this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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Communism does and has worked, what are you on about?
What concept "derived from Marxism and Anarchism," whatever that means, is "far superior?"
Communism only worked on a really small scale, when everyone was in favor of it.
Unless you consider a dictatorship "working", which it technically might be, but it's not something I would consider as a viable option. And technically it's not true communism when there is a dictator with it's circle of elite.
Another anti-communist that has never left his mind palace
AES states have and continue to exist, and with them have come drastic increases in life expectancy, literacy rates, access to healthcare, home ownership, and democratic participation, with vast reductions in poverty.
What are you specifically referring to, here? Not even the CIA believed the USSR to be a dictatorship, according to since released internal records. AES states are functionally far more democratic than the US and other Capitalist states.
So Stalin wasn't a dictator?
The CIA's own internal documents (you know, the ones they use to keep themselves well informed, so as to better tailor their external disinfo), repeatedly state that he wasn't.
Pretty much everything you've been told about the USSR and Stalin is false, and comes to you through a thick fog of anti-communist indoctrination cemented during the cold war. It takes a level of courage to question the lies you've had hammered into you all your life, that most people don't have.
Yeah, the gulags were actually happy holiday camps and the millions who died there was just a coincidence it was there while dying at natural causes.
The KGB was actually a fun motorcycle club who never harmed anyone.
Stalin was a fun, loving, caring man, not a dictator at all. He didn't even want war with nazi Germany, he actually wanted to join the axis. Stalin did nothing wrong.
/s
Come on now, I know there is a lot of anti propaganda out there making everything much worse, but facts are facts. Be careful with believing anything you hear, the other side perfected propaganda too you know. Sure, you can listen to Russian state press, or you could look towards places where there's press freedom. Make an educated guess which one is more trustworthy.
The USSR was a failed state, Russia is a failed state, the US is a failed state, China is beginning to realize there is no turning back from heading towards a failed state (if not already one).
Travel to former Soviet states. Talk to the people there. See the amazing sharade of the mighty Soviet Union crumble, and find out it's true colors.
Very rich to talk about gulags and KGB when America has the largest prison population in the world, legal slavery and the CIA, NSA and ICE.
Everything your bitching about exists here in the good old USA. You just ain't any of the targets. But let's ask Fred Hampton what it's like to be one hmm?
Just because the US is a failed state doesn't make the USSR less worse then it was. You can always claim "but there is something worse", that's not an excuse for the horrors they committed. The KGB was really bad, the FSB still is. American agencies are too. US agencies are corrupt and commit crimes against humanity but that's not a reason to close your eyes for the KGB/FSB. The US had concentration camps too during the second world war. No one talks about that. But you cannot say the germans weren't bad just because the US was bad too.
Just so you know, the world is bigger then just Russia and the US. I live in neither. I did see many places of the world though, including old Soviet states. I've seen gulags, I've seen Auschwitz among other concentration camps. I've seen ghost towns, I've spoken to locals about life during the USSR. But sure, the US is worse so whatever they told me is just western propaganda right? Come on.
"I spoke to locals". And so have sociologists. Most Soviet states have around a 60% regret for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It has its evils. A state is bount to rack them up. But the Soviet Union was better for its people before it and it's people wishes it never went away.
This doesn't absolve it of it's crimes. But why does it's crimes need to be brought up every time in the same breath? Imagine every time you talked about America that someone just shit canned you for every crime of its state. It's infuriating, and allows for no actual conversation.
But sure, keep pretending like you don't weight them differently.
Well, it's not like they are seperste things now, are they. The communist regime was able to hold power by keeping people poor, state propaganda, corruption, deportation, spying on everyone, prevent anyone from escaping their borders, etc. All aspects of a dictatorship. All intertwined into what the USSR was. It's not like it's communism was completely disconnected from the regime. So that's why I bring it up. The same happens in the DPRK, China, Cuba. Show me a working communist state where there's no dictatorial regime. Communism only works when everyone agrees to it, so it only works on small scales like communities where people choose to live.
The theory works, but didn't calculate in the human factor.
I believe a socialist state is the only sollution to a proper working society but not in the form of communism. It only survived on a large scale under strict dictatorial regimes.
You're never going to believe it, but the answer was more complicated than the cold war propaganda told you. Shocker.
