German guy
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2010
- Messages
- 5,187
- Reaction score
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- Location
- Berlin, Germany
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Moderate
In retrospect, it's easy to condemn communism. Hundreds of millions of dead people due to different communist dictatorships, four decades of tyranny in the East Bloc. Some will still say "real" communism has never actually been tried and still support the idea, which I don't want to debate here... I'm interested in a different question:
Was there a point in time when Communism indeed had to appear as a sound, attractive alternative? Before real communist regimes had showed their ugly faces, and when many capitalist countries had very severe social problems and discrimination?
Think for example of much of Europe in the 19th century. Many countries had authoritarian governments, and even the more liberal ones still were engaging in massive discrimination: No or fewer voting rights for poor people, no women suffrage, racial segregation. And many European countries engaged in imperialistic colonialism, enslaving many "inferior" peoples in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. There was only very few social mobility -- usually the rule was: Born poor, always poor. It was virtually impossible for working class people to climb the social ladder. And the wealth structure of these societies was basically a pyramid (few at the top, but a huge basis), where we today have more of an "egg" (big middle class, few on top and bottom).
In America, the situation was much less extreme, but you still had first slavery, and then still segregation and legal discrimination of racial minorities.
Communism was a big promise: It promised social achievements every sane person would agree are good -- a better wealth distribution that allows the under-class to escape poverty and gain some moderate wealth creating a middle class, an end of legal discrimination due to gender or race, as all humans are supposed to be equal, and some form of democratic participation of men, women and minorities alike, even if that was a "council democracy".
The capitalist societies had not yet found the answers to these social problems they would later find (by 20th century capitalistic development, which slowly eliminated legal discrimination, resulted in a massive growth of the middle class and increased social mobility -- also thanks to certain public programs, due to people like FDR and post-WW2 European leaders). Today's capitalist Western countries are not the same as they were 100 years ago, they have massively improved. They've found a way to make capitalism beneficial for (almost) everybody, and introduced more democratic control over government.
So I wonder... if you were member of a racial minority, or a woman, or a poor worker with no prospect of ever climbing the social ladder in late 19th century -- was Marxism/Communism maybe really a better alternative for you? Would you have actually been better off in a socialist system? Keep in mind that it was not yet known what the Western countries would become decades later.
What do you think?
Was there a point in time when Communism indeed had to appear as a sound, attractive alternative? Before real communist regimes had showed their ugly faces, and when many capitalist countries had very severe social problems and discrimination?
Think for example of much of Europe in the 19th century. Many countries had authoritarian governments, and even the more liberal ones still were engaging in massive discrimination: No or fewer voting rights for poor people, no women suffrage, racial segregation. And many European countries engaged in imperialistic colonialism, enslaving many "inferior" peoples in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. There was only very few social mobility -- usually the rule was: Born poor, always poor. It was virtually impossible for working class people to climb the social ladder. And the wealth structure of these societies was basically a pyramid (few at the top, but a huge basis), where we today have more of an "egg" (big middle class, few on top and bottom).
In America, the situation was much less extreme, but you still had first slavery, and then still segregation and legal discrimination of racial minorities.
Communism was a big promise: It promised social achievements every sane person would agree are good -- a better wealth distribution that allows the under-class to escape poverty and gain some moderate wealth creating a middle class, an end of legal discrimination due to gender or race, as all humans are supposed to be equal, and some form of democratic participation of men, women and minorities alike, even if that was a "council democracy".
The capitalist societies had not yet found the answers to these social problems they would later find (by 20th century capitalistic development, which slowly eliminated legal discrimination, resulted in a massive growth of the middle class and increased social mobility -- also thanks to certain public programs, due to people like FDR and post-WW2 European leaders). Today's capitalist Western countries are not the same as they were 100 years ago, they have massively improved. They've found a way to make capitalism beneficial for (almost) everybody, and introduced more democratic control over government.
So I wonder... if you were member of a racial minority, or a woman, or a poor worker with no prospect of ever climbing the social ladder in late 19th century -- was Marxism/Communism maybe really a better alternative for you? Would you have actually been better off in a socialist system? Keep in mind that it was not yet known what the Western countries would become decades later.
What do you think?
