- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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Two things can be true.
But they’re not by any metric you want to use. Study after study show that, at similar levels of development, socialism creates better outcomes in quality of life than capitalism.
We’ve had communism for the wealthy as long as I can remember
You don’t see any state run bread lines do you?
That’s because they’d rather you starve, but the mafia has soup lines waiting for you.
You don’t see any state run bread lines do you?
I remember getting extremely screamed at on Reddit when I posted “Bread Lines” and the picture of a line around the block at a grocery store on the eve of a hurricane.
Apparently, that’s not a “real” bread line because idfk free markets or some shit.
You don’t see any state run bread lines do you?
You do, they’re called food pantry lines, and they tend to be run by churches in my experience
There are still plenty of local government run food pantries too, since I have to spell this part out in crayon for some people…
If the food pantries are run by churches, then they are not state run, meaning you do not see state run food pantries.
If the food pantries are run by churches, then they are not state run
What if the state is subsidizing the church through tax credits, grants, and subsidies?
The state has no control over the food at the pantries beyond basic health standards. The state cannot force me to give out bread when I run a soup kitchen. It can encourage me to continue with charitable acts with tax credits and subsidies, but it cannot force me to.
The state has no control over the food at the pantries beyond
My brother in Christ there is literally a department of agriculture at the federal level and every single state. To say the state has no control over food in pantries you have to ignore water rights and farm tax credits and crop subsidies and trade restrictions and registration in pesticides and that’s just on the production end.
I live in a city where people are routinely arrested for distributing food to the homeless.
The state clearly has enormous control over what gets produced, where it is distributed, and who eats it. Even what price its sold.
I’m not American, but my uneducated ass believes America is basically a theocracy. The president has to pretend that he does everything in the name of god, you have to swear your official vows on the bible, every hotel has a bible, every child in school has to pray to the god-emperor every morning, your money says “in god we trust”, your churches are payed for by tax-evasion.
So then, what renains to be the difference between “state run” and “church run” benefits really?
So then, what renains to be the difference between “state run” and “church run” benefits really?
What kind of question is that? Churches are funded through donations rather than through taxes and they have no legal obligation to perform charity, so the difference is that they are not as reliable for people in need.
Well let’s break your points down.
1: The president does not need to pretend everything is done in the name of god. One party does this to appeal to a religious base.
2: You do not need to swear into office on a bible, many have sworn in on nothing at all or other holy books.
3: Every hotel is provided a bible (and often a book of mormon) by that company. This is because the company many of these hotels are owned by is a mormon company. Many hotels do not have bibles in them now.
4: Children are not required to pray in the morning, unless you attend a religious school specifically. If you mean the pledge, that is also optional and not done in many schools.
5: In God We Trust is an odd case yes. It was added in the 1950’s to “combat socialism.”
6: Churches are not required to pay taxes because they are also charities that perform good acts for the poor. Other religions claim this benefit as well.
Trump is a religion here. His devout call themselves christian but its clearly distinct in both beliefs and rituals.
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Actually they all functionally do, just to varying extents. Good luck finding a President who has never mentioned God in any of their speeches.
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Technically correct, but those who choose Not A Bible are routinely targetted with bigoted smear campaigns, often death threats, many of them credible, actionable.
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I mean you just do admit that this happens, that’s how normalized religion is, the state doesn’t do anything and it just happens.
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Clearly you have no idea how widespread and common it is for parents to force their kids to do this, for teachers in more religious states to force the pledge. Actual rules on the book be damned, don’t follow the unwritten ones and you are a pariah.
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You again concede this is the case.
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Churches can perform charitable acts, but there is no requirement for this, many of them don’t, many of them either directly or indirectly donate money to political think tank/campaigns and call that ‘charity’, many of them explicitly endorse particular political candidates, despite that being illegal, because either no one reports the violation and/or nobody bothers to prosecute it.
See also: The entire megachurch/megapastor phenomenon in the US, which would be described as a massive cult in basically any other country.
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Because they are religious? You would be hard pressed to find politicians who do not appeal to a higher authority except in countries where religious freedoms are restricted.
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Targeted by smear campaigns from their political opponents who would have smear campaigns running anyways. Credible death threats is a different story and not the norm, politicians recieve death threats from wackos over everything they do.
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What would the state do? It’s a first amendment protected right. If you dislike this practice you can stay in hotels without bibles.
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Anecdotal evidence at best, maybe in the more religious areas of the country in the south this happens, but they are a minority.
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Good job realizing that.
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Yes megachurches do provide some charity to maintain their tax exempt status. There is no defined percentage of revenue you must spend to be a charity. This is a larger issue that affects secular charities as well.
You have really only argued one of your six points.
Good luck getting an atheist elected president in the US.
You seem to arguing the US is not literally an official theocracy.
I am arguing that religiosity in the US is significantly more pervasive, common and extreme than in any other developed country, and I don’t even need to argue this, all kinds of stats have borne this out in detail, for decades.
Almost half of the US believes that we are all living in ‘the end times’, that the Rapture will either happen in their lifetimes, or even very, very soon.
Thats almost half the US that literally exists in an apocalyptic death cult.
They wouldn’t call it that, but that is literally what it is. Most other Christians in most other parts of the world do not believe in this essentially uniquely American fan fiction version of Christianity… and most Americans don’t even know that, that everyone else thinks we are weird.
Its a huge reason why we also statistically abberantly don’t believe climate change is real or is caused by humans or should have something done about it.
Its also a huge reason that US Evangelicals, up untill extremely recently… basically uniformly support anything Israel does.