What I know is from people who lived during the USSR in it's former states. But sure, what they told me is just western propaganda. They lied about their families being deported to gulags, never to have returned. Their idea of their leaders is all just western propaganda right? I mean, there was no western media, but maybe they were secret CIA sleeper agents or something? All hundreds of locals I've talked to, including historians, former politicians and former red army.
Stalin also never had anyone deported to gulags for saying anything he didn't like right? Do you even know what a dictator is? Or what propaganda is? Claiming any negative information about the USSR is propaganda is propaganda itself. What are your sources? Qanon or Russian state media or something?
Nobody said anything about claiming the Soviet Union was a peachy clean state. You are throwing your own presumptions in and arguing with yourself. All we are saying is that the state isn't like how you thought it was. But you'd rather double down then consider a slight change to your perception.
Enjoy battling yourself. I am done talking to a man who talks past me.
The CIA didn't believe him to be. Stalin had power as the head of state of the USSR, but he did not have all-encompassing, unaccountable power, nor did he reach over every nook and cranny of the USSR.
Consider reading Blackshirts and Reds.
You made it through the first layer of Anti-Communism propaganda. Congratulations!
Now here comes the next layer of propaganda. These so-called failed communist examples you speak of. Were any of them actually communism? Or were they just authoritarians calling themselves Communists to try to make people think they weren't authoritarian?
Sounds like you made it through the first and second layer, but stopped there and didn't seek further knowledge. There are hundreds, thousands of layers of propaganda.
I'm confused. Are you agreeing with me or disagreeing with me?
Both.
AES was true Socialism.
Nah, true socialism was my very small community that basically traded favors and helped each other out. Legalized weed killed it. Idealoging from an armchair doesn't do shit. Go out and make shit happen. It's possible if you're actually serious.
That was trade.
I do agree that more leftists need to organize, PSL and FRSO are 2 seemingly good American orgs.
Nice. I'd like to see a modern manifesto that focuses on guiding real occurring behavior. And yeah, I assume all economic philosophies have work and trade. My lived example was more or less equal exchanges without exploitation.
In what way were the gulags of the USSR propaganda?
The USSR did indeed have prisons, and criminals were put in prison. I never said the USSR was a wonderland with no prisons.
So are you saying it isn't propaganda? Because the west depicts the gulags as forced labor camps, not just prisons. They are depicted as places where people starved to death through neglect, who were summarily executed upon failure to work, threatened with starvation. They are depicted as places where millions of people where held and died. They are also depicted as places where not just criminals were sent, but political prisoners as well.
I'm not saying the west has perfectly depicted it. The west is absolutely rife with propaganda. But there being even a kernel of truth to this is downright horrifying, and cause to call out the USSR as being authoritarian.
Prisons in the US are also often forced labor camps. Prisons in the USSR, like most nations, were highly varied in intensity and quality.
The bulk of this comes from WWII, when the Nazis invaded Ukraine, the USSR's breadbasket. Famine increased and prisoners were not prioritized, leading to many dying.
Fascists and Capitalists were indeed also sent to prison, yes.
By your logic, every state that has ever existed is authoritarian. Looking at the metrics, the USSR has been more progressive for its time, both with respect to contemporary states and with respect to Tsarist Russia. As an example, they were far more leniant than the Tsar:
This is a whataboutism. The USSR doesn't get a free pass just because the U.S. is shitty too.
Do you have a source? And given that you say "the bulk" and not all, what accounts for the remainder?
Again, do you have a source?
To varying degrees, pretty much yes.
I was not giving the USSR a "free pass." I was putting it into context. For its time, it was progressive.
It's well known among Soviet Historians that famine occured during WWII and Prisoners were forced to take the brunt of the impact, rather than the average citizen or soldier.
What do you believe constitutes a "Political Prisoner" in the USSR? There were numerous Nazi Collaborators, Tsarists, and Bourgeois elements that attempted to destabilize the State. What would satisfy you as evidence, just examples, or what?
Then, genuine question, do you believe that making progressive, positive reductions in mortality rates is an authoritarian thing to do?
Force labor is still forced labor even if it is better than what the past was.
The graph you have attached to this statement doesn't have a source listed. And sorry, but I'm no historian, so I would like something better than "it is well known".
Ideally a primary source would be preferred.
