- cross-posted to:
- socialism@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- socialism@lemmy.ml
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It doesn’t matter what ideology. If the people running it are rotten, any system can be corrupted.
Deeply anti-materialist take.
Can you explain how you disagree? Is it about incentives to be corrupt (or against) depending on the system?
If you believe in great man theory™ and think that all political developments happen because one person can magically steer entire countries and the world, in geo-political terms, or idealists in thinking that if you have the correct ideas, you can magically steer the entire rest of the world to whatever you think, by having the correct thoughts. Then your theories of political developments are non-materialist, like this comment is objecting to. The system sets the conditions of who is going to be empowered or rewarded for their actions and positions.
I am not that person, but I guess you wouldn’t like the ambassadors of fascism to be efficient and competent.
you know, i tell you what. i’m fed up with all this gringo self-righteousness when you talk about “oh communism was bad, oh people where killed, oh people had no food, oh people had no liberty, oh people could not buy ataris, oh our countries are so democratic”. your countries were democratic during the cold war in the first place because you had people to sort things out for you here in the global south. for each person complaining about how the food rations in eastern europe were not tasty enough, there were 10 dying of hunger or malnourishment here in the global south. for every person complaining they had to wait 5 years in a queue to buy a trabant or an oka, there were 10 who got no school in a range of 50 km. for every person complaining that their 8 hour shifts in state owned factories were overwhelming, there were 10 who were indentured workers. for every person complaining about how the stasi, kgb or the stb had bugged their apartment, there were 10 suffering the most horrific tortures inside black sites of the military of u.s. allies here in the “third world”. for every person complaining about dull standard apartment blocks in mikrorayons, there were 10 who lived in mud shacks and slums, and those are just who were lucky enough to have a roof over their heads. finally, for everyone complaining about chinese sweatshops, which are indeed a problem, there are 10 americans who work and yet cannot afford proper housing.
you wanna complain about how communism was bad? go ahead. you wanna complain how your parents lived under communism and could not drink coke? do so if you wish. but there are still millions of people down here who would give an arm and a leg to have a polish ration, an apartment in a russian gray building, or a yugoslav job. and while the chinese maoist red guard was bad, surely it won’t be an inch closer to the harassement people endured on a daily basis by our police forces.
again: you wanna complain? be my guest. but for me that’s an encyclopedic example of white privilege.
This, so much this. Having a job and a roof over your head is such a luxury in the ‘global south’, the true face of capitalism
When people ask me what communist country was successful I usually say all of them until cia decided to go there and spread freedom 🇺🇸🦅
Well… There was this thing called Soviet Union. They decided to try to speed up the transition to communism by using repression and violence. And ended up being a totalitarian state, a direct opposite of what a communist state is supposed to be like.
Of course you can argue that Soviet Union was not communist, it was just a state that had chosen to call itself communist for propaganda reasons… But still, Soviet Union is an example of a communist country that was unsuccessful as a communist project already by itself. Then came outsiders and helped make it even worse, but bad doesn’t become good by some people wanting it to be even worse. Burma is another example. I’d say they hacked away their own leg before anyone else, such as CIA, had time to interfere in their business.
What no theory does to an mf
The USSR didn’t “do repression and violence to speed up Communism,” they had a successful revolution and established Socialism. By all accounts it was quite successful overall, but we can learn from where they erred and adapt for the future.
The only ones who believe the Soviet Union wasn’t Socialist are generally Western Trots or liberals/Anarchists who already don’t want the form of society Marxists want, which is a government that publicly owns its large and key industries and gradually folds in the new firms that grow to that level until the entire economy is publicly owned.
Have you never heard of bolševiks and menševiks? What you’re explaining is what menševiks wanted, but what happened was what bolševiks aimed for.
And that was inhumane horror.
No, the Mensheviks had a poor understanding of Historical Materialism and didn’t think the Peasantry could truly be allied to the Proletariat. What I am describing is what the Bolsheviks did. To a better extent the PRC also fulfills this.
PRC has concentration camps. Not a sign of a succesfull society, all that frankly.
I don’t think reeducation camps should be considered “concentration camps,” which brings to mind the mass killings of the Holocaust, but regardless the reeducation program is pretty much complete.
As far as can be considered a successful country, the PRC absolutely fits that. Conditions for the people are rapidly improving, the economy when adjusted for purchasing power parity is the largest in the world, it’s a world leader in renewable energy, and is overtaking the rest of the world in key metrics.
A camp where people are sent because of their ethnic background and where a large part of inmates die is a concentration camp, absolutely. Especially if human experiments are done on the inmates and torture is common.
I would not want my conditions to improve through slavery and torture of others. There is a big difference between you and me regarding that.
Least smug shitlib
The USSR had to deal with a civil war, rising up during WWI and being sabotaged by the Germans, more civil war, foreign meddling, and all while being the first successful communist revolution. Yet they still managed to raise literacy, raise health outcomes, raise average life expectancy, gender equality, science and technology, end the cycle of famines (after the first one or two they had when they were still building up), had faster growth during that period than any capitalist country (except maybe the US, which was doing imperialism at the time and the biggest hegemon), all while helping sustain other socialist countries, like Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea.
Yup, it would have been difficult not to get better at those after things were as bad as they were. It might be that the Soviet system did actually get some things right, just like the damn nazis managed to build a decent Autobahn network, designed Volkswagen and built some very useful underground train lines in Berlin. If you are a totalitarian country with concentration camps, you are not okay as a country, not even if you do some good things.
Soviet Union was a prison of its peoples and a murderous regime. A country exists for its citizens (or inhabitants, if you prefer that), but in Soviet Union the citizens existed for the country – meaning that the country did not fulfil a country’s main reason of existence.
Of course, if you want to compare growth against non-socialist countries, you need to choose one where the starting point was as abysmal as that of the Imperial Russia. Probably Finland is a good comparison, because when it became independent from the Russia in 1917, it was obviously about as developed as the Russia was.
