I’m not here to say whether communism can work nor to explore methods/history of implementing it. The scope of my comment was limited to bringing into focus the semantics being used. You don’t need to be a communist to understand the extent to which capitalism has caused and exasperated the problems of the present.

Okay, if you define “communism” as “whatever the fuck the USSR/CCP/DPRK/etc. is doing” then your statement is sound. However, most people around here (including myself) define the word to mean something like “a classless, stateless, moneyless society” and sometimes then regard the statement “The USSR/CCP/DPRK/etc. is communist” as an outright lie. They often assume that the person making the assumed-lie is ignorant, actively trying to infiltrate leftist spaces by pretending to be a leftist (the way tankies do), or are actively trying to smear leftist ideas.

I’d like to remind everyone that which words we choose to use to express our ideas are usually far less important than the ideas those words express. So long as we agree that the things the USSR/CCP/DPRK/etc. did/are doing are bad, acknowledge that capitalism has caused a great deal of strife, and seek to make the world kinder and more equitable, I think we should be able to agree and work together.

To be fair, given the model he was working with, this was actually a descent experiment so long as you ignore the ethical implications.

Okay, assume that’s the case.

So the fuck what?

I keep seeing counterpoints that assume that intent informs effectiveness, when that’s demonstrably just not the case. If your statement is relevant, that means you must be able to draw a causal link between that hypothesis being true and the campaign being ineffective.

Isn’t this normal?

Yeah, the white house can burn down twice in a four year period.

Lenin was a power hungry tyrant that over threw a left-wing government to install himself as an autocrat.