i go out of my way to experience different cultures and it seems like the immigrant communities in the united states originating from communist countries tend to be some of the chuddiest people imaginable. chinese, russian, cuban, vietnamese. literally every person who i ever talked to that has lived in a communist country and then moved to the united states, or is like second or third generation from that, tends to be incredibly reactionary and anti communist. i feel like i am a more well versed communist when talking to people that lived in a communist country.
its like that everyone that comes to the united states from a communist country forgets the values of marxism, socialism, and communism. i have been too polite to ask what really made these people move to this fucking shithole and if i had to guess they have something severely wrong with them and they want to participate in some small business tyrany and become capitalists. like all these assholes be chasing the dollar and they bring great shame on their own nationality even being here.
i have had much better discussions with people from countries that are still being exploited by capitalists since they already have an understanding of what colonialism and capitalism even is and they arent here to try to become small business owners or worse. people from puerto rico dont got the brain worms that cuban expats do for example.
and i should mention, they all state, they love their country but they blame everything bad with their country on communists. It infuriates me hearing these people, who were born in a nation with socialized healthcare, state controlled industry, basic welfare for citizens, just trash talk the system that make them so successful in the first place and gave them the resources they probably didn’t deserve to open up a shitty restaurant selling borscht. they would know exactly why these social programs cant meet demand if they just took the blindfold off and realized that america, the great fucking satan, is the reason why the global economy is so unequal ITS ALL BECAUSE OF FUCKING AMERICA NOT COMMUNISM YOU STUPID FUCK!
ive been told not to view myself as more communist than others, but i fucking am around these parts with expats who are not communist whatsoever, that makes me more communist than them. if i was to draw a hundred mile radius around myself odds are there probably wouldnt be someone more communist than me. nobody in my life reads theory, every fucking time i tried reaching out with dsa or the bernie shit i have only met shitlibs, i have found no comrades in bipoc communities, the lgbt, religion, or labor. just having someone say to me face to face they are a communist would help me anchor my belief system to something real and not entirely made up and on the internet.
idk, communism is basically what i use to fill my god hole and its fucking hard to find communists irl and its real shitty that people from communist countries arent oftentimes communists. i just want some validation in my belief in communism by someone who is fucking real.
Just because you lived in a Communist revolutionary government, doesn’t mean you ever got to experience the benefit of communal equality.
Remember, the vast majority of people in the countries that had revolutions were made up of the rural poor. When a revolution succeeds, it doesn’t happen everywhere at once.
Reactionary forces and a host of their allies will carve toe holds and propagandize to the population under their control . It takes damn near a generation just for a revolutionary government to stabilize and that’s if they aren’t still fighting off fascist.
This is inherent to any revolution, not just socialism or communism. However, the problem is more pronounced with communism as the infrastructure requirements for command economics. This is typically even further exacerbated by the previous government, who usually try and punish the general public by destroying key infrastructure on the retreat, usually attempting to lay the blame on revolutionaries.
It’s perfectly understandable why a person who fled any kind of revolution would hate the revolution. In their memory of the status quo things were bad, but they still had a home, a family, a community. We are beings made of memories of our past experiences, thus it is easier to to glorify what we know moreso than what we could know.
Revolution is hard. If it happens in a western nation people on both sides of the divide will loose homes, families, and communities. And if history has anything to tell us, there is a slim to zero percent chance that any of us would would ever live to see the transition of revolutionary government to post scarcity communism.
The fact that this is even question proves how disassociated the modern vanguard is from the proletariat in under developed countries. It basically amounts to victim blaming. “Why didn’t you stay and fight for revolution, didn’t you understand theory”? Well embodied theory is kinda hard to learn when you’re starving, or constantly being shot at by people you don’t know, for reasons you don’t know.
yeah you don’t do a revolution and suddenly all the problems go away. That’s step one
What’s to be done about this? You make very good points. My gut reaction was that it’s an education problem, but as you pointed out the educational infrastructure probably isn’t even built yet if the revolution is recent.
Tbh, I don’t really know. I don’t even know if armed revolution is even a possibility anymore. When I was a younger man I had hoped that the Internet would be a kin to the printing press 2.0. Something that would galvanize the world over and give a voice to the global poor.
A couple decades later I am beginning to realize that tools seemingly made with the intention of enlightenment and engagement can be reforged by capitalist to blind and mute us. Unfortunately it appears that tools built or reforged for capitalism cannot be co-opted by revolutionaries. I’m sure Murray Bookchin would prob have something witty to say about nature of systemic hierarchy about that one.
I don’t really know what the future of communism or socialism will be. I just don’t think it’s going to arise from the old theory people are completely obsessed about. We live in a completely different world than mao or Lenin, and I think it’s kind of silly for people to attempt to embody strategy and doctrine from a hundred years ago.
I agree