So, if Finland was doing its job as an organized society better in 1991 than Soviet Union was, then there we’ve got a country that grew to a better result from the same starting point. If Soviet Union of 1991 was a better place for its people than Finland for its people as of 1991, then probably the Soviet way was better. From what I heard from my relatives who visited Soviet Union around the change of 1980’s to 1990’s, they seemed to consider Finland more successful. You can of course point some other country where the starting point was as bad as the socioeconomical state of the Imperial Russia in 1914, and we can look at that. But, the comparison Finland vs. USSR 1917–1991 does not look terribly good for USSR, all that frankly. A part of the Russian Empire broke away and did not become socialist. It ended up faring much better than the rest of areas that were under Russian rule. Why, if not because of avoiding Socialism?
Comparing the Nazis to the Communists is a form of Nazi Apologia, originating with Double Genocide Theory. The truth is that they are in no way comparable, read Blackshirts and Reds..
The Soviet Union existed for the workers. They doubled life expectancy, over tripled literacy rates to 99.9% from the low 30s, dramatically reduced wealth inequality, provided free and high quality healthcare and education, and democratized the economy.
Comparing Finland to the USSR is… odd. Finland funds its safety nets through Imperialism. The Soviet Union was also far larger and far more populous, and yet cared for its people while detached from much of the global economy. The Soviets did 80% of the combat against the Nazis and had half their buildings destroyed and 20 million people killed by the Nazis, while Finland saw no such comparable devastation. The Soviets largely rebuilt on their own, while Western countries had an unscathed United States propping them up. The point is that Finland didn’t accomplish any of this on their own, and moreover a lot of these concessions came to prevent revolution like was seen in Russia.
I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.
I’m not comparing them. I’m saying that doing something good does not mean that the instance that does the good is also good. The Nazis are simply the most extreme example that can be found, and therefore the most efficient way to show that the concept of “doing some good things does not automatically mean you’re a good guy” exists in general.
They doubled life expectancy, over tripled literacy rates to 99.9% from the low 30s, dramatically reduced wealth inequality, provided free and high quality healthcare and education
And the only part of the Russia that did not become Soviet did the same things in an even bigger scale. Why?
Finland funds its safety nets through Imperialism.
The eastern block got money from Moscow through Warsaw pact. The western block got money from Marshall Aid. There was only one country in Europe that received neither: Finland. We were considered to be in the eastern block, so we were not allowed to get Marshall Aid. And USSR’s aid required accepting that “if the country’s independence is endangered, Moscow can choose to send its forces to help”. We demanded a change to that rule so that Helsinki decides if the help is needed, not Moscow. And then Soviet Union said, “okay, no money for you people, then”. Soviet Union got reparations from Germany and Finland. Finland paid all of its reparations, fully. The last payment was made in the 1990’s. While being the only country not getting any money from foreign countries for rebuilding after the war, we also paid huge war reparations to the country that had begun the war in coöperation with Germany by attacking us in 1939. And yes, that does mean that the advances Soviet Union did after the second world war were partially financed by Finland. Which still managed to do better than Soviet Union it was helping. Could you please tell, how precisely does all this mean that Finland was funding its safety nets through imperialism? Was the Finnish imperialism visible in the huge decrease of Finno-Ugric population, from whose colonized territories Soviet Union got almost all of its oil and minerals? Or where did the Finnish imperialism physically take place?
Finland saw no such comparable devastation
During just three nights in 1940, Soviet Union dropped 16489 bombs in Helsinki alone. How is that not devastation? And of course those were only the most intense nights of bombing, there were of course maaany more of them between 1939 and 1944.
The Soviet Union existed for the workers.
The Soviet Union said that it exists for the workers. But the workers were who got sent to the camps to die, not the ruling class.
You stated that the Nazis did some good things, but that they also did many horrible things, and used that to show that the good the USSR did was outweighed by the bad. That right there is Nazi apologia, the sheer scale of bad in the Nazis far surpassed that of the Soviets, just like the sheer good of the Soviets far outweighed that of the Nazis, to incomparable levels. Using the Nazis as an “easy example” doesn’t prove your point better, it serves as Nazi apologia.
No, Finland did not achieve better metrics at a larger scale, and further I already explained that Finland is Imperialist. It’s a landlord in country form, like the rest of Western Europe, and especially the US.
As for how Finnish Imperialism works, through various international loans and overseas production, Finland extracts superprofits off of exploitation of the Global South. To get into specifics of this takes up entire volumes, but you can start with Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism to see how the system generally works, though not specific to Finland.
20 million soviet citizens died in World War 2, and half of their buildings were destroyed. The Winter War does not compare, neither in proportion nor in raw quantity, to the sheer amount of rebuilding necessary. That’s also ignoring Finland’s history of anticommunism and cozying up to fascists.
The Workers in the Soviet Union were not sent to camps to die en mass. The "ruling class’ was the Proletariat. There was Prison labor, but overall incarceration rates, even despite having genuine Tsarists and fascists to contend with, were usually lower than the United States as a comparison. Consider reading Russian Justice.
The Soviet Union served the Working Class. Free, high quality healthcare and education, dramatically lowered wealth inequality, support for national liberation movements globally, defeated the Nazis, provided childcare, large movements in women’s rights, democratized the economy, and more.
The notion that there was a “ruling class” that exploited the workers is ludicrous, because they would have sucked at their job given that they dramatically lowered wealth inequality. They walked the walk as well as talked the talk.
used that to show that the good the USSR did was outweighed by the bad.
Nope. I used it to show that it is possible that the good the USSR did was outweighed by the bad. That the concept exists. The Nazis are a warning example of what we must never become. It is super scary that it is not allowed to talk about them. In this case nothing like Nazis actions was under conversation, but sometimes things do look almost 1:1 the same as Germany looked in 1920’s when the foundations for Nazism were laid and early 1930’s. It is not good that it is considered Nazi apologia, because if we can’t say aloud when things are going that way again, we will eventually end up Nazis ourselves.
I used to live in Germany, and it scared me that people there don’t see that their way will eventually lead to rise of fascism again, no matter how understandable the principles behind the “do not compare anything to Nazis” rule is! When it comes again, Germans are not going to anything to stop it, and will stop anyone who does try to. Except, of course, if it uses the swastika. Then it will be stopped.
But, now back to the actual subject!
The Workers in the Soviet Union were not sent to camps to die en mass.