This question at it's core is a whataboutism and therefore invalid. Being a progressive authoritarian still means you're an authoritarian.
Referring to the part of the conversation about the cause of starvation in gulags being the result of the nazis invading Ukraine, your second graph definitely helps support it, with the caveat being correlation does not imply causation.
Never said otherwise. I have not once said I wish to emulate the prison system of the USSR, just that they were progressive compared to their peers, and would have continued to remain progressive compared to its peers had the USSR not been illegally disbanded.
Is Wikipedia too Communist of a source?
Primary source of what, exactly? Here's a pretty good article on the history of Nazi collaborators in the USSR being punished and imprisoned. There's also this Wikipedia page on the White Terror, where Tsarists slaughtered people until their defeat by the Bolsheviks and the Red Army.
You said all countries are authoritarian, why stick specifically to being upset at the USSR if they were less authoritarian than their contemporaries? Wouldn't a reduction in authoritarianism be a good thing?
But this is just a whataboutism. I don't care how progressive they were. What matter is them being authoritarians.
No, of course not. However I don't see your white graph anywhere on that article.
The makeup of people held in the gulags. The reasons why they're there, whether they had trials, whether they were de facto considered innocent/guilty, etc. While interesting, neither of the links you use explain it. How many of those 'criminals' where put there for something non-violent?
Here's the thing, even in comparison to it's contemporaries I don't think the USSR was less authoritarian. On the basis of prisoner populations, even the US as grossly authoritarian as it has been had a lower prison population (obviously only up until Regan).
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2016/12/29/bjs2016/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#/media/File:USSR_custodial_population_in_1934-53.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#/media/File:US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg
Authoritarianism is still authoritarianism. Here's the thing, if you want to argue for socialism/communism, I'm all for it. But for the most part it is probably a terrible strategy to defend the USSR, and other countries that are portrayed as authoritarian dictatorships, because there is a great deal of truth to those portrayals from what it seems. You're just gonna scare off anybody even slightly closed minded.
It's probably a far better use of everybody's time to show that capitalism is a failure, that it's impossible to be paid the value you make under capitalism, that capitalism is just dictatorship in the workplace, etc. Those are the seeds you plant to get people to break out of their support for capitalism. Those are the ones that grow.
You don't seem to care about much of anything. If progressing and improving systems isn't enough for you because it isn't immediately paradise for everyone and Utopia for all, then you're deeply unserious and purely serve as a contrarion for nobody's benefit.
Where are you getting the idea that large percentages of people were locked up without trial? Don't you have to provide evidence for your claims as well?
"Authoritarianism" as admitted by yourself is a buzzword descriptor for every state, and is just a vibe. You don't care how countries compare to their peers or their previous conditions, just vibes.
Additionally, it is important to accurately depict and defend the USSR. While there were numerous issues, there were numerous resounding successes as well. Defending the real merits of AES is important, because if one is a Socialist, presumably they want Socialism!
What makes you think I don't do that as well?
You don't need to personally attack me.
That wasn't my point. The point is, you can't point to the soviet gulags and say it wasn't authoritarian, not without evidence.
You've made the implicit claim that those held in the gulags were held there with good, justified reasons. And then when you were asked to provide a source for it you gave me articles about the various places nazis went to after the war. Do you have evidence or not?
No, it's a scale. Most societies/countries are on it, but not all. Additionally, it is not an inherent part of a society/country. No part of that is vibes based. Subjective, partially, but that's the nature of unquantifiable definitions whether you like it or not.
A state that controls people's speech is more authoritarian than one that does not. A state that controls people's movement is more authoritarian than one that does not. There are a million different ways that a state can be unquantifiably authoritarian, but it is still comparable, discussions on it can still be based on facts, and so on. No vibes are needed.
You can stop with the personal attacks.
You seemed to have missed the "It’s probably a far better use of everybody’s time " part.
What on Earth are you talking about? Innovation is core to Marxism, Lemmy itself was made and is made by Marxist-Leninists. Where did you get the idea that Marxism is anti-technology? Why would the Soviets beat the US into space if that was the case?
Ah, got it, you do have no idea what you're talking about. Why add this tirade on the end?
eh?
I don't consider myself a Marxist, but... what?
Anti-Marxism finds new ways to present itself. Capitalist innovation.