Under capitalism, a lot of the time, highly dangerous jobs are also highly paid. Kind of a balance that the individual decides to engage with. Same idea behind getting an advanced degree in STEM or law. I think of my job by example, I’m a power plant operator at a large combined cycle plant. No fucking shot I’d be doing this if the pay wasn’t good. I’m around explosive and deadly hot shit all day.
This is a caricature of how socialism has functioned. In socialist states, people were compensated for their labor, and necessities were heavily subsized or otherwise free.
To the contrary of your depiction, the USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union. This expansion in humanitarianism actually carried onto the judicial system, documented by Mary Stevenson Callcott in Russian Justice, written in 1935.
Reducing the tremendous gains made by socialist countries to the whims of Stalin or Mao is extremely reductive. It means every single victory gained by the working classes, such as free healthcare and education, massive literacy campaigns, huge increases in equality among the sexes, and more were in fact the exclusive whims of their leadership. It also reduces all of their problems, struggles, and flaws to personal failings of their leadership.
This kind of analysis is very flawed, and gets in the way of analyzing what went right and what went wrong in existing socialism. Simply painting a prettier picture of socialism in our heads and rejecting all existing socialist projects for not measuring up to that picture means we will be hopeless when we run into similar problems when we ourselves begin building socialism.
I was talking about Maoist and Stalinist dictatorships, not socialism.
“Communism” was the brand name that these dictatorships used for their artificially red-dyed flavor of fascist mass murder. This name was stolen from the original Communists, and falsely & deceptively used by the fascist mass-murderers. Neither Stalin nor Mao had any intention of ever living in a classless society. Like all fascist leaders, they demanded obedience beyond that accorded to feudal kings, and erected new forms of hierarchy and class for their servants to populate — while they murdered the common people in whose name they claimed to rule.
The “dictatorship of the dictator pretending to care about the proletariat” murdered the proletariat by millions.
However, when people today say “Communism” — as in the title of this post — they are often referring to those dictatorships, and not to the earlier Communism of Marx and Engels, whose name the fascists misappropriated.
Hence my response, which distinguished Maoist and Stalinist fascist dictatorships from the theoretical communism of Marx and Engels.
Do not bother making excuses for fascist mass-murderers. There are none.
Marxist-Leninist countries, such as the USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK, Laos, etc. are all examples of socialism, and have robust systems of democracy. Again, Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance goes in-depth in many of these countries, explaining the intricacies of socialist democracy, as well as what’s been general across all socialist states and also particular to each.
These are all definitely socialism. The large firms and key industries, at a minimum, are publicly owned and run. Public ownership is the principle aspect of their economies, and the working classes in charge of the state. This is what the “dictatorship of the proletariat” means, the control of the state by the proletariat.
This is easily verified as false, though. Fascism is a violent protection of private property rights and capitalism, and happens in decaying capitalist countries. From Spain to Germany to every other fascist state, capitalists were entrenched by the state and communists murdered. Meanwhile, in socialist states, the working classes gained control, oppressing the fascists, capitalists, Tsarists, slavers, etc, and collectivized production and distribution.
This is more Orwellian fan-fiction than reality, though. With the advent of socialism, socialist states brought tremendous democratization. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about.
The PCUSA made a handy graphic, here (though I’m not a member of the PCUSA):
Further, on top of the dramatic democratization, socialism has been tremendously uplifting. When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
Healthcare was dramatically expanded, made free and high quality. Housing rates skyrocketed, jobs were assured, education was free and high quality, women’s rights dramatically expanded. Literacy rates jumped from 20-30% to 99.9%. Life expectancies doubled:
They didn’t, though, unless you’re counting deaths from unintentional famine as “murders.”
When people say “communism,” they refer to Actually Existing Socialism, such as the socialist states we are talking about, and to the societies Marx and Engels wrote theory to arm the proletariat to fight for. I already explained why calling communists “fascist” is wrong, so I won’t retread old ground.
When Marx and Engels spoke of the beginnings of communism, the transitional stage of socialism, they spoke of the working classes siezing control of the state, replacing it with a socialist one, and gradually collectivizing production and distribution. This requires violently oppressing the fascists, Tsarists, capitalists, kulaks, slavers, etc. The transition to the communism spoken of by Marx and Engels begins with socialism, as exists in real life.
Your response didn’t have much of Marx or Engels, nor much respect for historical fact, though. When I gave clear sources showing how you were under the wrong impression about existing socialism, you ignored them and just re-asserted your original, incorrect claims. Marxism-Leninism is a genuine continuation of the work of Marx and Engels today, and has successfully established socialism in real life.
I’m not making excuses, I’m correcting the record. Socialist states and socialist leaders have all been flawed, and have all made mistakes, including major ones. They’ve done so because they are real, not imaginary, perfect ideas of communism. It’s very common among westerners to use this ideal picture of socialism in our heads as a club against existing, real socialism for not being as perfect as our fantasies, but this works against us. If we in the west established socialism, we would too make mistakes, errors, and face struggles, because like presently existing socialism, we would be building it in real life, not just in our heads.
Socialism in real life is genuinely real, flawed, and progressive. It’s impefect, under constant siege, and blemished. It also has been tremendously uplfiting for billions of workers and peasants, and to fight against that and continue spreading debunked, outdated Red Scare mythos prevents us from meaningfully building solidarity with the global south, and sets ourselves up for failure when we refuse to learn from our comrades.