Correct, it was largely based on the ethnic background, not so much on social strata. For example Latvians were sent there in such amounts that now almost 50 % of Latvians speak Russian as their main language. It also does not really matter if they were sent there en mass or not, when several millions from around Soviet Union were sent there and 70 % of them died. Camps where millions are sent and less than a third come back alive is not something that can ever be considered acceptable. Camps where you put six people to sleep in a space built for one or two are not okay. It is not okay, it was not okay, and it never will be okay. And it is not okay to defend them.
Then there are some claims that you just let hanging in the air:
No, Finland did not achieve better metrics at a larger scale
I already explained that Finland [was between 1917 and 1991] Imperialist
Finland extract[ed] superprofits off of exploitation of the Global South [between 1917 and 1991].
You need to elaborate on those. I did alter the quotes, because in the context of comparing countries’ growth 1917–1991 whatever happened after 1991 is not really relevant. The altered parts are marked clearly.
“ruling class” – would have sucked at their job given that they dramatically lowered wealth inequality.
The job of the ruling class is not to maximize wealth inequality. They very often do that, yes, but it is not their job. Lowering wealth inequality is a sign of the ruling class is doing their job correctly, not incorrectly. I do not understand why you would think otherwise.
On the southern Kazak steppe an aged yellow-skinned herdsman, dying, sent a last message to his son who had been village president and who was now elected delegate to the All-Union Congress: “All the years of my life were dark with toil and hunger. But I lived to see the new day. Take care of the Soviet power, my son; it is our power, our happiness.”
The USSR is responsible for the largest decrease in poverty in all of world history
Finland decreased its poverty between 1917 and 1991 more than Soviet Union did. In the beginning of year 1917 Finland was a part of the Russian Empire, so we were extremely poor here as well. Soviet Union could be on the second place, perhaps. But, since there is at least one country that fared better, the claim you made it evidently false. There can very well be other countries than just Finland that decreased poverty more than USSR did. I do not know for sure, though, as I’m not terribly well aware of how faraway places like Chile or Burma were faring in 1917.
China is second place
Seeing some of the zingers in the comments here, now seems like a great time to plug my “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. Read up, comrades!
The struggle depicted perfectly lol
For those that don’t like to read, you don’t have to read theory. In fact, most theory is old. There are newer and better takes on these ideas. Find a good YouTube channel that goes over the ideas. I like Vaush.
If you like to read theory, go for it. But I think there are faster and easier ways to get the concepts.
Support for chasers and sex-pests like Vaush is pretty awful, not to mentions his awful politics and constant butchering of Marxist theory for an audience that usually can’t tell the difference.
Theory is important. Much of my list is newer, some is older when it holds up, some is newer when it meaningfully adds to the discussion. However, as someone who had your approach, reading theory directly genuinely is much faster than rolling the dice.
I have audiobooks linked as well that people can listen to if they prefer, and importantly they won’t be distorted by a sex-pest who complains about Marxists constantly while misrepresenting them.
Where can I find audiobooks you talked about? My app probably doesn’t show your userpage right.
I have audiobook links after (almost) each listed work.
I am pretty familiar with Vaush’s arguments on Marxist theory. What are your points of contention?
The vast majority of them, to be honest. He has no grasp of Dialectical and Historical Materialism, has no knowledge of AES, and horrendously distorts Lenin.
He’s a liberal that cosplays an Anarchist and pretends to have beyond a Wikipedia understanding of Marxism.
That’s, of course, ignoring that he’s a chaser, pedophile, sex offender.
He has no grasp of Dialectical and Historical Materialism
Can you list a specific example? I think he has a good understanding of this.
One of the worst issues is when he depicts AES as “not real Socialism” because they contain contradictions, when Dialectical Materialism shows that all systems contain contradictions and must resolve them, that doesn’t mean they aren’t that system. Ie, Capitalist states contain public ownership, which is a contradiction but does not define the system.
One of the recent and larger-scale issues was when he tried to explain Lenin advocated voting Socialism into existence.
I don’t make it a point to hate-watch sex offenders that do the work of the US state department.
Yeah, I am not surprised that you have disagreements behind Lenin and AES. The two are pretty related and hard to pull apart. I was just surprised that you would disagree with any of his Marxist takes. I think you both agree what the problems are from a Marxist perspective.
As for the sex offenders/sex pest stuff. I don’t think he is those things, but I understand I am just one person. From the stuff I have seen it is mostly people that disagree with him that label him as such as a way to get around the fact they don’t really have a leg to stand on; Fascists and the like. Not saying that is you of course.
Thanks for taking the time to talk this though by the way. I figure you get hit with a lot of stuff.
I like Vaush
Lmaoooo, ye I always follow the political opinions of some dude who watches child porn … oh wait, not child porn, it’s “shortstack goblins”
As far as I know, all the criticisms of Vaush watching child porn has been misinformation.
Then you clearly don’t know much. Maybe you should actually learn about the people you recommend
I watch Vaush a lot and I haven’t seen what you are talking about.
Vaush’s whole thing is controversy bait. He purposely crosses lines to get people mad at him while maintaining some form of “plausible deniability” to where his fans can always find a way to defend and excuse his actions by talking about “you don’t understand the context” or whatever, it’s a very common and tiresome tactic. Like, if you’re trying to promote a shitty video game that can’t stand on it’s own merits, just do something to antagonize either the left or the right (doesn’t matter which) and then go to the other group and be like, “Look, the guys you hate hate us, you should check us out.” Controversy generates clicks. A big reason for Trump’s success is that he cracked the code on how to apply this formula to a political campaign. If you know how to recognize it, it’s very obvious that Vaush does this.
This sort of opportunism is very detrimental to actually understanding the world or promoting ideas or building a movement. It’s essentially brain-poisoning and a cognitohazard. You’re much better off reading actual books than just following whoever’s best at attracting attention on the internet. If you are going to shun books for videos, you should at least go with someone more educational, like Shaun.
I do get that vibe from Vaush occasionally. Unfortunately the attention economy is a real thing and I would be impressed with anyone with the same reach as Vaush wouldn’t be doing similar things. I am not sure I would be as far left as I am without his content.
Doesn’t Hasan have a larger audience without doing that sort of thing?
No idea, I have only watch him one or two times. Seemed good to me.
A big difference between Hasan and Vaush is that Hasan generally wastes very little of his time with sectarian nonsense or left-punching, while Vaush makes that one of his core focuses. Hasan networks with the Deprogram crew, Chapo, and other more Marxist aligned groups without screaming about “tankies,” while Vaush leans heavily into that.
