Well, it does not have an economy, so why would it have money?
Also, it doesn’t have politics and society in the conventional sense, but men are clearly subordinate to God. Christ is king, this is the way Christians think, so I am not sure this is a correct comparison.
The question of “should Christians strive for a classless society” is a complex one. Egalitarian ideals are very new compared to Christianity, but some Christians now think that in the “fallen world” authority is undesirable as it can be abused. This is not common though.
However, Marxism is an anti-religious ideology. Marxists both believe that religion will disappear after “the base” changes and it will become, ultimately, obsolete, and also have historically persecuted and enacted violence on Christians. So I am not surprised there are not many Marxist Christians.
Egalitarian ideals are very new compared to Christianity
Run that one by Jesus and I think he’d be surprised
“the question of “should Christians strive for a classless society” is a complex one.”
Not to the early Christians it wasn’t. The early Christians movements (before they were co-opted by Empire) were radically egalitarian.
Sure, but comparing what people thought 2000 years ago to what they think now is a fruitless endeavor.
The concept of democracy came about around that time too (at least the Greek one, which arguably wasn’t the first but I digress) but should we exclude women and foreigners from it? That’s what the early proponents of democracy wanted.
Yes, just because it was written in a book doesn’t really means anything, we can change it, create bew editions of the book, even invert the meaning of inconvenient passages. These old code need to be made ambiguous and adaptible, endlessly reinterpretable to suit any situation that the priesthood needs to get themselves out of
The concept of democracy came about around that time too (at least the Greek one, which arguably wasn’t the first but I digress)
The Athenian concept of democracy had existed for the better part of a millennium by the time Christianity appeared.
Hmm you’re right. I thought it was closer to 0 ad, but it looks like it was closer to 600-300 bc.
Doesn’t change my point though.
You could literally describe early christianity as the spiritual arm of a revolutionary front.
Actually sir, have you considered that religion bad?
I have read a quote by Marx, and am very smart.
Not to the early Christians it wasn’t. The early Christians movements (before they were co-opted by Empire) were radically egalitarian.
That would be irrelevant even if it was true. We are not in the second century. It is a very controversial position either way.
Egalitarian values certainly did emerge out of Christianity, and there was a change in that direction even then, but they were not egalitarian in the modern sense.
Also, please be careful when generalising early Christianty, as it was a very diverse group of sects that hardly agreed on anything.
Early religious communities sometimes were very accepting, and women played a role as well, but they still existed in a very patriarchal culture, so you should not expect their women to be equal to men in society, and there were absolutely positions of authority.
They opposed the empire because initially, they were not perceived by anyone as a group distinct from Jews, which were very hostile to it. However, there were appeals made by powerful Christians later to be recognized as a non-threat to imperial power, and ultimately, they succeeded.
Even so, the Jews simply wanted independence, not equality. The idea of social equality did not even exist then. They were equal in Christ, not in society.
Christianity was not coopted by the empire, it conquered it.
The idea that early christianity was somehow “more pure” I do not accept as well. I would say the Christian tradition has only been enriched over the years, and without a unified basic set of dogmas it would really make much sense.
But the original interpretation!!! /s
Hey, do you mind telling me why I got down voted, if you have an idea why, of course?
I do not believe I said anything particularly contentious this time, and I do not believe I said anything factually wrong either.
I feel like the majority of Lemmy users are non-religious and definitely a good bit of us are antireligion, so when you make a post sorta outlining that modern Christianity is better then a more egalitarian and less dogmatic society it doesn’t sit well.
Not sure if that’s the case fully, and you’re only at like -2/3 lol
If only these nonreligious people recognised how little they know about religion.
I might have changed my views on certain things after coming to the fediverse, and now I see that Lemmy is an echochamber. It seems like right wing and even moderate people just stayed on twitter and “truth social”, which are echochambers as well, especially the latter, clearly, and I end up arguing with everyone all the time.
Communism is just people trying to create heaven on earth but without God.
OP is gonna get banned by the admins for implying communism is stateless
You know Marx said this right? Like that’s the end goal.
Yes, I know communism is stateless. You shouldn’t be so willing to think other people don’t know what they’re talking about. You should be more charitable.
So why would they get banned? I don’t understand
Their belief is that Marxists are hypocritical for wanting public ownership of property and believing a government necessary for that, as they are of the belief that government and the state are the same for Marx, and rather than the “Administration of Things” that Engels speaks of, there would be a structure closer to Anarchism.
