviets. He arbitrarily rejected science or news that didn't fit in with what he thought freedom was, and gave passes to American repression, inefficiency and violence that he didn't give to the USSR because it didn't affect him personally. The fact that he admitted that he basically didn't learn any marxist education at all actually helped make me more curious about the theory, though that I didn't really question baseline liberalism until pretty recently.
I've been radicalized relatively recently compared to a lot of you but even now I still have a subconscious stigma around the word communist and communism, I consciously know it's good but every time I hear it or see it or say it my default reaction is "bad" and "scary"
Yeah I'm trying to read theory but it's a bit difficult with my attention span being so shot lol I'll check out Michael Parenti though, I haven't heard of him yet.
thanks fellow ADHDer, used to have a kindle but I lost it years ago, I'm considering getting one of those open source E-Readers if I'm going to get another. Also Audiobooks are great, I'll listen while I play games or while doing work.
yeah if I do get a kindle I'll definitely get it used because fuck amazon
I grew up post fox news. So I've been hearing most of my adult life how everything from abortion to the metric system is communism. My guess is that unless you're one of the people nursing a grudge against librarians, you don't give a shit about the word communism.
than die in my bed of old age.than get shot by some right-wing death squad for owning a car that gets more than 15 mpg or something
I wouldn't say fear but I definitely had the communism bad brainworms, similar to hearing "nazi germany" in terms of moral outrage
Grew up in Ireland in the 2000s. Never heard any red scare propaganda and was instead thought lessons such as "sharing is caring" and "treat thy neighbour as you wish to be treated". The moment I was introduced to communism in secondary school I was interested in it. Certainly was never scared of the word.