They largely hate Jews, but, they literally want to hasten the apocalpyse, to hit all the conditions that they ‘interpreted’ into their scenario for the preamble to the Rapture.
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I agree with everything you’re saying. But I just wanted to mention that politicians are not actually required to swear in on a Bible. That’s just what most use because of everything else you said. But every once in a while a politician will choose something different to swear on. Two I can remember of the to of my head was swearing in on Dr seues green eggs and ham and another one that swore in on a Captain America comic. Of course the religious nut jobs always lose it when that happens though
TIL “tend to” means “always”
Even if they tend to be run by churches, then they wouldn’t count as state run. Meaning you do not see state-run bread lines / food pantries.
23 downvotes
People in the West absolutely can’t stand when you point out all the same instructions of poverty exist on their home turf.
It’s a sin to acknowledge poverty exists. Nevermind to suggest that westerners might be worse at alleviating it than their foreign peers.
The downvoted are cause they said “state run food pantries” and then talked about them being run by churches and not the state.
We fucking know there is poverty here. Hence talking about bread lines in the first place.
In the US? The church and the state are joined at the hip. Go look up the history of Mitt Romney. The man is an ordained Mormon Bishop while he lived in Boston.
We organize our charitable relief at the retail end through church fronts. But the money and the materials routinely come from state coffers.
Your teachers handed your tests back face-down didnt they?
A greedy sociopathic leader with lack of empathy will always cause starvation, be it capitalism or communism or any other system anywhere. Shitty kings, dictators, and colonialists have always caused this since the beginning of time. It ain’t about the system.
A greedy sociopathic leader with lack of empathy will always cause starvation, be it capitalism or communism or any other system anywhere
Empirically false. At equal levels of development, communism provides better life metrics such as life expectancy, infant mortality or nutritional values, and socialism also has been the only way for previously colonized nations to develop. China and India were similarly developed 100 years ago, yet now China has a higher life expectancy than the USA whereas India still sees tremendous amounts of death from treatable disease and malnutrition. This example alone accounts for hundreds of millions of lives saved. Similarly, in the Tsarist empire, life expectancy was 28 years of age. By the death of “le evil dictator Stalin”, it was 60 years of age.
The trick is to lock in a sustainable situation where power is spread out more than it is centralized. Democratic republics achieve this but, if your goal is simple “efficiency” (e.g. your personal political faction not restrained by rule of law) and you ignore the benefits of freedom of expression and movement that democracy gives you, then centralized autocratic control is tempting.
Defensive Democracy, but with added Socialism entrenched into the constitution.
Yes, idea is to spread power and not allow greed to take over. A Democratic Republic, i.e. a representative democracy is a good start but not good enough - we already have that in America & most countries worldwide, but that didn’t do much. What we need is widespread democratic socialism, i.e. market socialism i.e. co-ops, credit unions, open source etc.
To be fair, a lot of communist revolution did result in mass starvation.
Which communist revolution? Russia was having famines before the soviet revolution. Its more reasonable to say communism solved the famines in russia and created them in china.
Eh the Soviets had plenty of their own man made famine (Holodomor, among others)
The Soviet Famine of the collectivization, which you inappropriately label “Holodomor” (scary word for a specific famine to make it sound like holocaust, I wonder if you have any other special scary words for other famines) is indeed an unfortunate event of Soviet History. Yet, you fail to see it in the bigger picture.
First of all, even during the famine, life expectancy remained higher than in Tsarist times, because of increasing access to healthcare and nutrition on average to peasants.
Secondly, the famine is an unfortunate consequence of the necessity of rapid collectivization and industrialization because of threat of external invasion. There was intense debate in the CPSU at the time regarding rapid collectivization and industrialization vs. progressive one, and ultimately rapid industrialization won because of the perceived threat of invasion by industrialized western powers with 100 years of industrialization behind their backs. Famously, in 1931, Stalin said in a speech that the USSR was 100 years behind and would have to make up for that difference in 10 years or they would be eliminated. Almost exactly 10 years later, Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.
By industrializing rapidly (15% yearly growth of GDP) thanks to rapid collectivization of agriculture, not only did the Soviet Union defeat Nazism and save every European nationality between Germany and the Urals from Nazi genocide (hence saving tens of millions of lives), but this rapid development managed to raise life expectancy from below 30 years old in 1929 to above 60 bu 1960, effectively saving tens of millions of lives more. By any demographic metric you use, compared to what came before (Tsarism) and what came after (capitalism), the USSR saved tens of millions of lives. Capitalism is the one that brought unemployment, hunger, drug abuse, violent crime, and a reduction of life expectancy after decades of progress.
Don’t believe me? Go check the data:
inappropriately label “Holodomor” (scary word for a specific famine to make it sound like holocaust, I wonder if you have any other special scary words for other famines)
Try again, buddy.
edit: Also, the Holodomor specifically refers to the famine within Ukraine which killed millions, while the “Soviet Famine of the collectivization” (a specific name I can find referenced nowhere else, is that a translation?) is (evidently) the broad famine impacting the USSR of which the Holodomor was a part.
The word was used in print in the 1930s in Ukrainian diaspora publications in Czechoslovakia as Haladamor
And why exactly did that term stick in the west, only transliterated as Holodomor instead? And why is it overwhelmingly discussed with this term since the 2000s? Maybe because the usage of the word is political in nature as I explained?
As for the name of the famine broadly, in Wikipedia it appears as Soviet famine of 1930-1933.
And why exactly did that term stick in the west, only transliterated as Holodomor instead?
