this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
1122 points (96.2% liked)

Memes

49373 readers
1813 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ProbablyBaysean@lemmy.ca 8 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

Well, something that the Mormons have is they tried out communism. They called it the law of consecration. They had some fun times with trying to handle being productive and redistribution and poligamous. They ultimately concluded that they weren't ready for it yet so they went back to default capitalism with tithing and poor/fast offerings.

Tl;dr: Mormons believe in a kind of communism in heaven, and they go hungry for 2 meals (24 hrs) to remember to give generously to the poor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_consecration?wprov=sfla1

[–] meyotch@slrpnk.net 4 points 15 hours ago

‘They’ didn’t decide they weren’t ready. It was used to fleece the pathetic true believers for a short period until the inner circle felt sufficiently capitalized.

[–] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 24 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Heaven was literally [re]invented to be a description of utopia specifically so that toiling workers wouldn't get distracted trying to create it on Earth.

"oooh heaven is a place on earth" take that shit literally, fam

[–] meyotch@slrpnk.net 2 points 15 hours ago

Pie in the sky By and by

[–] follica@lemm.ee 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

That only works when there's no scarcity. Then its up to communists/capitalists/anarchists/dictators how to slice the cake

[–] damnedfurry@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

Yeah, pretty massive fundamental difference, lol.

[–] skozzii@lemmy.ca 33 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's because there are no brown people in their version of heaven.

[–] udc@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

Ah now it all makes sense

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 38 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

The thing to understand about Christianity is that it was originally a reaction against the Roman empire and then got co-opted and integrated into it. As a result, ever since like the 4th century Christianity has been about basically the opposite of what Jesus talked about. It turns out all that stuff about turning the other cheek stops being relevant if the emperor has his soldiers paint crosses on their shields while they're out conquering and enslaving the Gauls. Of course, you can keep all the mythological stuff, who cares, but anything relevant to politics or the material world mysteriously seemed to reverse once they entered the halls of power.

The carrot of being accepted into the empire was matched with the stick that if you didn't go along with the imperial-approved form of Christianity you'd be burned at the stake as a heretic. Any sects still clinging to anti-imperial sentiment get hunted down and exterminated just like when they were being fed to lions, but it's the Christians doing it to each other now, so you don't even have to get your own hands dirty. This approach worked way better at suppressing dissent than just trying to ban Christianity altogether.

Of course, a lot has changed over the centuries. And originally it wasn't perfect or anything either. But imo, it was when Rome Christianized that Christianity Romanized, and ever since its real values have had more to do with Rome than with Jesus. The meme's, "moneyless, classless, stateless" ideal of heaven is a relic of the original teachings that gets shunted off to the purely mythological side, where it not only doesn't matter, but also occupies a place in their brain that could have otherwise been sympathetic to making good things happen in the material world. That's already resolved, there's no need to worry about it, there'll be pie in sky when you die.

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 hours ago

This is why christian fascism should not be the least bit surprising.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 3 points 16 hours ago

Great writeup comrade, I also wanna share this really interesting article from Roland Boer, going over this history a bit, and also outlining the historical intersections of communism and christianity.

[–] Zoboomafoo@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 day ago

They didn't keep the mythological stuff, that got edited out too as needed once it started disagreeing with the State and the Church.

Oh it makes sense now, recuperation is not a capitalist concept, it is an imperialist concept!

[–] Aggravationstation@feddit.uk 8 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

I don't think communism is a moneyless system. Pretty sure people paid money for things in the USSR. Have there been any communist countries without money?

[–] CapriciousDay@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

To understand this you need to understand the theory. Marx outlined that socialism and communism each had to be transitioned to after reaching a given level of social/economic development. In particular there is the notion of "withering away of the state" which would happen after a global revolution, which is the aim of this classless/moniless society they outlined.

The communist manifesto is a short read!

