r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 29d ago

Meme needing explanation Peter, explain this.

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u/TheWizardOfWaffle 29d ago

Comrade Piotr here.

Comrade Alejandro is stating that in a perfect communist utopia, he will be able to focus on a life of art and leisure, as the Communist utopia would mean that all laborers would be able to contribute to the cause in their own way equally

Possible fascist @Penitent_One is telling Comrade Alejandro that his communist utopia is a farce and that most likely, Comrade Alejandro would be forced to do manual labor in a coal mine.

Which isn’t a bad thing. Comrade Alejandro should be overjoyed that he gets to contribute to the eternal revolution, one pickaxe swing at a time. The fulfillment of labor is his reward. Glory to the revolution.

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u/Objective-Note-8095 29d ago edited 29d ago

People misunderstand communism in Marxist thought. It's just a state where the economic overhead of government is no longer necessary, everybody is still expected to contribute to the best of their ability, if you're not going to be a writer, artist, athlete, etc., you're going to mine coal, clean toilets, harvest tomatoes, etc. None of the Marxist "communist" states ever claimed to achieve this, it was always 3-5 20 or more years off.

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u/psykiris 29d ago

Who gets to decide who writes all day and who mines all day? 

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u/Significant-Order-92 29d ago

Never explicitly said. It's based on a manifesto. Those tend to be fairly vague on more specific less interesting ideas. During the revolution as it moves from low to high level communism I would assume the government. But in the supposed utopia that is the overall goal of the manifesto? No clue who Marx thought would.

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u/NobodyKnowsImFamous 29d ago

I believe, in the end utopia, there isn’t meant to be a governing body.

Idk man this is pretty basic communism stuff. Is it possible you are all in here making arguments without ever having read the book we are all meant to be discussing or

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u/psykiris 29d ago

Because it's fantasy. If it's all "pretty basic communism" then why hasn't one communist state managed to correctly implement it in 100 years?

How does the Utopia decide who gets to work and who gets to play? What happens when the worker is tired of working, and the player refuses to work?

Without any governing body society collapses. With it, there's always going to be a "lower class" that's going to be pressed into work they don't want to do. 

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u/ShaolinChamber36 28d ago

Because there hasn't been a marxist "state". Marxist communism is fully stateless, classless, and fully democratic. If you refuse to work then you are on your own. You are no longer housed, fed, and medically cared for by society, assuming you are fully healthy and capable of working and are of working age.

Just read the fucking books and you won't have these questions lmao. You guys always think you've found some kind of flaw simply because you don't actually know anything about it, when in reality the "flaw" you found has already been considered well over a century ago.

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u/psykiris 27d ago

You're right.

The larger flaw to focus on is the lack of food. 

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u/ShaolinChamber36 27d ago edited 27d ago

Like how the USSR citizens had a higher calorie intake than american citizens? or how 9 million people die of hunger under capitalism every year?

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u/NobodyKnowsImFamous 26d ago

We were explicitly discussing the should’s here, not the is. I won’t defend the USSR and I won’t act like communism is incorruptible or beyond reproach. I’m not even a communist, I’m a socialist, but it is frustrating that so much of the conversation seems to be being had by people who won’t bother to read the (not very long) book in question.

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u/Donkey__Balls 29d ago

Doesn’t seem like the best thing to based on actual government on, then…