Because that’s the name it was given by the Ukranian peoples that survived it? I’m not sure what your point is here when you agree that it’s a transliteration of the name.
ngram graph
It’s not exactly a disputed fact that things like the Holodomor didn’t gain much traction in western literature until after the fall of the soviet union, because that’s when western literature was able to access it.
Discussion of the Holodomor became possible as part of the Soviet glasnost (“openness”) policy in the 1980s. In Ukraine, the first official use of the word “famine” was in a December 1987 speech by Volodymyr Shcherbytskyi
Add to it that the soviets violently suppressed reporting on it within the USSR, which you can even see reflected in that graph, explains the lack of occurrence in non-western works. That seems, you know, pretty gosh dang basic.
You’re seriously arguing the pretty straightforward etymology of this word is some kind of deeply political conspiracy, to deflect from the openly manufactured nature and your weird stalinist apologist thing you’ve got going on where millions of “lives saved” (pop quiz: how do you measure that?) somehow outweighs millions of deaths. Maybe there is a similarity with the term “holocaust”, which would seem kinda fair given the scale of the killing. But you know, there isn’t. Like there provably isn’t, it was a term coined from the original meaning of the word “holocaust” before “The Holocaust” even happened.
Just come on with this. They share a similar root.
Because that’s the name it was given by the Ukranian peoples that survived it?
Then why don’t we use any Indian names for the very many famines in India due to British occupation? Why do we call them neutral names like “Bengal famine” and not “exterminatron 3000”?
millions of “lives saved” (pop quiz: how do you measure that?)
Demographic extrapolations and comparative economics. Example: Brazil between 1930 and 1960 went from 36 years to 52. USSR went from 30 to 65. By comparing the evolution of socialist life metrics with capitalist life metrics at starting equal levels of development, you can find out that socialism massively boosted life metrics. You can also compare with the country itself in pre- and post- socialist times:
Surely you, so concerned with Ukrainians, knew about the horrifying demographic crisis caused by the capitalist restoration? The millions of lives lost and ruined by unemployment, suicide, malnutrition, defunding of healthcare and treatable disease, alcoholism, drug abuse and violent crime. Now, compare the hiccup in the graph in the 1930s, with the unrecoverable drop after 1990. And look at the vertical axis.
I wouldn’t associate that with a revolution though. Similar to how the “Irish potato famine” was something the brits did to Ireland that’s a thing the soviets did to their colonies, essentially and I would probably chalk it up to a type of colonialism
Lysenkoism was the cause of both Soviet and Chinese non-war related famines, a grand tragedy only possible under an authoritarian fever dream.
Ignore the lessons of history if you want, it just makes you the villain of the next cycle.
There was no one single cause, and trying to deflect blame onto a single (exceptionally whackdoodle) pseudoscientific theory is intellectually dishonest at best, and regular dishonest at worst.
Funny, because it and the pre-industrial cyclical famines ended when his policies did.
Man yeah, the fall of Lysenkoism is really the defining moment of mid-late 1940s soviet russia. Couldn’t possibly have been any other factors which played into the shift in cultural attitudes within the soviet union at that time. Nope, must have been down to Lysenkoism itself falling out of favor.
Also it ended in the 60s and the last big soviet famine was in 47s so idk about that timelineYes, eventually the industrialization of Soviet farming paid off despite his nonsense.
Doesn’t stop it from being the major cause (beyond deliberate genocidal policies) of the interwar famines. As you can provably see when it spread to Mao’s newly formed Chinese state and, surprise, caused famines again when they didn’t have the sheer output of an industrialized agrarianian sector to make up for it.
The Four Pests Campaign obviously didn’t help in that regard but Lysenkoism was part and parcel of it, with Mao officially adopting it as state policy and Lysenkoism trained advisors setting specific policy goals.
I don’t think I’ve ever up voted a comment of yours. But you are 100% on point about Lysenko. His promotion and the treatment of Vavilov are emblematic of a few of the many many flaws of Leninism. Vavilov was at least posthumously exonerated.Though he still died in a Siberian gulag for the crime of disagreeing with comrade Stalin, and sticking to the evidence.
As a precursor, sure. The OG 1918 October Revolution was fueled by a string of famines, exacerbated by the World War.
The American Bonus Marchers of 1932 were also propelled by food shortages of The Dust Bowl.
But these events get vanishingly little coverage in western history textbooks
To be fair, fat cat capitalist hoarding wealth have caused exponentially more. Counted the homeless in your community lately. Year in, year out. They might be invisible to you … but they are there. Millions of them – year in, and year out. Starving. Homeless.
tankie gonna say it was due to mismanagement or some shit like that
Not to be a tankie or a lib or a capitalists, but sometimes famines do happen, in the USSR was mostly due to one shitty botanist who played the politics game, we SHOULD learn from those mistakes, sometimes it is because natural or unexpected consequences. Like I wonder if there were biologists in China saying that killing the sparrows would cause a famine. But capitalists famines are such an different beast. They are always obviously preventable but doing so would decrease someone’s profits. The Irish famine was a straight up genocide, dust bowl was rich people recklessly gambling with the nation, and this one? straight up billionaires shoving the nation’s wealth into their pockets, like before but even more mercilessly.
Lysenko the shitty botanist happened a bit later and his ideas had repercussions way into 1970s. Lysenko was still on the come-up back in early 1930s but he really started getting political weight a bit later in 1935-36 when the purges happened and his bullshit started really messing things up after WW2 into the 1950s.
Meanwhile, Holodomor was way more diabolical and spiteful act. Ever since the soviets took over Ukraine - they had paranoia about nationalist uprising taking them out. For a while, a workable solution was to provide national representation. The whole Ukrainization policy. Eventually, their own policy got them scared so much they started the russification policy to undo “the damage”. They started taking out various Ukrainian political and cultural figures under false allegations.