Hasan is also generally much better with foreign policy, even though I don’t always agree.
The biggest thing is that Hasan serves as a great gateway to Leftist radicalization, while Vaush ends up preventing further Leftist movement, kinda like a more Libertarian Socialist-coded Destiny.
My fiancé and I will still watch Hasan even when we may disagree with him on some issues because he is generally entertaining and generally more correct than not, but would never watch Vaush.
Hasan avoids arguing with leftists because hes a cowardly clout monger and can’t debate for shit because he isn’t really that smart and is captured to some degree by his audience.
I don’t hate Hasan, I do agree with a lot of his takes but hes fundamentally a less ideologically honest person than Vaush. Vaush doesn’t give much of a shit about pissing off his audience, he does it constantly.
Hasan has drama/beef with H3H3 & Lonerbox.
I don’t know what it’s about or who those people are really. Aren’t they Zionists?
No. Or at least I know Lonerbox isn’t.
I don’t know where you are getting the idea that he purposefully generates controversies. He lost subs during most of his controversies, not gained. And it has down stream negative impacts on his channel other than just sub count.
He is just very careless.
No way it’s just carelessness, nobody forces him to say edgy shit. It’s the classic “no such thing as bad publicity,” or, “but you have heard of me” thing. I’d have never heard of him without the controversies (of which there are many), and despite making a conscious effort to avoid him, even I’ve seen clips of him. When you get people talking about something, people will get curious and want to see it straight from the horses mouth, then some percentage of the people who show up “to get the full story” will like what they see and stick around, and even if they don’t, a hate click is still “engagement,” it doesn’t matter why you click, if you click, it boosts him in the algorithm.
Going into examples will naturally only play into this effect, but I recall him once talking about performing eugenics to eradicate trans people from existence, under the idea of detecting gender dysphoria in the womb and aborting the fetus. This is an example of walking right up to the line and getting people mad on purpose, that’s not something someone just “organically” says out of “carelessness,” it’s specifically formulated to generate outrage, while, as always, leaving him an out that he can fall back on.
There is 100% such a thing as bad publicity. Your post here is a literal example of this, you actively avoid him and there are many people who feel the same way as you.
Hes not forced to say edgy shit, he just doesn’t put much effort into not saying edgy shit and he naturally wants to. He doesn’t police his own words, for instance, his frequent use of the word “retarded” and his joking about hating women. He also constantly blurts out shit and then his audience points out he misspoke and he gets annoyed and says “You fucks know what I meant”. He has no anxiety or shame about his wording of things. There is no worry on his end about saying something shameful, he’s literally said that he thinks shame is a worthless emotion.
He doesn’t “mask” essentially. He is not careful. Maybe to some degree that helps his internet career because of reputation of authenticity or something but it also frequently pisses off his own audience. The controversies have lost him subs, they’ve severely damaged his ability to engage with other creators because he has either alienated or outright insulted them, which means he doesn’t debate anyone anymore, left or right.
Its not on purpose. Hes not playing 12D chess to boost his youtube career. He wouldn’t be a leftwing creator in that case, he’d be a rightwing grifter instead. A lot more money in that.
Your post here is a literal example of this, you actively avoid him and there are many people who feel the same way as you.
And yet, I’ve given him clicks. And I’m talking about him. That’s what he wants, that’s why he does what he does. Were it not for the controversies, I wouldn’t watch him either because I wouldn’t have heard of him, and also because I’m not his target audience.
Hopefully my criticism calls out the pattern directly enough that people take away that they should just ignore him, as opposed to playing into his specific controversies that are calculated to make use of criticism and outrage.
Hes not forced to say edgy shit, he just doesn’t put much effort into not saying edgy shit and he naturally wants to.
All I can see is that I see a pretty clear method to the madness. There’s always an out, it’s always “you don’t understand the context.” It’s the same tactic Trump uses, and the same tactic used in countless ad campaigns. I can’t really prove it because it’s just a matter of pattern recognition, but suffice to say, I don’t fuck with what he does. Even if your interpretation were correct, associating with someone so careless about messaging and so prone to controversies is more of a liability to the left than an asset. But also, your interpretation is not correct.
The first time I see someone holding a bloody knife over a dead body, I might be willing to listen to their explanation and their side of the story. The 17th time I see the same person in the same situation, something’s going on. How many times am I expected to give him the benefit of the doubt? Because whatever that number is, he’s exceeded it, because he’s doing this constantly, and you can pretend that it isn’t a clear pattern of behavior all you want, but I’m not going to.
He wouldn’t be a leftwing creator in that case, he’d be a rightwing grifter instead. A lot more money in that.
No, there’s lot’s of little niches that one can carve out, regardless of being left or right. There’s plenty of opportunists with supposedly left-leaning brands. The right-wing grifts and personality cults are more profitable, but it’s also a fairly saturated market with a lot of competition. There’s plenty of room for people like Destiny, Jimmy Dore, and Vaush to carve out their respective “left-leaning” niches.
Also, btw, I have never heard about any actual insight that watching Vaush gives. His content isn’t educational or edifying, the way someone like Shaun’s is. It’s all about aesthetics and personality. The best thing anyone can really claim about Vaush is that criticism towards him is invalid, or that he makes people they don’t like mad, nobody actually seems to learn anything from watching him.
And yet, I’ve given him clicks.
I thought you said you only watched clips of him? I assumed you meant by other creators.
All I can see is that I see a pretty clear method to the madness. There’s always an out, it’s always “you don’t understand the context.” It’s the same tactic Trump uses, and the same tactic used in countless ad campaigns.
Trump supporters don’t actually care about context though. They say that shit for propaganda purposes. Vaush supporters bring up context because he literally gets clipped out of context for oppositional propaganda purposes.
Also, there isn’t always an “out”. Some of the things Vaush has said/done are bad even with context. Like when he told his followers to go harass Contrapoints on Twitter once because he was upset with her and wanted to “Force her to see reason” or whatever. When he was unnecessarily nasty to TJ Kirk during some debate. Or when he flashed on screen AI generated and drawn porn of a canonically 16 year old character and bestiality.
There are a few other things I’m probably forgetting.
