I am not so knowledgeable so forgive my ignorance, but why do most communist States have this knack for massive intelligence gathering on its own citizens? Are the concepts of personal privacy with freedom and working towards collective good so mutually exclusive?
Again this is not sarcastic, I genuinely wish to know.
PS I also hate capitalism from the core of my guts.
It’s less that Communist States have massive intelligence networks on their own populace because they are Communist, and more that states kinda just do that. American privacy violations are horrifying.
The “difference” largely comes from bourgeois media overplaying the bad elements and underplaying the good elements of Communist projects, while downplaying the bad elements and overplaying the good elements of Capitalist projects.
Combine this with the widespread fact that the US intentionally infiltrates and destabilizes states that even flirt with Socialism in the Global South, with hundreds of assassination attempts on figures like Castro, and it starts to seem more reasonable.
Media nah leave it, advertising I’d absolutely be down for. Advertising and Marketing are essentially the science of tricking our brains, and when that lever is exposed to capital you get enshittification and misery.
Are the concepts of freedom and working towards collective good so mutually exclusive?
Not necessarily, and I also disagree with the commenter above that without the USA suddenly the world would be singing kumbaya.
The problem was dictators seizing power in turbulent times. In Russia, Stalin abolished the soviets (A.K.A worker’s councils, kinda like mega unions) in the Soviet union. I think that says a lot.
In Romania (I’m a bit better equipped to talk about this one), things were a bit different.
The original communist government (1945) was essentially a Russian puppet state that drained the wealth of Romania via war reparations. Stalinist purges happened often during this period.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Romania got a degree of independence and things were actually looking up. Society in general (infant mortality, gender equality, literacy, standard of living, etc) were all improving rapidly without Russia draining us and making decisions for us, and we didn’t have a surveilance state of the scale that would come later. This was a period marked by political battles between the liberal communists and the Stalinist communists for control, with Stalinists commiting some pretty horrible atrocities (if you want nightmare fuel for some reason, look up the Pitesti experiment).
Then, 1965, Ceacescu took power. During his early years, he actually looked like a liberal (EDIT: Just to be clear: I mean a liberal communist. This means more individual freedom for citizens in a communist economy). He allowed some emigration, some free speech, and even spoke out about the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. This, at the start, did not look like a typical authoritarian communist state. Unfortunately, Inspired by the “amazing” society of North Korea in 1971, he started to make changes in the structure of society to be more like it, which included an expanded Securitate. 2 years later, harsh austerity policies to repay foreign loans led to a massive drop in living conditions, which led to riots, which led to crackdowns. Things rapidly spiralled, and the Securitate were given more and more power to keep control.
This then became the police state that everybody thinks of when they think of communism. A combination of too much power in 1 person’s hands, an authoritarian imperialist overlord (Russia), and rising backlash against dropping living conditions.
In Russia, Stalin abolished the soviets (A.K.A worker’s councils, kinda like mega unions) in the Soviet union.
Are you referring to the constitution of 1936, which established 4 layers of representative councils (local, regional, national, union) as Stalin dissolving the Soviets?
why do you think that is worse
why do you blame it on Stalin? Seems like a thing that was written and implemented pretty democratically.
No, I’m not talking about the 1936 constitution. I meant specifically the disempowerment of local and union soviets.
I’m no expert on Russian history, so I may be misinformed about this, but as far as I understand it he put in place a series of reforms that stripped power from the local level and empowered the central committee.
This is partially true. Issues arose from trying to marry central planning with localized production, so there were a series of reforms that shifted the balance of control. This didn’t end worker representation, it was a major shift that changed its form as the USSR industrialized and grew beyond where it once was.
Was it perfect and entirely democratic? No. Was it far more democratic than Capitalism? Absolutely, without question.
Shifted power in the sense of the local branches were federated within the same structure now, but honestly that seems more accountable and democratic?
