Yeah. You come across like a person who knows how to navigate the world effectively. Good luck to you! You’ll need it

This is a lot of propagandistic bullshit. The USSR was the second-best fed country in the world according to the CIA. And they did it by lifting up the bottom and literally eliminating the nobility. Meanwhile the US was the first-best fed country in the world with a much worse poverty and homeless problem.

The USSR also didn’t force people out of university to do physical labor or face a firing squad. The USSR landed a dozen of remote probes on Venus before anything even remotely resembling that was possible in the West. They had incredible academics and research in all fields and that outpaced the West in tons of ways. They absolutely had academics and strong education for people.

The fact that you’re so wrong, and so obviously wrong, should not be a moment of anger and resistance but a moment to go read about things that contradict your current beliefs and an examination of not only how you came to believe those things but what it says about potentially other beliefs you have about communism and politics in general

[Edit: if you’re gonna downvote, make an argument]

Real talk. They are not different ideologies. At all.

The reason the words are used interchangeably is because they are, in fact, interchangeable. Any distinction between the two terms is entirely context dependent and one should never assume that anyone you’re talking with shares the same distinction you have for the terms.

We can understand why first linguistically.

Social-ism is the ideology of “social” ownership of the material wealth of society. This is opposed to “private” ownership.

Commun-ism is the ideology of “communal” ownership of the material wealth of society. This is also opposed to “private” ownership.

What is the difference between “social” ownership and “communal” ownership? Nothing. There is no definitional difference between these two words at this level. This is the beginning of the source of your question

We can then understand why they are used interchangeably from a historical perspective.

When Marx and Engels were producing their critique of capitalism and their writings on the type of society of that would come after it, they described that future society as one in which the wealth of society was managed, effectively, as a commons. That means social/communal ownership. At this time, not they nor anyone else in the tradition was making a hard distinction between these terms and they were using them interchangeably.

So they are used interchangeably today for linguistic and historical reasons.

And then we have historical-linguistic reasons. Lenin saw these two terms being used interchangeably and he decided to give them separate definitions. But these definitions were Lenin’s definitions and no one else’s. Some people adopted them, some didn’t, and some adopted them and then later changed their mind. However, it is very important to note that he did not use the terms to distinguish between two different ideologies, he used them to distinguish between two different organizations of society. A communist party, according to Lenin, is a political party that seeks to build communism. There is no such thing a socialist party that means something different than a communist party. But a society is socialist first and then later it becomes communist, despite a continuity of the communist party. Lenin said a socialist society is a capitalist society that is becoming communist and a communist society is one that has achieved communism.

But then the political backlash hit the EuroCentric world (which includes the US). The Nazis were vehemently opposed to communism, but the workers in Germany associated socialism with a movement for a better life. So the German elites made communism the enemy and a taboo, but then the National Socialist party formed. They said “socialism is when workers get what they want” and they promoted better lives for workers to get their support, but they also said “communists are the enemy”. So now we have socialism and communism being framed in a way that is ideologically distinct but in a completely disingenuous and manipulative way.

This sort of perversion continued for a while all over the white world. Communism was “bad” but “unions are socialist” and red scares had to work with the ways in which the communist parties branded themselves as communist instead of socialist. The words kept twisting under the torture of social manipulation in order to obfuscate revolutionary politics.

And now we live in a society where people think socialism and communism are legitimately distinct ideologies, and people believe socialism is fine but communism is just too far, and people believe that communism is a defined phenomenon (moneyless, stateless, classless) with distinct boundaries and a country is either communist or it’s not and that no country has ever been communist.

You are right to ask this question, because you are living a very obfuscated context. But there is no simple answer to your question that is satisfactory. The simplest and most accurate answer is “there is no difference and you can use them interchangeably”. Going beyond that requires engaging with the history and the discourse and it takes a lot of time and effort.

Keep. Punching. Left.

Forced migration of Ukrainians from borderlands into central Ukraine is not genocide! Jesus, people will twist and turn to keep their moral high ground. Imagine if it was the other way around and Ukraine crossed the border and pushed Russians further into Russia and tell me if you think that would actually be genocide. It’s a ridiculous proposition.

And it’s made more ridiculous when you understand the history of how the border was defined. It would be like saying pushing the Mexican border North into Texas and then dsiplacing the Americans that live in South Texas into North Texas is ethnic cleansing. No it’s not. It’s a border dispute.

It was in the image that you are replying to.