At the same time shambolic economic reforms and collectivization attempts led to people questioning government competence and demand proper political representation instead of whatever soviets tried to do. The government solution was to call business owners and rich upper class peasants the enemy and go full feudal - purge the politically active people (call it the continuing class struggle) and turn peasants into collectivized serfs under kolkhoz system with no representation or rights. They couldn’t even travel without their superior permission and had no documents. And to seal the deal - start village blockades - attrition into submission and assimilation.
thanks, forgot about Holodomor, you make good points.
the most horrifying thing is that during that period soviets also proceeded to wipe out almost the entire Ukrainian intellectual elite under various false pretenses. One generation gone - just like that.
The most egregious example was The SVU trial (translates as Union for the Freedom of Ukraine trial) - a completely made up case with mock trial drummed up by the media - it was meant to take out folks who seemed out of line with “nationalist” tendencies threatening the state integrity in some nebulous way.
Umm ackshuslly it’s because of america! Because, ummm, sanctions. Without American trade, the economy crumbled. The soviet union was a victim of economic terrorism!
Adam Curtis’ Pandora’s Box series has a funny bit about Aleksei Gastev and his scientific management theories - dude wasn’t even political, he just liked figuring out how to get shit done efficiently. His ideas were essentially what is today known as innovation-driven project management - so naturally he was gulaged and commie cronies used feudalism instead.
In my country, one evil of communism I always heard was “not being able to buy Adidas shoes and Levis jeans”. But if capitalism makes it a de facto luxury product through devaluing your work, then it’s tough luck.
The reason of the confusion is clear.
The US propaganda has always equated Communism and totalitarianism.
It is bonkers that people in the USA cannot distinguish between an economic system and a political system.
Those two are distinct things. True communism is very democratic. But reading the Communist manifesto is heretic in the US and you are left with what your leaders tell you.
The Russian Revolution was communist but the USSR was never communist.
Right wing totalitarian dictators also use starvation of their own people as means of control.
What you are experiencing in the US is totalitarianism and while it hasn’t gotten to USSR levels, it is going on that direction.
Food for thought: study the political system in China, you’d be surprised how it’s actually more democratic than the current USA. Yes, the CCP controls the nominations. Now, tell me if there is true plurality in the US, two right wing parties selecting their candidates without any real popular input.
Really you’ve been bamboozled to think there is real democracy in the US.
The Russian Revolution was communist but the USSR was never communist.
Yes. But what does that mean? If I have a recipe for potion of immortality, but anyone that drinks the resulting potion dies instead, it’s a bad recipe. It doesn’t matter its promise of immortality sounds good.
Communism makes good promises. However, every time you have a communist revolution, it ends up being authoritarian instead. What does that say about the communist political system?
Every time a capitalist system is implemented the oligarchy grows and seizes power and some corrupt oligarchs usurp the power of the people. What does that say about capitalism? I think your generalized question is terribly bad faithed when every can point out the US system and straight capitalism is a failure also. Rather then generalized ideas and theory we look at all the systems and see what does work and how we can keep the power in the hands of people
I think the issue is corruption, power, and control. To have a capitalist society you must allow businesses do what they want or they will seize power. In a communist society power is centralized when it is focused on the state as a communistic in which power and control when questioned or control loosened gets cracked down.
Democratic Republicans are great but there is a few problems when they move so slow. One, what if the charter is never fixed when we add more rights. We just tack it on as precedent and never amend the charter.
Second,if the population is growing is it still representing people properly. I think having a representative for every 1 million people is to huge. And the fact we have disparities as large as 1 to million but then some have as low as 1 in 250k. Is unequal.
Third. I don’t think as long as businesses hold power over an individuals life businesses should have political power. They hold to much currently. Also the fact through a business they can unlimitedly donate money but i as an individual can only spend $2,500(somewhere around there is the campaign cap)on a candidate is insane power wise.
Fourth a mixed economic/ business system would be wonderful a more planned economy by what citizens need would be nice. Also economy and business shouldn’t be running the country. The individual people should.
Fifth States are stupid unless they can leave. The lines/borders are arbitrarily stupid and the fact the power federal is based on the lines fucks us up. If so chooses states should be able to break apart and make local states of the people so it is easier to have democratic control over your local area. Yes this means almost every state would become major cities and then the rural areas. Unless they want to partner with a city.
I don’t see how what you write relates to what I write other than what-aboutism directing attention to (non-fatal) issues of capitalism instead of addressing the fatal issues of communism.
non-fatal
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Do I have to remind you that capitalistic democracies other than USA exist? Plenty of them work decently well. Certainly still far from perfect, but well enough to prove these issues can be overcome, and are therefore non-fatal.
…Dude, the planet is frying.
“everyone is an American”
More like you have a simple and easy to follow recipe for cake. You and a friend are following it dutifully. Just before the last step of the recipe your friend gets a call from their partner. Your friend then pushes you out of the kitchen and locks you out. The cake is served frosted in your friends freshly cut hair clippings.
Ill be the patsy: You can’t make rules to eliminate human greed / lust for power?
I’m very simplistic with this stuff and haven’t studied it, but that seems to be the fundamental limitation with communism. Would work great with robots but we’re more ‘complex’ with our subconscious bias, unexamined motives and insecurities driving our actions.
I read a Chinese visual novel where society actual DID manage to eradicate humanity’s greed/lust for power.
