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“Democracy sustains capitalism. Capitalism thrives in a democracy. And, right now, we are dealing with, as I called him at my speech on the Ellipse, a tyrant,” she said, referencing her rally last year on the White House Ellipse in Washington. “We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That’s what we’re dealing with right now in Donald Trump. And these titans of industry are not speaking up,”

  • Omega@lemmy.world
    315·
    5 hours ago

    Except they have actually started seizing parts of businesses. Is that not literally communism? Honest question. Because if it’s not, I don’t know what it is.

    • degen@midwest.socialEnglish
      19·
      5 hours ago

      It’s communism when the workers seize the means of production. The thing is, this is not a workers’ government.

      • Omega@lemmy.world
        213·
        5 hours ago

        So the split hairs is that technically it’s not communism because it’s not helping the workers?

        This really feels like “no true Scotsman”. The government that workers chose, seized the means of production. This is communism.

        • Ruxias@lemmy.world
          2·
          2 hours ago

          It’s not “no true Scotsman”, you just have a completely blurred concept of what communism even is. Literally happening under a capitalist economy, with a dictatorship of the bourgeois.

          This is part and parcel of fascism by the way: the muddying of discourse itself so terms become meaningless. Everything becomes everything, and nothing all at once. Education is the cure. I’d recommend reading communist texts if you want to learn more of the difference.

        • Quokka@quokk.auEnglish
          1·
          1 hour ago

          This is state capitalism. Words have meaning, it’s not “no true Scotsman” simply because you’re using the wrong word.

        • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          4 hours ago

          It’s not even under the illusion of communism you nonce. So no, it’s not communism.

          Might as well call Trump the real “woke librul antifa” if you don’t care about the meaning words.

        • mitram@sopuli.xyz
          8·
          4 hours ago

          I guess what @degen@midwest.social is trying to point at is that worker’s don’t truly control the government and so when the current government seizes the means of production it’s closer to a change of hands between different groups of capitalists than anything envisioned by communists.

          I’d also like to say that although the government has “seized” 10% of Intel shares for example it has no control over Intel’s decisions. Those shares only provide dividends.

          • TronBronson@lemmy.world
            1·
            4 hours ago

            Question was the history of the USSR what you envisioned as communism because that’s what we’re comparing this to? You understand no one’s thinking about your belief in what communism is right? We are using the term communist to refer to the USSR related propaganda we enjoyed as children. No one cares what your vision of communism looks like and how it compares to the Trump administration ffs. How many of you are going to embarrass yourself stating this strange sentiment

            • mitram@sopuli.xyz
              3·
              3 hours ago

              I guess politics is a touchy topic for some.

              I don’t know why you are insinuating I’m:

              1. Agreeing with the original commenter (OC)
              2. Communist

              I was just attempting to clear up what OC was getting at, no need to get all worked up over it.

              To answer your questions.

              1. The USSR never achieved what I understand to be communism
              2. I understand it’s uncommon to actually comprehend what political terms mean, heck I struggle quite a bit, but that’s why all who read the definitions must, as politely as possible, spread to others what they learnt. In this case what Harris should have said is a dictator period, at most a capitalist one.

              Feel free to point out anything I might have gotten wrong, cheers

          • TronBronson@lemmy.world
            23·
            4 hours ago

            THIS ISNT REAL COMMUNISMM REEEEEEEE

            -no shit Sherlock we know it’s not an imaginary classless utopia because I’m still poor

        • degen@midwest.socialEnglish
          2·
          4 hours ago

          It can feel that way when communism isn’t really understood. It’s not communism because it’s still capitalism, explicitly. 10% of shares makes the government insider capital, nothing else, and definitely not communist.

    • Ruxias@lemmy.world
      8·
      5 hours ago

      And an honest answer for you: no.

      Communism speaks of “seizing the means of production”. The means of production aren’t solely “business”. More core than that, communism speaks of a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Since we are still evidently in a dictatorship of the bourgeois, this move isn’t “communism”. These things don’t get us closer to working people having real power in this country.

      State stake or ownership in companies isn’t new by a long shot. Fascist regimes of old also fused and blurred the line between state and private enterprise.

      So long story short: this is another muddying of the waters from the two major parties that serve the same interests - profit at the detriment of all else.

      My hypothesis is this is Kamala signalling to fascists that she’s not a real enemy, because now she’s calling them something other than what they are, while also aligning herself with the fascists against anyone who’s more left than her politics.

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
      1·
      3 hours ago

      A king in medieval times faces an economic crisis, blames and expels the Jews and seizes all their assets (as was their typical, go-to response).

      Is that communism, in your eyes? The government is seizing parts of businesses, after all.

        • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
          2·
          1 hour ago

          No, it is not. “The government doing stuff” (including seizing property) is not communism. Lots of governments seize property for all sorts of reasons. Another example, when the US was building the transcontinental rail system, there were times when it seized land that was in the path of the planned railway and gave it to the rail companies. If that made a person or system communist, then I don’t think I could name a single non-communist country in all of history.

          A communist system can mean either a classless, stateless, moneyless society, the ideal that communists pursue, or it can mean a system run by communists in practice, since most communists would say that such a system cannot be implemented overnight. There is no universal, standard set of policies that makes a system communist, because communists (at least, Marxist-Leninists) believe that policies should be developed based on an analysis of a country’s specific material conditions.

          Trump is not seizing parts of businesses because he’s applying some kind of Marxist analysis to conclude that that’s the best way to advance the interests of the proletariat. He’s just taking shit because he wants it and nobody can stop him. At that point, it’s like pointing at two wild animals fighting over a kill and calling them communists.

          Communists may be known for nationalizing corporations but that does not mean that anyone who nationalizes a corporation is automatically a communist.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
      2·
      4 hours ago

      Communism (at least the USSR kind) calls for the state to (among many other things) seize all business, not just a small part of it. Also the government is buying stakes in businesses, not seizing them without compensation. State intervention in the economy isn’t necessarily or even usually communism, and for example it’s something fascists like to do.