No, there’s lot’s of little niches that one can carve out, regardless of being left or right. There’s plenty of opportunists with supposedly left-leaning brands. The right-wing grifts and personality cults are more profitable, but it’s also a fairly saturated market with a lot of competition. There’s plenty of room for people like Destiny, Jimmy Dore, and Vaush to carve out their respective “left-leaning” niches.
Jimmy Dore is 100% vapid grift. Destiny is a terrible human being but he is also almost certainly not a grifter. He says what he means and means what he says.
Vaush is someone who is significantly egotistical, narcissistic, impulsive, and short sighted. But he is not a controversy-monger, on that front he is just a dumbass.
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And then 7 million people died, and most people feel they were better off under Socialism and wished it continued.
It’s easy to say if one has never lived under communism rule. Stalinism caused the Holodomor in Ukraine and starved to death 2-7 million people. Mass deportations of people in Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and many other countries in Eastern Europe. Federated platforms? Forget about it. Everything is controlled by the state. Do you want to say something that the government doesn’t like? You can, but then you are off in a concentration camp (gulag) or sent to Siberia. Almost every family has a history of one of its family members being sent or imprisoned because they said something bad about communists / had a farm and could feed themselves with the products from their farm or land. On the contrary I would recommend to read the Animal Farm by George Orwell. - “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
The famine in the 30s was caused by natural causes and spiraled to greater heights because of collectivization, but this ended famines.
The Soviet system was similar to federated platforms. It was government controlled, in a somewhat federated manner. Read Soviet Democracy.
The GULAG administration was a prison system, not concentration camps. Read Russian Justice.
Orwell was a fan of Hitler, hated workers, and in Animal Farm specifically his biggest critique was that Russian Workers are stupid and destined to be taken advantage of. Read On Orwell and A Critical Read of Animal Farm.
Oh yes, my friend, I knew someone would repeat me this soviet narrative. I urge you to read about Mr. Jones or watch a film about these events. Regarding gulags, it’s the same as telling me about concentration camps built by the Nazis. They also claimed it was just for labor, you know. I see you are well prepared with communist materials, it’s the same as entering communist class in the Soviet Union and expecting they will share the truth.
I urge you to read about Mr. Jones
There have been millions of Mr. Joneses so you’ll need to be more specific. In the meantime,
- Domenico Losurdo, 2008, Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend
- Grover Furr, 2014, Blood Lies: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands Is False
.
Regarding gulags, it’s the same as telling me about concentration camps built by the Nazis.
I see you are well prepared with communist materials, it’s the same as entering communist class in the Soviet Union and expecting they will share the truth.
Those aren’t arguments, they’re vague, empty rhetoric.
No, now you’re doing holocaust minimization by supporting Double Genocide Theory. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
“Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches. I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power — till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter — I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity.”
liked hitler is not exactly true, he just found him charismatic, I think saying he liked him is rather misleading
Given that he was wildly aristocratic in demeanor, looked down on workers, and even wrote an entire book that spends time after time talking about how stupid Russian workers are and thus are destined to be taken advantage of by bad actors, I don’t think saying “like” is wrong, here. The Anarchists he fought alongside in Spain even questioned why he wasn’t fighting for the fascists. There’s also the issue of Orwell’s antisemitism to contend with.
Orwell says he would have killed Hitler had he the chance, but still clearly found him appealing.
In this case, I think saying he liked Hitler is actually weakening your argument, even if it’s completely true, it’s clear from the reading that he wished he could personally kill hitler, but found him charismatic, and is saying that charisma is what his success was found on.
All of what you said there might be true, and all of that makes your case that he was a bad man better, but doesn’t make the case that he liked him better. At the end of the day, you don’t like someone you wish you could have killed. Saying he liked hitler when the reading makes it clear he wished he could kill him makes your other claims more dubious, not stronger, you should probably refrain from that in the future if your goal is to convince people.
All of those things may be true bad things about orwell, but none of them means he was clearly a fan of hitler.
Furthermore, I think antagonizing orwell, even if he was bad is just bad praxis for convincing people to be anti-capitalist.
I suppose it’s more of a different stance on the use of the word “fan.” Saying you would feel no personal animosity for Hitler while killing him goes quite a lot beyond simply finding him charismatic. I can say Trump can be funny, but I hold a great deal of animosity towards him despite that.
Just my 2 cents.
Because no one who experienced it thought hmm is briliant, yeh nah, socialist policies are needed but not any form of totalitarian communism
Most people actually preferred Socialism over modern Capitalism in post-Soviet states. Socialism works better than Capitalism, and was more democratic.
Find me an old person anywhere that isn’t nostalgic for their youth.
Considering that once Capitalism was restored wealth inequality skyrocketed, 7 million people died, and previously relied on safety nets were destroyed or sold for parts to Capitalists, I don’t think it’s something that can be attributed to simple youthful nostalgia.
Luckily the US is dismantling the CIA so that’s good news for communism!!!
JDPON DON
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deleted by creator
to anyone who says “why don’t you compare communist eastern europe to democratic western europe?”. sure, first thing to notice is that eastern europe didn’t had companies exploiting underdeveloped nations for their cheap labour and raw materials, their oppression of labour organizations and the support of corrupt rulers. since brazil was mentioned (heh), let us remember that west german companies such as vw or mercedes-benz used to report on syndicalists and communists working and organizing on their plants to the brazilian military during the dictatorship, and sold equipment to the military and police. that siemens sold nuclear reactors to the dictatorship during the late 70s. that many former officials of the dictatorship got leadership jobs in these companies and in basf, hoescht, atlas-schindler, mwm. behind the “economic success” of the rich countries of the west there’s always some degree of exploitation of poorer countries.
I like this version better, thx.
Anytime anyone whines about “commies / tankies”, they’re entirely complicit with these mass killings.
Don’t know how your get one from the other. I can think that state socialist experiments were flawed, misguided, and ultimately destined for autocracy, and still think that targeting them with imperialist intervention is wrong.
Just because the US empire is evil doesn’t make everyone opposing them good. The world is not black and white.
Who’s the one telling you that the USSR, Cuba, China, Venezuela or Vietnam are/were autocracies?
If you actually investigate countries that have substantive / economic democracy, which goes far beyond the liberal equality before the law, you’ll find them to be far more democratic than the countries accusing them of being autocracies.