In fact the USSR implemented explicit market policies, a sort of contained capitalism, which was designed to facilitate reaching the necessary preconditions for socialism and communism. Essentially all of the "communist" states we've seen so far have been some play on the notion of just "socialism in one country" in the Marxist-Leninist version of communist parties, who have/had the goal of eventually reaching communism.

What's probably most interesting is that the idea behind the USSR wasn't initially to have the state direct everything from the top, but in fact to facilitate worker councils (soviets) to direct their workplaces.

But you have to remember this all happened in the context of a state which had recently undergone a revolution, was rife with counterrevolutonary action (see revolutionary France and civil war Britain to see how this played out during the birth of liberalism) and was then plunged into WW2 where most states involved were acting fairly dictatorially for the duration of it. Followed shortly by the US making it an explicit goal to prevent world communism through e.g. CIA intervention because they feared "domino theory"

[–] aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee 26 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Yes, which is why the USSR never once in its history claimed to have built communism. The best they claimed was "developed socialism" with promises to build Communism someday

[–] veeloth@lemm.ee 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

something that I don't get about communism: how do you prevent people from redistributing their wealth unequally over time?

I don't really have any politic views because the discourse on it is so big and the issues so complex, but lean more towards socialism

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 7 points 12 hours ago

By the time we reach Communism, that is, the Marxist vision of a fully publicly owned and planned world economy, distribution of wealth will likely be based on need. There is no necessity for equal wealth, as humans have very unequal needs. Equal ownership of property is certified through public ownership.

If you're asking what's preventing someone from starting a business, it would be the sheer difficulties of actually starting one that can compete with the highly developed productive forces in the rest of the economy. Communism isn't so much about outlawing private property, as developing beyond it.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 14 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Communism is a post-Socialist society, it must be global, highly developed, and have full public ownership, or close enough to those. The Soviet Union was, instead, Socialist, ie an economy where public ownership is the principle aspect. That being said, there were attempts at Cybernetics, and moving beyond money. These are actually incredibly interesting, and anyone interested in Socialism should look into those attempts.

If you want to learn more about Socialism and Communism, I recommend checking out my introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list.

[–] carrion0409@lemm.ee 4 points 22 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 22 hours ago

I do be mentioning Marx

[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 30 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And no one has to work, they are provided with everything they need. Almost like a universal basic income or something.

[–] vga@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

More like post-scarcity. I don't think even the wildest leftist thinks we're quite there yet.

[–] kugel7c@feddit.org 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

On calories housing and most everyday things we are post scarcity if we ignore distribution. In fact we over commission and under deliver all these things. We over produce food by a factor of around 1.5, housing is much less transferable but even there we're unbelievably wastefull, energy is basically the only thing that isn't outright overproduced but really only because when we have cheap energy we just tend to use it, often to produce more stuff.

So imo we are by bookkeeping standards post scarcity, delivery/distribution is just fucked and partially because of that we are creating tons of waste.

We could all live in comfort and those who want to could work less, and none of this would break. The real world economy(things, energy, housing , food, water, logistics capabilities...) is so large and secure it could support the world population. If not for the barriers and assumptions, the intrinsic I've got mine fuck you of the systems.

For me that is being there, and I hope that even if you can't agree on that point, it at least illustrates that we are incredibly close to post scarcity.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 3 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I actually take a critical eye to the word "work" itself and think that it's too encompassing a term. In our society it's a blanket word that covers all labor. From punitive, fruitless toil all the way up to invigorating, actualizing applications of trained skill. Lots of what we call "work" are actually things we could want for ourselves in a utopia and would miss without, while IRL we're currently on the crest of an economic trend in which the majority of society are trapped in ultimately meaningless and forgettable toil under wage coercion. Literally just being kept occupied and oppressed.

Put very simply I think you can slice our current idea of what work is into two halves, work that removes happiness from ourselves and society and work that adds happiness to ourselves and society. As utopians I think a society that contains only the latter is a reasonable prize to keep our eyes on.

[–] blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io 48 points 1 day ago

The description of the first primitive church in Jerusalem is very close to an ideal anarchist commune.

load more comments
view more: next ›