The biggest issue with the depicted society is that people live out their lives in ways deemed safe by the state. No one who lives in the society sees any problem with this, since their needs are cared for, and they’re allowed to freely pursue interests the state considers safe. The society determined that any culture that existed before their rise to power has to be destroyed or locked up - introduction of such items can have a majorly destabilizing effect, and bring greed/lust for power back.
Even if “greed is human nature” weren’t complete bullshit, the best economic system is definitely not the one that most aggressively incentivizes greed
I think it says more about how Lemmings and other westerners understand authoritarianism. Because capitalist countries are way more authoritarian than any communist country has ever been. Y’all have just been fed lie after lie until you start repeating them yourselves.
More like every time there’s been democratically elected socialists or communists, western powers intervene with staged coups, assassinations, or embargos.
Even if that’s true, so what? You are just pointing out one possible reason why communism doesn’t work in reality. Still doesn’t work.
If I say my immortal potion recipe would work in an alternate reality where humans didn’t breathe oxygen, it does not make it any more useful. Equally, in our reality, coups, assassinations and embargoes exist. If a political system can’t withstand them, it is not useful.
This is like saying the idea of solar panels is bad because capitalists work against them to destroy their reputation. Judging a system based on the assumption that theres someone else trying to destroy it is very simple minded.
A political and economic system is not some random piece of infrastructure, like a solar panel. It’s more comparable to a padlock. It’s entire point is to manage human nature. If all people were benevolent and willing to work for collective good on their own, we wouldn’t need political systems at all. Neither would we need padlocks. A padlock that can’t hinder an intruder is a bad padlock. A political or economic system that can’t handle human nature (greed, lust for power) is a bad system.
A political and economic system is not some random piece of infrastructure, like a solar panel.
And its also not a magic potion.
A padlock that can’t hinder an intruder is a bad padlock.
A political and economic system is not some random
piece of infrastructureobject, like asolar panelpadlock.Youre saying a political system can only work if there is not a single aspect that can be taken advantage of? Thats equivalent to every single person being controlled 100% in their actions. If thats your idea of ideal, sure. I guess some people currently being in leading positions would agree with you.
The US is currently in the middle of a fascist takeover, while being a Democracy (in the past at least). Are you saying Democracy is not a political system worth pursuing because it doesnt work?
Youre saying a political system can only work if there is not a single aspect that can be taken advantage of? Thats equivalent to every single person being controlled 100% in their actions.
I did not say anything even close to that. I am saying a political system can only work if it can’t be easily overturned. It has nothing to do with how much it controls peoples lives or if it can be taken advantage of.
You’re discussing with brainwashed tankies who can only answer “what about xyz in the west” to any kind of, even constructive, criticism.
Lots of anarchists are like that too, a shame because there is surely something to take from those kind of ideas.
If you say something is bad, you must have some frame of reference to know how bad it is. So if you say communism is bad, we will want to know, “relative to what?” And since capitalism and western hegemony are the dominant systems, naturally they will draw comparisons. And those comparisons will be unfavorable since capitalism is clearly broken and incentivizes great evil.
So OK, we’re still not really discussing the merits and flaws of communism as they stand on their own, but most of you aren’t ready to accept that almost everything you have learned about communism is a lie and you definitely aren’t ready to engage with the actual historical record.
So instead, the arguments revolve around what-aboutisms. Because most of you deny the evidence of your eyes and just listen to daddy. Long before we can delve into how the soviets actually existed in the world, you have dismissed us as “tankies” and stuck your fingers in your ears.
I must also stop believing my eyes and ears as I grew up in a country bordering the URSS.
I went there. It was a hell hole. Nothing to buy in the stores. I can tell you more.
It also was trying to invade or coerce its neighbours. All The Time. They (the russians) still do.
Capitalism has its flaws but that doesn’t mean the soviet union was in any way good. Ffs open a history book, travel, go there and talk to people who lived during the brutal dictatorship of the soviet union and maybe You can open Your eyes.
64 per cent of Russians say life was better in the Soviet Union than now
Data is better than anecdotes.
In many of these cases, the political system which couldn’t withstand coups were democracies. Does this mean that democracy isn’t useful? Are you saying that democracies should forbid socialists from being elected since if they get elected then america will intervene and the democracy will cease to be useful? Sounds like you don’t care for democracy and self-determination of nations. Bonus points will be awarded for being able to make your point without a potion metaphor.
My entire point is that political systems like democracies are not isolated from economic systems. Democracies fail when combined with communism, because all power is concentrated in the political apparatus, leaving no leverage for the rest of the population. Then, seizing power and removing democracy is too easy.
The problem isn’t political systems, it’s superpowers intervening, e.g. america funding fascist coups of democratically elected socialists. It would be hard for any small nation, regardless of political system, to defend against a coup funded by a superpower. Please prove me wrong and tell me how e.g. the coup in Chile 1973 could have been prevented by decentralizing power.
The problem isn’t political systems, it’s superpowers intervening
There can be more than one problem.
Please prove me wrong and tell me how e.g. the coup in Chile 1973 could have been prevented by decentralizing power.
A coup still inherently relies on there being internal forces willing to execute said coup. I don’t dare say being capitalist could have stopped this particular one, quite likely it couldn’t. But it it is at least more resilient in general.
If it was impossible to resist superpower sponsored coups, I am sure the Baltics wouldn’t be able to remain democratic right next to Russia.
The capitalist apparatus requires emmense effort to maintain. Military, police, propaganda, bailouts,… Its not self sustaining and its not natural. For comparison, cooperative, democratically controlled workplaces, have greater survival rates than their conventional, privately owned firms. Not to mention workers or more likely paid a living wage, have greater job stability and satisfaction, and just as likely, if not more so to lead to innovation. Its literally proven a better economic system, but yet some still think it offers empty promises.
