Socialism doesn't seem to be a failure to me. Wish people would stop trying to hate on things they don't even understand.

It only shows how ignorant they are.

Yep, I guess Hitler t-shirts aren't cool with the kids since he didn't kill 100 million.

I wonder what the original artist of that shirt for Threadless would have thought of it sparking a Mudede-style treatise on the history of capitalism and communism and their interwoven economics.

Do you understand the concept of a visual pun, Charles?

a teenager wouldn’t listen to four minutes of this ‘splainin’.

I'm still reeling that Charles' teenage daughter texted that she "found it funny-LOL".
What are they teaching in U.S. high schools anymore?

I'm still waiting for the T-shirt that depicts Chris Columbus, Geo. Washington, and Andrew Jackson (et al. ad infinitum) dancing on the graves of millions of dead Indians and Africans.

That would be a laff riot.

You know, whenever I hear stories in far off places of communists been grabbed in the middle of the night and disappearing I think, "whatevs".

What's worse, a few of them vanishing or a million of us sharing two rolls of toilet paper, eating our neighbor's dog and then starving to death anyway?

"Chris Columbus, Geo. Washington, and Andrew Jackson"

All pre-capitalist and pew-neoliberal. Thanks for playing.

@7 -- What are they teaching in high school? I dunno, but I read in Slog that nuclear weapons have been used only once, not twice, and that it was a retaliation for Pearl Harbor.

Then I read something by Charles Mudede, the M C Escher of economic thought.

Errata - Sorry, I read that first howler in another online publication that should have known better.

"Socialism is the best; while the money lasts."

You'd think Chuckles would remember that from his British upbringing, when Callaghan had to crawl to the to the IMF with "cap in hand". Marginal tax rates on the rich in the UK over 80%, over half the British economy state-owned, Labour in charge.

Yet they managed to run out of other people's money

Imagine if Charles was your dad. What a trip!

OK, Charles, I think I can be of some assistance on this one:

It's a picture of some famous Communists, you see, under the flag of the Soviet Union, which was a famous Communist country, and they are all celebrating, having a "party" of some sort. Thus it is a "Communist party" depicted on the T-Shirt. Consider, now, that the phrase "Communist Party" is usually used to refer to a serious political organization, not to a frivolous celebration. There is a dissonance between the phrase conjured by the image and the image conjured by the phrase, and this dissonance is considered by some to be amusing, or "funny," as they will sometimes call it.

Does this help?

@16

What if your dad were a somewhat bitter man at the wrong end of middle age who drank a little too much, thought he was smarter than everyone else, lost his temper a little too often, and constantly embarrassed you by yelling about politics in public?

Honestly that sounds kind of unremarkable, if you look at it from the perspective of a typical teenager.

"But 21 years before you were born, in 2001, the Berlin Wall came down"

This looks like a typo. The wall came down in 89, not 80, so I'm guessing you meant 12 years.

@10
And Russia was a feudalist monarchy (i.e., pre-capitalist) before they became communist, so if you have a point besides being butt-hurt, you failed miserably to make it.

@14
I'd say I'm still waiting for you to make any sort of sense whatsoever, but that would be a lie.

I don’t know why you all are bitching, this is a great little explainer! Wish someone had told me all of this when I was 17, although at that point, we were still firmly in Clinton land, huffing the fumes from the first wave of tech startups and cutting welfare.

"But 21 years before you were born, in 2001, the Berlin Wall came down, and this marked the end of state socialism."

The grammar curmudgeon in me says: Could some editor please remove the extra comma for that sentence (the one after "born")? As currently written, it claims the Berlin wall came down in 2001.

@19 and @23) fixed and fixed.

@24 Charles Mudede: Didn't the Berlin Wall come down on November 9, 1989 to be exact?
I got divorced in 2001.

Mudede--I got a great chuckle out of this conversation with your daughter business! I also learned a helluva lot. Ta much.

And patriarchal capitalism has proven such a win for humanity and the planet.

...#27 types, in her secure, climate controlled home with a full stomach surrounded by technological devices that would have been considered miracles 50 years ago. In a bit, she will go to her job where with only an hour or two of extremely easy "labor," she can feed herself for several days, and even splurge on all the fairy bread and Tim-Tams she wishes.

@18: Wins this thread outright, along with options for winning two of the next three Mudede threads by default.

Well done, sir! I bow in awe.

@24: long as you're fixing stuff:

"A union is, ontological, a capitalist composed ... "

"... there was no fundamentally (or ontological) difference... "

How did you explain Jeremy Corbyn's antisemitism?

I, for one, very much enjoyed this. Thanks Charles! I like the notion of looking at the communist and socialist governments as ultimately some form of capitalism, just with the workers in charge. My follow up is--if that's so, then is there anything out there that isn't ultimately just some form of capitalism?

Shoot. I guess this means I have to stop making jokes that include 'a priest' and especially anything to do with the Pope too. If authoritarian governments that murder people aren't funny then almost two millennia of supporting that behavior (crusades, wich hunts, giving authority to midevil rulers, excusing slavery and racism including the massive slaughter of native people) has got to really take it off the laugh list, right? (Side note, it seems like the most valid concern over Muslims or Communists is that they might act like Christians, who to this day deny life saving medicine to children and directly support racial imprisonment so it's a valid concern I guess).

@28, funny boy, as always. Our earth is being destroyed because of greed and capitalism. No matter where I live or if I have food today, things are fucked. You not notice? Nth Pole Ice melting, you hear of this.

People lived for many many many yrs, in groups, sharing resources. The Leaders were respected by the group. Patriarchal Capitalism, yes, it’s guven us all this comfort, it’s still has been a poison.
Democratic Socialism, where the Leaders work with the truth of our earth, that’s the way forward. Though, how much forward do we have.

@35 have you been drinking with Charles Mudede by chance?

You missed the joke. Communist Party. Get it? Party. (even if in poli-sci ville they aren't technically communists) Sometimes a shirt with a lame joke is just a shirt with a lame joke.

@35: You do realize that humans no longer live in small family based social groups wandering around grasslands, yes?

What the fuck happened to this paper?