“we didn’t have a surveilance state of the scale that would come later”
For all of you that preach communism please make an imagination exercise just for a minute and imagine what kind of Authoritarianism you ask for when you will have a neverseen kind of Technological Communism, using current available surveillance technology (in place) like your smartphone for example (which I know a lot of people don’t know what is its real use…)
Thank you all for the valuable insight. I can’t reply to everybody individually so I am replying as a collective. From what I can surmise, basically, the state becomes the sort of mega Corp that capitalism inevitably breeds and data mining becomes legal as you are the law and data mining is necessary to hold power and prevent further revolutions.
It makes me wonder, how do new economic models come to be? Does it always have to be Einsteinian, that one man is a genius, or can economics do collective progress like modern science. Obviously economics has more artificial hurdles to overcome, but we should have something better by now when we know that both systems suck. I don’t know, I am just a random guy on the internet
BTW, correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that the root cause of these problems is one human having enough power to decide life and death of another human. Like maybe due to our origin by subjugation of other species, but people holding power over other people is creating a huge crap fest. Plus there is the worst inequality of all… Inequality of BIRTH.
Honestly,i dont know, most dystopias come about because of some persons dream of utopia.
Because once the dictatorship of the proletariat is installed it needs to defend itself from counter revolutionaries who want to reinstate class inequality. Actually similarly to how the US and other capitalist states are heavily surveilling and infiltrating communist and other anti capitalist groups in- and outside of their own countries.
Basically when you do a socialist revolution your national bourgeoisie and international bourgeoisie are willing to crush it through any means necessary. You unfortunately have to use the machinery of the state to protect from bourgeois subversion, or you get shit like Indonesia, Chile, overthrow of the USSR through executive coup, etc.
I am not so knowledgeable so forgive my ignorance, but why do most communist States have this knack for massive intelligence gathering on its own citizens? Are the concepts of personal privacy with freedom and working towards collective good so mutually exclusive?
Again this is not sarcastic, I genuinely wish to know.
PS I also hate capitalism from the core of my guts.
Corporations have this knack too. Everybody in power does. It’s just that one privately owned corporation can only reach so far.
It’s less that Communist States have massive intelligence networks on their own populace because they are Communist, and more that states kinda just do that. American privacy violations are horrifying.
The “difference” largely comes from bourgeois media overplaying the bad elements and underplaying the good elements of Communist projects, while downplaying the bad elements and overplaying the good elements of Capitalist projects.
Combine this with the widespread fact that the US intentionally infiltrates and destabilizes states that even flirt with Socialism in the Global South, with hundreds of assassination attempts on figures like Castro, and it starts to seem more reasonable.
Indeed Communists never manipulated the media… Jesus!
Did I at any point say they didn’t? I was explaining why that happens, lmao.
Knowing the why means that one sane person would not want to do the same mistake again if (s)he learned the lesson in the first place…
hope you get what I’m saying…
What “same mistakes?” Capitalism? Yes, I agree, we should abolish it and progress towards Socialism.
Literally everyone uses the media that way, media always has bias and if you’re ignorant to it you should be more wary.
Maybe it is time to start abolishing media and advertising in the first place…
*I bet a lot of those downvoting work in advertising/media… No pun intended.
Media nah leave it, advertising I’d absolutely be down for. Advertising and Marketing are essentially the science of tricking our brains, and when that lever is exposed to capital you get enshittification and misery.
Media is advertising 🙂
All advertising is media, not all media is advertising 🤷♂️
Nah, the issue is capitalist control of it.
LMAO
Not necessarily, and I also disagree with the commenter above that without the USA suddenly the world would be singing kumbaya.
The problem was dictators seizing power in turbulent times. In Russia, Stalin abolished the soviets (A.K.A worker’s councils, kinda like mega unions) in the Soviet union. I think that says a lot.
In Romania (I’m a bit better equipped to talk about this one), things were a bit different.
