Not quite. The closest example that springs to mind would be the soviets and factory committees following the Russian revolution. Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks made the mistake of abolishing these institutions and established bureaucratic centralism (though they touted it as democratic centralism) instead. They…

You have clearly misunderstood. People keep claiming that Marx’s solutions were not insightful, but I’m pointing out that they clearly haven’t read Marx and are claiming he he offered solutions that he simply did not. He wasn’t “being vague” either, he was avoiding the pitfalls of the utopians.

A couple of people here have been making the case that communism doesn’t have to devolve into authoritarianism, but I haven’t seen a convincing argument why it wouldn’t.

Also, it’s funny how Capitalism is predicated on the idea of endless, exponential growth, something which doesn’t happen in the real world, as entropy is always inevitable. And yet nobody says “Capitalism doesn’t work in the real world.”

I don’t think it’s fair to say this, since pretty much every communist state has had to deal with the US fucking up its steez.

You don’t need a dictatorship or authoritarian government to have a successful socialist government. 

(1) The proletariat would be the obvious answer. The only risk of liquidation is from (mostly outside) reactionary forces, but that is how upheavals go.

Whoops, I did in fact mean to write “social democracies”, not democratic socialism.

You gonna yell at sweat shop workers too, or are you going to admit that there's a system in place that we're forced to participate in if we want medicine and education?

That’s a disingenuous statement. Capitalism is terrible at delivering health care, education, and the general social services that a stable society requires including rural electricity and Internet. Most of the people who we consider to be the greatest thinkers of the past were also independently wealthy, including…

Capitalism has been present for these developments, but that’s simply a matter of the improvement of the productive forces. Due to the predatory nature of capitalism, the development you’re praising has been uneven and disastrous.

What solutions are you referring to? Marx is often criticized for *not* positing many specifics in terms of solutions, which was completely intentional on his part. Before he and Engels put scientific socialism together, most prominent socialists were utopian and only focused on the endpoint.

Scandinavian countries are social democracies crumbling under the weight of neoliberalism, just like America. Democratic socialism entails the social ownership/control of the means of production.

“Communism” can refer to about a dozen radically different forms of economy and government. Democratic socialism is a pretty lightweight form of it and seems to be working pretty great for Scandinavia, with no hint of Stalinism in sight.

It’s almost as if more than one person has input into which stories the A.V. Club posts!

I like the new Doctor’s smile. I know what you’re going to say but not in a sexist “You should smile more” way but in that it expresses a sense of wonder and enthusiasm that I think an entity who experiences the enormity of time and space through new eyes on a semi-regular basis should have. Eccleston had that smile,…

Yes, how dare these fictional characters live above the poverty line

The second episode was so much better than the first -I’m glad it aired immediately after. I laughed all the way through it, and was genuinely moved at a couple of scenes with Darlene’s son. The audience calmed down a little bit too, which was a relief - in the first, I felt like I was watching an episode of Happy…

Really enjoyed both episodes, the second moreso. After initially being introduced to Mark I was worried that stories involving him would be done inelegantly but I loved that each character’s reaction to him going to school dressed however he wanted felt true to Roseanne the show and to each character individually.…