So you’re saying if the admins ban me, they’d be giving me exactly what I want, and therefore they shouldn’t?
I’m okay with you believing that. Even if you are choosing to reduce my entire personality to one event, weeks ago, which I’d mostly forgotten.
I’m not really saying much of anything beyond that you have a bone to pick with the mods, and that is the clearest explanation for why you made your original comment. I’m not trying to reduce you to anything, just draw on a similar situation from a few weeks ago.
The mods have never treated me unfairly, I have no problem with them.
I’m aware they’re at least somewhat disingenuous. I’m trying to get them to spell out their beliefs and assumptions despite that.
Gotcha, keep it up, comrade 🫡
It is, pretty much every communist including ML’s here fully accept and support the notion that communism at the end is going to be stateless, as the state itself would become unnecessary. The differences come from the means which this end would be achieved.
The end? No, no, no. The point where the state is abolished is the beginning. We don’t pack up and go home after we abolish the state. We live in the world we created. Everything before the state is abolished is preamble.
Yes, that’s implicit - you build something in order to use/live in it. The end I was talking about was referring to the end of the gradual transformation from capitalism to communism, it’s not an instant process.
I do feel that that wording can cause confusion. Marxists and Anarchists have a different view of what the state even is to begin with, and thus very different end goals. Marxists see the state as an implementation of class oppression, Anarchists see it as a tool of hierarchy.
As a consequence, Marxists see Communism as a fully publicly owned and planned, democratic government, while Anarchists want decentralized networks of Communes. For Marxists, the Anarchist solution retains class distinctions as each commune only has internal ownership and thus class is retained, while for Anarchists the Marxist solution retains the state as it retains hierarchy.
This struggle over analysis drives the major distinctions between each major school of Leftist thought. That doesn’t mean we do not share a common anti-capitalist and anti-Imperialist struggle, but it does mean the strategies and ends are different. If it was simply a question of strategy and timeline specifically, there would not be as much friction outside of explicitly non-sectarian spaces.
Why would OP be banned for that? That’s what Marx literally stated.
Say you’re new to Hexbear without saying you’re new to Hexbear
Edit: lol this isn’t on hexbear or even lemmygrad what are you even smoking?
Lemmy.ml is run by MLs for the most part, so even if this isn’t an explicitly Communist instance there is Communist sympathy. The user you are replying to takes issue with that.
Nonsense, I’m a communist. I love it when people want to create a society where the workers own the means of production. I think you’ve made a false equivalence to reach that conclusion about me.
I’m using Communist to refer to what most people understand as Communist. I’m sure you have your own opinions on what that constitutes and how, but they are definitely not the standard or traditional readings of Marxist Communism.
Yeah, those are the two things you made a false equivalence between. Communism and Marxist Communism. If you think Marxism is the only kind of communism, you won’t be able to acknowledge anarcho-communists. That’s probably why a lot of people say you don’t respect anarchists.
I don’t assume Anarcho-Communism isn’t a form of Communism, but I do find it more intuitive to say Communism for Marxism, and Anarchism for Anarchism, as that’s what occupies most people’s minds. I do respect Anarchists, actually, I don’t know what you mean by saying a “lot of people say I don’t respect Anarchists.”
Well you said I had an issue with communism. Knowing I’m an anarchist, that’s very misleading. Your intuitive language is causing you to disrespect anarcho-communism, you should change it.
Did you switch from anarchism to communism in the last month? https://reddthat.com/post/36317630
No, I’ve been an anarcho-communist for years.
Ahh good ol cowbee :) i gotta recall my calm… leavin the rest to you mate
🫡
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“Not like that!” My dads response when I tell him Jesus was a communist.
Heaven was literally invented to be a description of utopia specifically so that toiling workers wouldn’t get distracted trying to create it on Earth.
“oooh heaven is a place on earth” take that shit literally, fam
Pie in the sky By and by
lots of unironic communists on lemmy?
Yup, but Lemmy is a federated service so if that fact makes you uncomfortable or something you can always spin up a liberal instance with corporations and classism.
Yeah, it was literally created by communists
Libs when free, open source, distributed and community supported platforms are not made by people who love capitalism and corporations 🤯🤯🤯🤯
Unfortunately, yes. Ignore the downvotes from the the mad people, and prepare your blocklist. It’s your right, after all.
