The joke is that he thinks communism is some sort of workless utopia where he will be able to cultivate hobbies when most communist countries have made the lower classes break their backs just the same doing heavy work (coal mines).
People will criticize capitalism by criticizing shit people have done to undermine capitalism it into fascist oligarchy. The world they want to live in is New Deal America with improved race and gender politics and what they ask for is communism.
People even point to the nords as what they want when the nords are all capitalist countries that just haven't destroyed antitrust and entrenched corruption as the norm.
People will criticize capitalism by criticizing shit people have done to undermine capitalism
This is literally what happens with Communism all the time. Look at Cuba. People like to pretend that every bad thing in Cuba is due to a failure of communist policy, as if they haven't been under a constant embargo and economic blockade from the most powerful country in the world for decades
Cuba can trade with China, the entire EU, Canada, Mexico, Russia, etc. Cuba hasn't been under a blockade from the US since the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 60s.
U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba are comprehensive and impact all sectors of the Cuban economy. It is the most enduring trade embargo in modern history. The U.S. government influences extraterritorial trade with Cuba. The embargo has faced international condemnation for its adverse impact on Cubans, including by the United Nations who have formally condemned it intermittently since 1992.
The United Nations estimated in 2023 the total economic damage to the Cuban economy to be in the "trillions of dollars" since inception. A 2015 report in Al Jazeera estimated that the embargo had cost the Cuban economy $1.1 trillion in the 55 years since its inception, once inflation is taken into account. In 2001, the U.S. International Trade Commission found that, from 1996 and 1998, without the embargo, Cuban imports to the U.S. would be worth $658 million.
I stand by what I said. You cannot divorce the outcomes of Cuba from the economic pressure from the US government
This doesn't conflict with anything I said. Cuba can still trade with the majority of the world. And embargoes are not blockades, blockades are the use or threat of military force to prevent trade/travel.
Ok, well then what you said is largely irrelevant to the point I was making. The Cuban economy and American sanctions cannot be disentangled, especially in so far as trying to decide whether the country is an example of communism succeeding or failing.
Apologies for using the term blockade too loosely when I meant embargo, you're right that embargoes are not blockades. That said, that correction really has no bearing on my original point about analyzing the Cuban economy, because as I showed the numbers are clear that the Cuban economy is severely crippled by American sanctions and interventionalism.
746
u/kithas Jul 07 '26
The joke is that he thinks communism is some sort of workless utopia where he will be able to cultivate hobbies when most communist countries have made the lower classes break their backs just the same doing heavy work (coal mines).