No, we’re talking past each other. The sentence you quoted was not about defense, it was about your claim that Ukraine is being ethnically cleanses by Russia. It is not.

But this is a false dichotomy. The missile systems we send to Ukraine? They come with operators, often remote ones. They can’t be used without US satellite feeds and recon. They require immense training and we send trainers. You think aid to Ukraine is just money? It’s measured in money, but it’s not like we send them money and they go to weapons store to buy more weapons in their way home from work. It’s a full blown logistics operation. You think they just slap a FedEx sticker on a tank?

But also, Ukraine is not undergoing ethnic cleansing. As you said, it’s in a war. Russia has stayed in a very small area of Ukraine that is predominantly inhabited by ethnic Russians. Russia does not make the demand for an apartheid regime, it does not have different laws for ethnic Ukrainians. It does not have an entire population that believes every Ukranian child is a valid military target because they will grow up to be terrorists. Palestine is being ethnically cleanses. Ukraine is being partially occupied in a war of attrition. There’s a huge difference between these two phenomena.

But even those libertarian states would be self-organizing states, just like the non-libertarian states we have today. The commenters are discussing a noun “self-organizing collective” and saying it’s better than another noun “state” but there’s literally no difference. As you say, a self-organizing libertarian collective would still apply force to protect the interests of the collective insofar as they perceived those interests.

A world with borders as we know them is imminently possible, but not until we address the root causes for why states as we know it and borders as we know them emerged. That requires operating the state with a deliberate goal of identifying and eliminating those root causes AND dealing with the second and third order consequences until the system finds a new equilibrium.

Lenin didn’t deal with the colonial question. He did, however, deal with the national question, and clearly the national self-direction of the First Nations is dependent on decolonization.

That’s for the sovereign people to decide, not the occupiers. If you want working class solidarity, you’ll need solidarity with the occupied peoples first.

Communism without decolonization is currently theoretical and in theory it’s deeply problematic.

Or you could put the Canadian military into the hands of the first nations people and collaborate with them as they lead the defense against the torchbearer of European colonial empire

Fucking racist piece of shit

I know that settlers think justice will never reach them, but settler states are only a few centuries old and the civilizations they transgressed are several thousands of years old. It’ll happen.

Yeah, the State of Canada, as a body politic, must undergo a full transference of sovereignty to the original inhabitants of the land who were subjected to genocidal violence, cultural erasure, displacement, and other crimes against humanity on behalf of the project for Canada which every inhabitant of Canada necessarily benefits from by virtue of their occupation of the land, the consumption of its resources, and the displacement of their externalities.

Everyone’s missing the point that states are self-organized collectives that subjugate people. What in the world does anyone think is the alternative definition of a state? That states were organized by “someone else”? It’s ridiculous! England didn’t make the USA. A self organizing group of people made it and they fought England and won militarily and then they kept self organizing it and then when people resisted them they applied violence to them.

Like what alternative is actually being described here? I feel like I’m reading insanity here

They feel like they want to liberate them from wage slavery and join with them in proletarian solidarity to replace the leadership of their nation with a party organized to meet the needs of the insurance sales man, and their family, and bring about a sustainable future human society hand in hand with them

You personally or the country that you are a citizen of? Because I never said that each member of the society committed crimes against humanity. But if you’re going to use the land that your forbears made available to you through genocide, you might find that your protestations that you shouldn’t be punished just because you’ve built your whole life around the spoils of other people’s war crimes don’t hold a lot of weight.

No, that’s not what colonization is. You should educate yourself on your own country. Let’s take one example of how a land dispute between two First Nations is not equivalent to colonization.

The First Nations didn’t decide where their reservations would be, the English settlers decided that. That’s colonization.

The First Nations didn’t decide which tribes would be legally recognized and which would not, the English settlers decided that. That’s colonization.

The First Nations didn’t decide that tribal membership would be based on blood quantum, the English settlers decided that. Not only is that colonization, it’s literally genocidal colonization. Why? Because the reservations and First Nations populations are tied together, meaning that if a First Nation is no longer federally recognized, their land goes back to the settlers. And since the settler government killed so many of them in the process of colonization, First Nations have low population. So when you say that you are required to have a minimum of 1/4 blood quantum to be a federally recognized member, then the tribe either has to intramarry and create huge genetics problems, or they need to marry across tribes and dilute their blood quantum. Eventually the settler system will breed out enough blood quantum that they can reclaim the land.

That’s colonization.