Every time I talk about communism to my extremely right-wing dad, he always says without fail “The high-ranking members of the communist party are elitists who live like kings in mansions and drive luxurious cars while the rest of the population live like peasants. That makes them worse than capitalists.” I call that bs, but I dont know much about the wealth differences between high-ranking party members and the rest of the populous. Is it really that wide?
Even if it was, think about the numbers:
under capitalism, bosses take about 50% of workers’ value
suppose under corrupt communism, you had a red bourgeoisie siphoning off 1-2% of the workers’ wages; that would make them fabulously wealthy, but the workers would still be much better off
And this is not even close to what happens in reality, right?
eh, I mean, I’m not gonna say it’s never a problem. Look up ‘red bourgeoisie’ or ‘new class’. Depends on when and where we’re talking about.
Communists aren’t perfect people who are immune to corruption; to think that would be utopianism.
Depends where and when you are referring to. In the later years of the socialist bloc this was probably accurate, especially after Gorbachev’s liberalizing reforms began in the 80s. Before that no, there really wasn’t much if any of this sort of bureaucratic new bourgeoisie to speak of. Then during the 90s the remaining AES states were busy trying just to survive and most (with the exception of the DPRK) had to open up their economies to a lot of market liberal reforms. And as we know private enterprise always brings along with it considerable corruption. Nowadays things are getting much better as the economic situation is stabilizing even in the poorest AES states, and the non-Western world is growing in strength by leaps and bounds, which also means that the ruling communist parties can afford to carry out anti-corruption campaigns and fix the underlying material imbalances that were driving the rise of corruption in the 80s and 90s.
The point I’m trying to get across is that we should always avoid blanket statements like “X did/didn’t happen under socialism”, we need to differentiate as every socialist state’s experience was unique in its own way and things also changed over time.