Or… perhaps… talk to people and try to understand why they think the way they do. Who knows, maybe you’d hear something that makes sense. Just an idea! :D
I spent enough time in my teens and early 20’s doing that. I grew out of it when I got smarter and more jaded.
Yep! Lemmy is primarily developed by Marxist-Leninists, and is generally structured in opposition to Capitalist networks. It allows Communists to form our own spaces without corporate censorship.
Which is why it’s a big irony when people come to Lemmy to complain about communism/socialism.
Like, man, you are on a decentralized network run by volunteers who don’t want to be monetized. You want to enjoy the benefits of socialism but somehow keep capitalism
Yep, but that’s just how it is, and why I focus on outreach all the same.
just wanna second what @moonmelon@lemmy.ml said. you’re awesome.
i’d say “keep up the good work” but like you deserve a break.
Thanks for the kind words, and don’t worry! I do take frequent breaks, that’s why I made a Hexbear alt in the first place, haha.
You’re fucking incredible, Cowbee. I’ve watched you spend literally days patiently and politely responding to dozens of confrontational, probably bad-faith posters in thread after thread with nothing but solid information. I really admire it.
Thanks, I really do appreciate it! At the end of the day, I try to only speak on what I know, so that helps me not get frustrated if someone comes in in clearly bad-faith, haha.
Is the 0 getting around a commie filter or?
It’s 0 because communism is a moneyless system
Shit i have got to read more the0ry
Ooh baby, do you know what that’s worth?
Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth?
And no one has to work, they are provided with everything they need. Almost like a universal basic income or something.
More like post-scarcity. I don’t think even the wildest leftist thinks we’re quite there yet.
On calories housing and most everyday things we are post scarcity if we ignore distribution. In fact we over commission and under deliver all these things. We over produce food by a factor of around 1.5, housing is much less transferable but even there we’re unbelievably wastefull, energy is basically the only thing that isn’t outright overproduced but really only because when we have cheap energy we just tend to use it, often to produce more stuff.
So imo we are by bookkeeping standards post scarcity, delivery/distribution is just fucked and partially because of that we are creating tons of waste.
We could all live in comfort and those who want to could work less, and none of this would break. The real world economy(things, energy, housing , food, water, logistics capabilities…) is so large and secure it could support the world population. If not for the barriers and assumptions, the intrinsic I’ve got mine fuck you of the systems.
For me that is being there, and I hope that even if you can’t agree on that point, it at least illustrates that we are incredibly close to post scarcity.
I stand corrected. I guess some people do think we’re there.
Personally, I don’t think we’re close yet, but there could exist a better system where we’d at least be closer.
I’m pretty sure most of this is is loosely from “Half earth socialism”, which might not consider us already in post scarcity, but is at least sympathetic to the position while trying to approach the arguably more important factors,- climate change and biodiversity decline- through such a lens.
Examining how our lives could be lived, in accordance with the natural world systems, with a socialist organization of the world economy.
It’s pretty readable as far as these books go, I think it might even be the first explicitly socialist book I read /listened to.
I actually take a critical eye to the word “work” itself and think that it’s too encompassing a term. In our society it’s a blanket word that covers all labor. From punitive, fruitless toil all the way up to invigorating, actualizing applications of trained skill. Lots of what we call “work” are actually things we could want for ourselves in a utopia and would miss without, while IRL we’re currently on the crest of an economic trend in which the majority of society are trapped in ultimately meaningless and forgettable toil under wage coercion. Literally just being kept occupied and oppressed.
Put very simply I think you can slice our current idea of what work is into two halves, work that removes happiness from ourselves and society and work that adds happiness to ourselves and society. As utopians I think a society that contains only the latter is a reasonable prize to keep our eyes on.
Shoutout to my boy Camilo Torres who famously said, “If Jesus was alive today he’d be a guerrillero.”
Well, something that the Mormons have is they tried out communism. They called it the law of consecration. They had some fun times with trying to handle being productive and redistribution and poligamous. They ultimately concluded that they weren’t ready for it yet so they went back to default capitalism with tithing and poor/fast offerings.
Tl;dr: Mormons believe in a kind of communism in heaven, and they go hungry for 2 meals (24 hrs) to remember to give generously to the poor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_consecration?wprov=sfla1
‘They’ didn’t decide they weren’t ready. It was used to fleece the pathetic true believers for a short period until the inner circle felt sufficiently capitalized.
difference is that in heaven people dont have need to produce, so presumably no means of production even exist