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varjaglast Wednesday at 8:23 AM1 replyview on HN

It's a bit of No True Scotsman. USSR (and other places) did an earnest attempt to build communist societies based on Marxist tenets. They went full in: class war, expropriation, even the attempts to abolish money and family. That it failed after decades of attempts was not for the lack of trying, so maybe at this point it's worth reconsidering viability of the idea.


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tryauuumlast Wednesday at 12:51 PM

Is not a "no true Scotsman" situation.

USSR itself did acknowledge that whatever they have is not communism. Because they knew the definition, they knew that it's a utopian society which, as you mentioned, doesn't use money

The rest of the world had to name this regime somehow. Since there was only one party, the communist party, the west named the regime "communism".

Now we have a word with different meanings, depending to whom you speak. Certainly makes discussions between ex-ussr people and americans hard. I remember how my school teacher got irritated when we asked her "how was the life under communism". "We never lived under it, we lived under socialism" she said

To sum up, this is not a "no true Scotsman" situation, since the observing part of the world decided to extend the meaning

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