The original communist government (1945) was essentially a Russian puppet state that drained the wealth of Romania via war reparations. Stalinist purges happened often during this period.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Romania got a degree of independence and things were actually looking up. Society in general (infant mortality, gender equality, literacy, standard of living, etc) were all improving rapidly without Russia draining us and making decisions for us, and we didn’t have a surveilance state of the scale that would come later. This was a period marked by political battles between the liberal communists and the Stalinist communists for control, with Stalinists commiting some pretty horrible atrocities (if you want nightmare fuel for some reason, look up the Pitesti experiment).
Then, 1965, Ceacescu took power. During his early years, he actually looked like a liberal (EDIT: Just to be clear: I mean a liberal communist. This means more individual freedom for citizens in a communist economy). He allowed some emigration, some free speech, and even spoke out about the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. This, at the start, did not look like a typical authoritarian communist state. Unfortunately, Inspired by the “amazing” society of North Korea in 1971, he started to make changes in the structure of society to be more like it, which included an expanded Securitate. 2 years later, harsh austerity policies to repay foreign loans led to a massive drop in living conditions, which led to riots, which led to crackdowns. Things rapidly spiralled, and the Securitate were given more and more power to keep control.
This then became the police state that everybody thinks of when they think of communism. A combination of too much power in 1 person’s hands, an authoritarian imperialist overlord (Russia), and rising backlash against dropping living conditions.
Are you referring to the constitution of 1936, which established 4 layers of representative councils (local, regional, national, union) as Stalin dissolving the Soviets?
why do you think that is worse
why do you blame it on Stalin? Seems like a thing that was written and implemented pretty democratically.
No, I’m not talking about the 1936 constitution. I meant specifically the disempowerment of local and union soviets.
I’m no expert on Russian history, so I may be misinformed about this, but as far as I understand it he put in place a series of reforms that stripped power from the local level and empowered the central committee.
This is partially true. Issues arose from trying to marry central planning with localized production, so there were a series of reforms that shifted the balance of control. This didn’t end worker representation, it was a major shift that changed its form as the USSR industrialized and grew beyond where it once was.
Was it perfect and entirely democratic? No. Was it far more democratic than Capitalism? Absolutely, without question.
Shifted power in the sense of the local branches were federated within the same structure now, but honestly that seems more accountable and democratic?
“we didn’t have a surveilance state of the scale that would come later”
For all of you that preach communism please make an imagination exercise just for a minute and imagine what kind of Authoritarianism you ask for when you will have a neverseen kind of Technological Communism, using current available surveillance technology (in place) like your smartphone for example (which I know a lot of people don’t know what is its real use…)
*Multumesc Tovarasi!
Thank you all for the valuable insight. I can’t reply to everybody individually so I am replying as a collective. From what I can surmise, basically, the state becomes the sort of mega Corp that capitalism inevitably breeds and data mining becomes legal as you are the law and data mining is necessary to hold power and prevent further revolutions.
It makes me wonder, how do new economic models come to be? Does it always have to be Einsteinian, that one man is a genius, or can economics do collective progress like modern science. Obviously economics has more artificial hurdles to overcome, but we should have something better by now when we know that both systems suck. I don’t know, I am just a random guy on the internet
BTW, correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that the root cause of these problems is one human having enough power to decide life and death of another human. Like maybe due to our origin by subjugation of other species, but people holding power over other people is creating a huge crap fest. Plus there is the worst inequality of all… Inequality of BIRTH.
Honestly,i dont know, most dystopias come about because of some persons dream of utopia.
Because once the dictatorship of the proletariat is installed it needs to defend itself from counter revolutionaries who want to reinstate class inequality. Actually similarly to how the US and other capitalist states are heavily surveilling and infiltrating communist and other anti capitalist groups in- and outside of their own countries.
Basically when you do a socialist revolution your national bourgeoisie and international bourgeoisie are willing to crush it through any means necessary. You unfortunately have to use the machinery of the state to protect from bourgeois subversion, or you get shit like Indonesia, Chile, overthrow of the USSR through executive coup, etc.
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