The US Empire being incredibly evil and predatory towards anyone daring to exert domestic control over their economies and even their own allies does paint a better picture for AES states. It doesn’t make them automatically good, but it starts them off on the right foot.
Then you can analyze how AES states have brought immense democratizations of the economy, massive expansions in key quality of life metrics like education, literacy, life expectancy, Home Ownership, and more, while expanding worker rights and supporting the Global South against the Imperialist countries, it’s hard to see AES as “bad.”
There are genuine critiques of AES countries, but I wouldn’t call them “autocratic,” considering they are generally more democratic than western countries, and moreover the needs of the people are better met. For example, people in China believe the government represents their interests at rates surpassing 90%, and more Chinese workers believe they have democratic control than USian workers.
All of these considerations need to be taken into account, and the fact that these AES states have been treated with the harshest of violence from the US Empire means they are deserving of support for their own existence.
This map misses some red. For instance, Belgium was also targeted with the Brabant killings (don’t remember if Killing Hope covers that. It’s been so long, I should read it again anyway.)
It’s such a long book(> 20 hours), but very good. I only finished it ~ a year ago, and I remember the person who recorded the audiobook said it’s been a journey.
And it often comes into being because of a CIA coup
It’s like the chicken or the egg question.
When has the CIA ever financed a communist coup?
Never … the communists / socialists / democratic groups usually reacted because of a CIA financed coup
09/11 Chile vibes
Communism only works on a small scale. The second society gets bigger, you require a state with militaristic presence to keep the people in line. To this very day, the Marxist ideal of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” has ALWAYS resulted in centralized power structures that became brutal dictatorships.
No matter which country you pick, large ones like china or the soviet union or smaller ones like cambodia under pol pot or vietnam under the CPV, all of them have devolved into a dictatorship. Even “experiments” like yugoslavia under tito were, in the end, still dictatorships where political opposition was disallowed, a secret police was founded and tito still had absolute control. Now, you might say: “But the people lived well!”, yes, for about 10 years until the 1960s where the country suffered a massive economic crash, insane debt (because commies suck at economics) and inflation. Tito was able to hold it together with sheer force until he died, and after his death, yugoslavia completely unraveled into the mess it is today.
I know you like to cope with “oh no the evil CIA again >:(” but in the end, communism is a failed ideology that will never work on a large scale without completely suppressing individual freedom and brutally knocking down any sign of dissent.
Edit: By the way, I’m more than willing to argue about this - however, I just noticed that I’m on lemmy.ml so I’ll most likely get banned for not conforming to the tankie-ideals.
This is generally wrong, though. Communist countries have dramatically democratized society, it works better at large scale if we are speaking of Marxian Communism because that’s the Marxist reason for Communism to begin with. Competition centralizes, so in the future it must be publicly owned and planned. This is the basis of Scientific Socialism, primitive Communism is not the same as the post-Socialist Communism, which must be large-scale as production increases in complexity.
Pol Pot wasn’t even a Communist.
Communist countries have dramatically democratized society
No. That’s just a straightup lie. Name one.
it can only work at large scale because that’s the Marxist reason for Communism to begin with
And yet, it never did. Not one single time.
Competition centralizes, so in the future it must be publicly owned and planned.
Competition does the exact opposite of centralization. That’s why I can buy most goods from completely different vendors that differ in price and quality.
Are there mega corpos that harm people in general? Absolutely. Should we do something about it? Absolutely. Is communism the solution? Nope.
Pol Pot wasn’t even a Communist.
Pol Pot followed a radical form of Maoist communism, heaviely influenced by china. So no - that’s also a lie.
The USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, etc are more democratic than theie previous systems.
Communism still works, just because the Soviet Union isn’t here doesn’t mean everything is a failure.
Competition forces centralization and monopolies over time due to increasinly complex production practices that raise the barrier to entry. It’s unavoidable.
Pol Pot denounced Marxism and focused on an odd agrarian system, and was backed by the CIA.
The USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, etc are more democratic than theie previous systems.
No?
While these regimes may have dismantled previous monarchies, colonial systems, or oligarchies, they did not replace them with democratic governance, but rather installed rigid, one-party authoritarian states that eliminated political competition, suppressed civil liberties, and centralized power. By nearly every standard of democracy these systems fell short, making them less democratic, not more.
Communism still works, just because the Soviet Union isn’t here doesn’t mean everything is a failure.
No, it doesn’t. The USSR was the most successful country and only existed for like 60 years, and every other communist country that still exists today is an authoritarian shithole like Vietnam, North Korea or Cuba where people are executed and suppressed constantly.
Competition forces centralization and monopolies over time due to increasinly complex production practices that raise the barrier to entry. It’s unavoidable.
True for a very narrow spectrum of products and services, mostly those that are extremely expensive to manufacture/develop or those under government supervision, like medicine. Untrue for most.
Yes, competing with twitch.tv on streaming is nearly impossible because the infrastructure is extremely expensive. But you can compete with most other companies in the space. Look at lego, for example. 15 years ago, there was only lego, nobody was competing with them, they became worse over time, more expensive, less quality, people complained and suddenly, companies like cabo or bluebricks came up and invaded the market, offering a wider variety of products.
Pol Pot denounced Marxism and focused on an odd agrarian system,
He still followed communist ideals for the most part, or are we going to argue that maoism is not heaviely influenced by communist ideals?
and was backed by the CIA.
The US never directly supported pol pot. Before 1975, they supported Lon Nol, who was fighting against the communist Khmer Rouge.
The part that IS true is that the US did support China and Thailand at the time, which in turn used that aid to support resistance groups in cambodia because vietnam invaded cambodia in 1979 - something the US had no problem with since vietnam was backed by the soviets. Also, it is true that the US and other western countries supported keeping the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s official UN representative, however, that was mostly done to undermine Vietnam’s rule over cambodia.
So, yes, by extension, the US supported pol pot, but it’s not the big “gotcha” you think it is - it was the cold war, an extremely complex geopolitical time.
Read Soviet Democracy, as well as read up on the government structures of the PRC, Vietnam, Laos, etc. They are democratic.
The PRC is more successful today than the USSR was, and is Socialist. Calling countries in the Global South “shitholes” is wildly chauvanist, along with your unsourced claims about them.