True communism is very democratic.
At some point, you have to get passed “true whatever” and accept certain institutions already exist.
Also helps to recognize that communism as a movement has been anti-colonialist first and democratic only as it serves the former cause. Communists aren’t receptive to a liberal democracy that allows half the people to sell out the other half.
Folks love to get lost in the sauce talking about what Marxism really truly means, as an ideology, without asking why people adopt it or how they apply it in practice.
that allows half the people to sell out the other half.
Do you actually think that’s worse than the elite deciding who is going to starve and who’s going to be disappeared to maintain their power?
Why bother pretending to return the means of production to the worker only to rob them of their voice?
You’re hopped up on that US propaganda, bud. The USSR was democratic from the ground up. Working people’s voices had more power there than almost anywhere else at any other point in history.
You’re discussing with a tankie. For them the gulags and the holodomor will only get the response “what about xyz in the west”.
Do you actually think that’s worse than the elite deciding who is going to starve and who’s going to be disappeared to maintain their power?
I think that’s how it is accomplished. Divide and conquer.
Why bother pretending to return the means of production to the worker only to rob them of their voice?
Why do you believe elections are a voice of the people when they do routinely reproduce the plutocracy people say they despise?
I think you’ve been living in a broken democracy too long, you can’t examine it objectively anymore.
The alternative is that you actually believe authoritarianism to be morally superior, which is just disturbing.
The alternative is that you actually believe authoritarianism to be morally superior
Which enemy state of the US isn’t classified as “authoritarian” in the modern era? The very etimology of the term gets chased back to the Anarcho-Capitalist heyday of the Coolidge Era. It’s a token phrase that’s intended to denounce any government institution. Since Reagan, we’ve adopted it to mean “any government we don’t like”.
I don’t believe the system of government establishes any inherent morality. A democratic slave state is not morally superior to a liberated theocracy. A multi-party parliamentary system that starves and imprisons its homeless population to the applause of a supermajority is not ethically superior to a revolutionary junta that strives to feed every mouth and shelter every head.
I think the long term impulses of a single-party state or a consolidated leadership tend towards corruption. And egalitarian governance can alleviate tension between state bureaucrats and lay civilians by offering them a hand in oversight and intervention. But the sin is in the corrupt practices, not the composition of the state. Corrupt mass media, disinformation, and corporate capture of social institutions undermine the foundations of
Go crack a copy of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. Its a fairly short story, but it illustrates my point. Democracy is not a panacea nor should it be expected to function as such.
The USA is a massive country of 330m+. Literally tens of millions of us have no delusions about this.
The Russian Revolution was communist but the USSR was never communist
Hard disagree. Universal healthcare, free education to the highest level, lowest wealth and income inequality in the history of the region, guaranteed housing and abolition of homelessness and unemployment, life expectancy skyrocketing from a meager 28 years to 70 in the span of 40 years, abolition of private business, redistribution of land to peasants, and saving Europe from Fascism really seem like communist traits to me. There were defects and policy failures during some of the hardest times in history, don’t get me wrong, but simply by achieving all of those wonderful goals without ever having colonies or engaging in imperialism, that’s very communist to me.
What you are experiencing in the US is totalitarianism and while it hasn’t gotten to USSR levels, it is going on that direction
The US has had, for decades, the highest prison population in the world, both in absolute and relative terms. In absolute terms, the US has nearly as many prisoners as the USSR did during WW2, the historic highest for obvious reasons (25 million Soviet citizens were killed by Nazism). You have literal fascist police disappearing people based on the colour of the skin, and the US has literally bombed black people for their ideology in US soil.
You’re damn high in American exceptionalism and anticommunist propaganda.
without ever having colonies or engaging in imperialism
That’s only because the USSR lobbied hard in the UN so that colonialism is defined as having overseas colonies. The “near abroad” is/was a colonial empire.
The USSR was definitely imperialistic, see Hungary 1956, where it crushed a revolution which was not against communism, the revolutionaries were in fact communists, they just wanted to be free of Soviet occupation.
Not debating the accomplishments of the USSR though, it was definitely and improvement on the Russian Empire.
The “near abroad” is/was a colonial empire
The USSR was definitely imperialistic, see Hungary
You’re spitting in the graves of the tens of millions of murdered by colonialism by comparing it to intervention in Hungary. Colonialism isn’t “maintaining an aligned bloc”, colonialism is the plunder, enslavement and murder of millions in the name of wealth and resource extraction. Go tell the tens of millions of enslaved Africans, of murdered Congolese and Native Americans and Palestinians how what happened in Hungary was colonialism. Disturbing the definitions of western colonialism in order to dunk on communism is honestly a disgusting attitude that trivializes the suffering of the millions upon millions of wretched of the Earth.
Find me anywhere where the USSR did 1% of the horrifying shit that the Brits did in India.
Holodomor. Katyn. Gulags. Literal alliance with the Nazis.
You disgust me, up on your high horse, clutching your pearls and discounting millions dead because theyre politically inconvenient for the economic system you glaze. You accuse other people of spitting while you piss with your Shapiro-like disingenuity. Gross.
Holodomor
Yeah, a bad famine happened in the USSR between 1930 and 1933, no need for a scary special word to refer to it. Famines were commonplace in the region up to that point, and this one was the result of unforeseen difficulties in the first successful collectivization of land in human history. It was not intended or targeted, unlike the repeated famines in India under British rule. As I’ve explained in other comments, it was a tragedy that took place during the necessary rapid collectivization of agriculture that enabled the industrial revolution which saved Eastern Europe from extermination by Nazis.
