One of the reasons I'm so conservative is because throughout my entire childhood, my grandparents explained to me over and over again what life was like in their native Bulgaria. (I know you aren't very bright as you are a known leftist, so let me inform you that Bulgaria was a communist country) They were not allowed to own anything. They were not allowed to go anywhere without the government's approval. When my grandfather went back to visit his mother and sister in the 1960s, his own family didn't believe him that he owned a farm and his own farm equipment.
You my friend have no idea what communism is because if you did, you wouldn't be the leftist you are. There is nothing good about an all powerful, unaccountable government something the American left longs for.
Social democracy is not communism.
I lived in the former USSR for over five years. I did research on the development of what was called in “free market democracy“. I worked as an analyst for the us dept of state for three years too. I saw effects of so-called “shock therapy“, corrupt privatization, I saw the rise of Putin in Saint Petersburg, and just because you have an anecdote from your grandparents doesn’t mean you understand much of anything about communism. Do you really think that Ayn Rand is the only response to the awful excesses and genocides of Stalin and Lennon?
Newsflash: there have been justice many genocides conducted in the name of capitalism and imperialism as in 20 century communism. Much more in fact.
you do know that corporations were formed for the first time in the name of capitalism and imperialism, right? Do some reading on the Dutch East India Company. And a few centuries later, do some reading about imperialist and capitalist monsters like King Leopold second of Belgium, personally responsible for the deaths of a couple million Congolese, because the Belgian Congo was his personal fiefdom and he wanted as much rubber as possible for his personal wealth. Ever watch Apocalypse now? It’s based on a book that’s written about the Congo at that time, called heart of darkness by Joseph Conrad.
My father-in-law was detained as a teenager installers Gulag after the war. They in the majority of the people in the agricultural sector in the Baltic states were able to do much better under collective agriculture than they do now, because most of them were driven off their land during privatization and now it is mostly corporate big ag.
You can be against Soviet or Mauist communism but for social democracy or work or cooperatives or unions.
it’s amazing to me how people think they know an entire ideology because of stories that they heard as a kid or whatever.
People decide what to believe early on in life and they don’t educate themselves or act with any kind of objectivity enough to change their opinion based on actual facts on the actual ground.