You didn’t really go against competition causing centralization. Even further than companies, there are joinings of companies under single megacorps that share supply chains and interwork.
Pol Pot did not “follow Communist ideals,” though. Moreover, if someone makes a clear deviation from Communism and denounces Marxism, why on Earth include it as a detractor other than clear bad-faith?
Sure, the Cold War was complicated, but the US was never fighting for Communism and neither was Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge never actually read Marx, and mostly declared any Communist sympathies out of aesthetics and geopolitical support than genuine support for Communism, and the US supported them.
You made a lot of claims here. Do you have any sources to provide support?
Here’s a well-sourced post on China’s democracy, but really, read their constitution and government structure if you want more.
Cuba was under a fascist slaver before Socialism, and now has a democracy.
The PRC is Socialist, and has one of the largest and most rapidly growing economies in the world, I don’t think you need a source for this.
As for competition and centralization, where do you think the megacorps came from? We are more centralized now than ever before.
Pol Pot and the CIA, alternatively Blowback lists their sources and they went over it in Season 5.
Competition does the exact opposite of centralization. That’s why I can buy most goods from completely different vendors that differ in price and quality.
Competitions have winners, and in this case it means the competition goes out of business and dies, leaving you with a near monopoly or outright monopoly.
That power then gets used to
- lobby (bribe) the government to raise barriers to entry to prevent new competitors
- buy out new competitors
- intentionally price everything lower than competitors, at a loss, to kill competitors in a war of attrition that they can’t possibly outlast
And that’s even assuming there’s any competition at all, which often isn’t the case with certain things like healthcare, internet, electricity, etc.
Not really? Competition might cut into your profits, sure, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be bankrupt. Just because dyson vacuums are amazing doesn’t mean stuff like vorwerk is dead, right? They still exist and are very profitable.
I’m not saying that the ones at the top are not using their power and money to lobby and stuff, but that doesn’t really seem like a good argument to me why we should switch to communism instead of just fixing the issues we currently have lol.
Im sure the uyghurs and tibetans see it differently
EDIT: \s
The Schrödinger’s sarcasm edit 🙄
uyghurs
The US propaganda machine’s “Uyghur genocide” psyop has been debunked six ways to Sunday already. [1] [2]
.
tibetans
I’m pretty sure virtually all of the Tibetan people are happy to no longer be suffering under theocratic feudalism. Happy to no longer be illiterate serfs and slaves, suffering depredation under a god-king. I doubt many of them are sad that CIA asset Dalai “suck my tongue” Lama is in exile. [1] [2]
By debunked you mean the leader accused of genocide denied it and then denied journalists and observers access! Your propaganda is too stupid to believe.
The tibetens were beaten into submission and shown that they will be disapeared for even suggesting that god-king Xi might be wrong.
Not sure what you’re trying to say. Uyghurs are systematically eradicated and tibet is controlled by china since their invasion in the 1950s. Not exactly speaking in favor of communism.
So, if you’d like to expand on your point, I might be able to discuss this further.
Lol I meant to reply to the main thread, but you could pretend im being sarcastic and it kinda works
Makes sense, I just was kinda confused and wasn’t sure.
If it’s not the CIA it will be a coup from some smart ass****e high ranked in the military/party.
Humans are to greedy to live in a socialist peaceful world.
That doesn’t make any sense, though, greed has a larger impact on Capitalist systems as its the main mover and driver.
Yes, exactly! For all the noxious effects of greed, it drives competition which drives evolution.
Even if a utopian communist/anarchist society were able to stabilize on its own, it would inevitably be overcome at some point in the future by a more competitive society that had martially evolved beyond the utopia’s understanding.
Whether its right or wrong has no bearing on the entropy of it.
To the contrary, competition eliminates its own existence, eventually all markets will coalesce into large trusts that can be publicly owned and planned.
Well, competition has been going pretty strong for the last four billion years; time will tell.
Not exactly, it’s increasingly disappearing in favor of monopoly.
The health of the current system is undenianly declining, absolutely. But competition is eternal and non-optional, so systems that seek to eliminate it are intrinsically doomed.
Competition can’t be eternal, otherwise monopoly wouldn’t exist.
Marxists are anything but utopian, and I think you’ve bought into the just-so stories of bourgeois ideologues like von Mises, Hayek, Rothbart, and Greenspan.
Have you considered a world where power is based in social welfare instead of capital?
Would be nice, but it just never going to happen.
We’ve been there already.
So no, you haven’t.
Literally any socialistic country turned in a shitty dictatorship. Do you still need further investigations?
The biggest example is China. They opened to capitalism in order to let the greedy comrades survive in their power and what you have know? Chinese are free to earn tons of money, but not to say what they think.
It’s the biggest paradox of the world.
In the biggest socialist country capitalism is tollerated more then free speech.
Everything you know about these “shitty dictatorships” has been told to you by a media and a government that has a direct monetary (and by extension, power) interest in maintaining and legitimizing the current system you live under. They are free to lie to you as long as they make it believable enough. Not to mention how the ruling class would have profited immensely from assimilating the resources and labor of these “shitty dictatorships”. When that fails, they will profit by generating war and weapons contracts.
This is accomplished by lying and manipulating half truths in order to call them “shitty dictatorships” that need to be dealt with through military action (and destabilization via propaganda and collective punishment to make conditions favorable to accepting capitalism as their way of life). They must justify their actions to the American people in order to generate the least friction within their system, but when it does generate friction, they do it anyways, because their power ultimately lies in capital and not in the people’s opinion of them. This is often when things turn to fascism, but let’s be honest, it’s not “not fascism” just because it’s done in the light of polite society.
This is unique to imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, which “shitty dictatorships” like China do not practice. China takes advantage of western capitalist’s greed to fund their socialist project, but they are not themselves capitalist. They are in what they define as their first stage of socialism with Chinese characteristics, which has already lifted millions out of abject poverty. The presence of a market-based economy does not make a system capitalist, just as the presence of social welfare does not make a system socialist. Being openly vigilant (which likely means far less than you imagine it does) to intentionally subversive western propaganda does not mean they can’t be democratic in far more meaningful ways, without the burden of constantly re-hashing information that has already been proven faulty.
We are the last people that should be telling China how to run their country and media. Because, in contrast,
Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. they know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism.’
Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions.