Katyn
Katyn and similar incidents in Poland number in the tens of thousands of victims, most of them military and law enforcement. It’s not like Poland didn’t have expansionist ambitions that needed to be fought against.
Gulags
Gulag is just the name of the prison system of the USSR. The fact that many people died in the Gulags during WW2 is consequence of the food shortages that Nazis themselves caused in the USSR during their invasion:
Literal alliance with the Nazis
This is simply ahistorical and untrue. In 1936 already, the Soviet Union was the only country to send weapons, munitions, tanks and aviation to Republican Spain in the Spanish Civil War against fascism, fighting the Nazis in proxy war. Regarding Molotov-Ribbentrop, this deserves its own comment, so I’ll post it below this one
Regarding Molotov-Ribbentrop and the invasion of “Poland”: I’m gonna please ask you to actually read my comment and to be open to the historical evidence I bring (using Wikipedia as a source, hopefully not suspect of being tankie-biased), because I believe there is a great mistake in the way contemporary western nations interpret history of WW2 and the interwar period. Thank you for actually making the effort, I know it’s a long comment, but please engage with the points I’m making:
The only country who offered to start a collective offensive against the Nazis and to uphold the defense agreement with Czechoslovakia as an alternative to the Munich Betrayal was the USSR. From that Wikipedia article: “The Soviet Union announced its willingness to come to Czechoslovakia’s assistance, provided the Red Army would be able to cross Polish and Romanian territory; both countries refused.” Poland could have literally been saved from Nazi invasion if France and itself had agreed to start a war together against Nazi Germany, but they didn’t want to. By the logic of “invading Poland” being akin to Nazi collaboration, Poland was as imperialist as the Nazis.
As a Spaniard leftist it’s so infuriating when the Soviet Union, the ONLY country in 1936 which actively fought fascism in Europe by sending weapons, tanks and aviation to my homeland in the other side of the continent in the Spanish civil war against fascism, is accused of appeasing the fascists. The Soviets weren’t dumb, they knew the danger and threat of Nazism and worked for the entire decade of the 1930s under the Litvinov Doctrine of Collective Security to enter mutual defense agreements with England, France and Poland, which all refused because they were convinced that the Nazis would honor their own stated purpose of invading the communists in the East. The Soviets went as far as to offer ONE MILLION troops to France (Archive link against paywall) together with tanks, artillery and aviation in 1939 in exchange for a mutual defense agreement, which the French didn’t agree to because of the stated reason. Just from THIS evidence, the Soviets were by far the most antifascist country in Europe throughout the 1930s, you literally won’t find any other country doing any remotely similar efforts to fight Nazism. If you do, please provide evidence.
The invasion of “Poland” is also severely misconstrued. The Soviets didn’t invade what we think of when we say Poland. They invaded overwhelmingly Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands that Poland had previously invaded in 1919. Poland in 1938, a year before the invasion:
“Polish” territories invaded by the USSR in 1939:
The Soviets invaded famously Polish cities such as Lviv (sixth most populous city in modern Ukraine), Pinsk (important city in western Belarus) and Vilnius (capital of freaking modern Lithuania). They only invaded a small chunk of what you’d consider Poland nowadays, and the rest of lands were actually liberated from Polish occupation and returned to the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian socialist republics. Hopefully you understand the importance of giving Ukrainians back their lands and sovereignty?
Additionally, the Soviets didn’t invade Poland together with the Nazis, they invaded a bit more than two weeks after the Nazi invasion, at a time when the Polish government had already exiled itself and there was no Polish administration. The meaning of this, is that all lands not occupied by Soviet troops, would have been occupied by Nazis. There was no alternative. Polish troops did not resist Soviet occupation but they did resist Nazi invasion. The Soviet occupation effectively protected millions of Slavic peoples like Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians from the stated aim of Nazis of genociding the Slavic peoples all the way to the Urals.
All in all, my conclusion is: the Soviets were fully aware of the dangers of Nazism and fought against it earlier than anyone (Spanish civil war), spent the entire 30s pushing for an anti-Nazi mutual defence agreement which was refused by France, England and Poland, tried to honour the existing mutual defense agreement with Czechoslovakia which France rejected and Poland didn’t allow (Romania neither but they were fascists so that’s a given), and offered to send a million troops to France’s border with Germany to destroy Nazism but weren’t allowed to do so. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a tool of postponing the war in a period in which the USSR, a very young country with only 10 years of industrialization behind it since the first 5-year plan in 1929, was growing at a 10% GDP per year rate and needed every moment it could get. I can and do criticise decisions such as the invasion of Finland, but ultimately even the western leaders at the time seem to generally agree with my interpretation:
“In those days the Soviet Government had grave reason to fear that they would be left one-on-one to face the Nazi fury. Stalin took measures which no free democracy could regard otherwise than with distaste. Yet I never doubted myself that his cardinal aim had been to hold the German armies off from Russia for as long as might be” (Paraphrased from Churchill’s December 1944 remarks in the House of Commons.)
“It would be unwise to assume Stalin approves of Hitler’s aggression. Probably the Soviet Government has merely sought a delaying tactic, not wanting to be the next victim. They will have a rude awakening, but they think, at least for now, they can keep the wolf from the door” Franklin D. Roosevelt (President of the United States, 1933–1945), from Harold L. Ickes’s diary entries, early September 1939. Ickes’s diaries are published as The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes.