This is is at once the most comic and most tragic aspect of the excitable alarm that talk of social democracy or democratic socialism can elicit on these shores.
An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than, say, Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete.
They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone too irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, far more subject to income inequality, and so forth, while effectively paying more in tax (when one figures in federal, state, local and sales taxes, and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover).
One might think that a people who once rebelled against the mightiest empire on earth on the principle of no taxation without representation would not meekly accept taxation without adequate government services.
But we accept what we have become used to, I suppose. Even so, one has to ask, what state apparatus in the “free” world could be more powerful and tyrannical than the one that taxes its citizens while providing no substantial civic benefits in return, solely in order to enrich a piratically overinflated military-industrial complex and to ease the tax burdens of the immensely wealthy.
Also *waves generally at the current state of things in the US*
Yeah.
The CIA is why the Soviets fell. Not corruption or incompetence.
It was complicated. Kruschev, and later Gorbachev’s reforms really weakened the Socialist system because they didn’t properly retain strong control of the larger firms and heavy industry (a lesson the CPC took to heart), however the CIA and really the US absolutely worked tirelessly to weaken it. The Soviets also had to spend a much larger portion of their production on the millitary in order to keep parity with the US, meaning that development rates began to slow.
What is complicated about it?
The reforms you refer to allowed for political dissent. If the Soviet Union was some worker’s paradise, then allowing people complain wouldn’t change anything.
The simple reality is that the Soviet Union was a dictatorship that only survived as long as it did because it was a dictatorship. Once people had the option of opposing Communist rule, they did. And that is what killed the Soviet Union. Not some conspiracy by the United States or the kulaks.
The reforms didn’t just allow for “political dissent,” they worked against the Socialist system, that was based on central planning. Rather than running in a more efficient manner, it ran against itself.
Further, nobody says the Soviet Union was a “worker’s paradise.” It had tremendous strides for workers, but it wasn’t perfect by any means.
The Soviet Union wasn’t a dictatorship. Read Soviet Democracy. It lasted as long as it did because it had tremendous GDP growth while lowering wealth disparity, free and high quality education and healthcare, doubled health expectancies, full employment, and over tripled literacy rates to 99.9%.
Do you really believe that we could have retained power and have had the backing of the vast masses for 14 years by methods of intimidation and terrorization? No, that is impossible. The tsarist government excelled all others in knowing how to intimidate. It had long and vast experience in that sphere. The European bourgeoisie, particularly the French, gave tsarism every assistance in this matter and taught it to terrorize the people. Yet, in spite of that experience and in spite of the help of the European bourgeoisie, the policy of intimidation led to the downfall of Tsarism.
Exactly, and this didn’t last for 14 years, but nearly the entire 20th century, and is succeeded by other AES countries like the PRC.
That’s what dissent is.
Nothing you said disputes it being a dictatorship. The people could not choose their leaders, there were no limits on the power of their leaders, er go it was a dictatorship. None of your “pros” matter. And that’s before we get into the lack of freedom of speech and press and total absence of transparency, meaning that I have no reason to trust those supposed accomplishments.
None of your “pros” matter
Healthcare? Doesn’t matter.
Education? Literacy? Reading is how the communist get you, remain illiterate.
Full employment? You don’t need to feed your family.
Life expectancy? Why prolong the suffering?We weren’t debating the quality of the Soviet Union. We were debating whether or not it was a dictatorship.
Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.
A lot of the cold war propaganda about the USSR turned out to be bullshit, now that US & Soviet archives have been released, as contemporary Western academic historians will tell you, like Domenico Losurdo and Grover Furr.
No, that isn’t what dissent is, it was a fundamental liberalization of the economy that favored private property over public.
Secondly, they absolutely chose their leaders.
Finally, you say life expectancy, literacy rates, and worker rights “don’t matter?” That strong, sustained economic growth doesn’t matter? You must be trolling.
As for distrusting the sources, you can look into them yourselves, they are well-respected.
So, you’re denying that glasnost allowed for political dissent?
Second, no they didn’t.
Finally, it does not matter because we were debating whether or not the Soviet Union was a dictatorship, which the literacy rate has nothing to do with.
Well-respected by Tankies, not by actual historians.
Glasnost allowed for liberalism to expand as an ideology, sure, alongside other reforms that weakened the economy and erased its foundations. You can’t cherry-pick the reforms to make it seem like the system worked poorly and only was dissolved because the “people had a choice.” In fact, most post-Soviet citizens regret the fall of Socialism and prefer it over Capitalism.
Read Soviet Democracy.
We were debating a great many things, one of which being the economy and the well-being of the people, because that helps explain why it was democratic.
Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan is quite literally used as a reference on the Wikipedia article for Soviet Democracy. You are incapable of being honest or looking at facts that disprove you because you care more about appearing morally righteous than being correct.
The Soviet Union was, if not a traditional dictatorship, absolutely a totalitarian autocracy. Stalin was a brutal dictator and his successors were chosen by the communist party. Elections in the USSR were for show.
Life was miserable almost from the start of the Bolshevik revolution for most people. The USSR’s implementation of communism was so bad, it’s become cliche.
“Life was miserable almost from the start of the Bolshevik revolution for most people”, said the romanovs.
Allow me to repeat myself:
The Soviet Union wasn’t a dictatorship. Read Soviet Democracy. It lasted as long as it did because it had tremendous GDP growth while lowering wealth disparity, free and high quality education and healthcare, doubled health expectancies, full employment, and over tripled literacy rates to 99.9%.
Life was miserable almost from the start of the Bolshevik revolution for most people.
People like you should be forced to live under conditions like Tsarist Russia.
All communist states were/are dictatorships (Soviet Union, China, North Korea).
What the society really needs are strong democracies with a free, well regalemented market and strong social welfare (mixed economy). This is already happening in northern europe with great succes.
This isn’t true, actually. AES states are democratic, you should read Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan.
Northern European countries aren’t role models, either. They depend on Imperialism to fund their safety nets, and are dictatorships of the Bourgeoisie, hence why their safety nets are declining.
Those aren’t/weren’t communist so per the post their leaders worked for the CIA
Worker owned cooperatives would go a fair way to seizing the means of production.
Kinda. They are nicer to work at, but aren’t what Marx is talking about, as they still retain classes due non-coop people having different property relations to those in the coop.