"One must suppose that the Soviet Government, seeing no immediate prospect of real support from outside, decided to make its own arrangements for self‑defence, however unpalatable such an agreement might appear. We in this House cannot be astonished that a government acting solely on grounds of power politics should take that course” Neville Chamberlain House of Commons Statement, August 24, 1939 (one day after pact’s signing)
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this
When the USSR came to Hungary, they literally exhausted the syphilis medicine supply of the country for two years with the amount of rape, and the country has had collective PTSD from it for generations.
I’m sure others can bring up other countries, I’m more familiar and am more in touch with the culture of specifically Hungary. It is widely researched and not debated actually that it was so bad, suicides and misogyny spiked in the aftermath, as the people who couldn’t defend their loved ones from often repeated often gang rape either committed suicide, or just internalised that “rape is not so bad” to cope.
600 thousand people were also kidnapped (from a country of less than 10 million) and forced into labour camps for decades, with a third never coming home. This also specifically targeted the local German-Hungarian population (which had nothing to do with Germany, it was a diaspora dating back long into medieval times), so it can also qualify as genocide.
There were also examples of brutal torture, keeping people in cells small enough they couldn’t even sit down, and so on. Had nothing to do with communism, some of the direst things were actually done against communists who wanted to be free from Soviet occupation. It was pure Russian imperialism.
And truth be told, we got off easy compared to some other countries.
And finally, colonialism being “western” in an inherently racist way to view the world. East Asian empires also had colonies, so did most empires around the world.
And what did Hungary do to the USSR? Hungary was a fascist Axis state that contributed to Holocaust and to the invasion of the USSR.
Regarding the rapes, it’s unfortunate, but an army of starved and mostly uneducated peasants who suffered millions of deaths for the prior two years is bound to commit excesses.
600 thousand people were also kidnapped (from a country of less than 10 million) and forced into labour camps
Yes. Hungary was a Nazi nation. Sending the people responsible to prison is a good thing. Not technically labor camps, the GULAG system is just prison, and reeducating the people out of Nazism was a good thing. The USSR literally rid Hungary of Nazism.
There were also examples of brutal torture, keeping people in cells small enough they couldn’t even sit down, and so on
Sure, excesses in repression during a struggle against Nazism happened. I wonder why youre you’re more concerned with that than thankful that Hungary stopped being Nazi and such tortures and means ended forever after the 50s.
True communism is very democratic
Literately Marx himself called for a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Which would then somehow magically give way to a true democratic government, as if any dictator on earth had ever just resigned out of their own accord.
If you are familiar with the Paris Commune of 1871, you’d know what was meant by that term, according to Engels.
It is not a call to install ‘a’ dictator to usher in a new socialist world. It is the act of overthrowing the ‘dictatorship of capital.’ The character of the people should be radically democratic, and aim to put all social institutions in the collective hands of everyone who is affected by them. The only magic going on here is the mystification of what has been plainly laid out over the past two centuries, and attempted by numerous cultures across the globe, with varying degrees of success, in no small part due to people who knew what it means to take power away from self-interested tyrants.
“Varying degrees of success” is a great euphemism for “more people killed than several holocausts”
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
The Holodemor alone killed almost as many people as the Holocaust, and that’s just one item in a very long list of communist “whoopsies”.
You didn’t even spell it right lol, it’s literally the entire name of the linked article, and Wikipedia isn’t a source or a reliable aggregator of sources for anything remotely controversial
I’m sorry, I didn’t spell the name of your favorite genocide right, that means it didn’t happen!
Who is the proletariat?
The people specifically the working class
I mean in the current dictatorships, where it’s a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by Marxist terms, it is usually one dictator and the setup is fairly hierarchical.
Why is it called a dictatorship then?
Dictatorship of the proletariat literally just means that the state represents the proletariats interests, rather than the bourgeois’ interests (like democracy in the west).
Democracy was supposed to do that. What would prevent a communist state from being usurped by capitalist interests (since capitalists are the ones who pay their bills)?
That is a good question. Keep in mind I’m not marxist, but I have read some of the theory.
In a communist state, the means of production are usually nationalised by the state, for capitalists, all of their wealth comes from exploiting the labor of others, if the means are controlled by the people through a democratic government, the capitalists can’t profit since they don’t control the means.
As such, the idea that capitalists pay the bills of communist states seems wrong to me.
Call me naive if you want but I think we might want to aim for slightly more than another flavor of illusory democracy.
Although I have to say that the primary selection process in the US, while deeply flawed, is far more open for insurgent candidates than the Chinese system. See Mamdani for a recent example of how democratic elites don’t have total control of the outcomes.
The USSR never intentionally starved its citizens as the US is doing right now.
Downvote if you believe CIA/fascist propaganda.
its what dictators use to be exact.
At this point, this joke is basically like kicking a dead horse.
Keep going an let’s make MAGA glue
Umazing
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What game is this?
Based on the ears I’m guessing Umamusume
Is it one of the gacha games?
Oh, horse girls.
Make it trend for a month.
With a centrally controlled food supply, a misstep can lead to there literally not being enough food. You know this is different and this post is disingenuous.
More people die from obesity than starvation. There are tons of options for free food. Nobody is going to starve to death.
With a centrally controlled food supply, a misstep can lead to there literally not being enough food
Agreed, let’s abolish Walmart then and advocate for collectively owned, decentrally planned agriculture. Love to see fellow comrades!
More people die from obesity than starvation. There are tons of options for free food. Nobody is going to starve to death
Ignoring the reality of the literal millions of people receiving food assistance with food stamp programs and charity kitchens isn’t as intelligent as you think it is. Some people can be obese while others in the same country experience food insecurity.
Because capitalist authoritarians never try to use starvation as weapon.
i love uma
Whoma is dat?
