this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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You are absolutely defending capitalism when you do not hold capitalism up to the same standards you hold socialism up to.
What do socialists do? We take the state away from the bourgeoisie, and use it in service of the proletariat. That's it. That's what we do.
States do bad shit. There's a reason we're communists, we want to abolish states. That's literally our goal. Because they fucking suck.
But the path to that, one of the things we do, is take the existing state and use it, exactly as is, for the proletariat instead of the bourgeoisie.
Everything you complain socialist states do is done by capitalist states 10x worse.
But you spend your time on the internet reflexively bitching about anyone saying anything good about socialists. While not doing the same for capitalism. Why is that? Why do you reflexively do this for socialism but not capitalism? This is something that you should examine, deep inside yourself, because it is your deeply rooted propagandised anticommunist brain. Your
, and you need to remove them.
No I fucking can't you dimwit. This ENTIRE TOPIC for us "we want socialism because it produces better human outcomes than capitalism". Literally EVERYTHING is about whether or not socialism is better than capitalism. I will not stop doing "but capitalism" because that's the fucking point you phenomenal dickhead. You can not "socialism bad" in a vacuum anyway. When you say "these socialists suck" you are making a value comparison, you are comparing to existing things that you accept, you are literally saying "I prefer what exists, this would be worse". There is no "that's bad" without comparing to a baseline.
This is how I know you're absolutely full of shit. The older generation in Russia that actually lived during it are overwhelmingly pro-USSR. But this just highlights how fucking ignorant and pigheaded you are. You think you can just make up absolute fucking nonsense and not get called out for it. In fact it's the young people in modern Russia who are sceptical because they've been brought up in a capitalist education system surrounded by the same all-encompassing anti-socialist propaganda that has rotted your brain.
No you didn't. You're just an anticommunist trying to fucking wing it in this conversation with people who are well read and extremely knowledgable, making shit up as you go along, and looking like a fucking toolbag while you do it. I can't stand this shit. Stop trying to pretend. It's so fucking obvious to anyone with a brain. If you don't know something it's OKAY to not know things. Pursuing new information and expanding your knowledge is a good thing but you don't have to do it as a fucking debate pervert.
I fuwking said USSR sucks, not communism/socialism sucks, so I'm not comparing it to damn capitalism.
Yeah, right, tell it to my grandpa who was, using modern terms, swatted by their neighbor or my mom who had to live without the only remaining parent 'til he was released. Tell it to other folks from my town living with elevated risk of (or already dead from) cancer due to Chernobyl being kept secret. In short, fuck USSR, but yeah, that's unless they lived in Moscow or something (pretty much the same shit we have now).
Getting into general communism territory,
So why not do just that instead of "proletariat dictatorship"? Having any state basically creates another class holding power to itself, and that state inevitability starts protecting itself and oppressing others. Let ppl organize, let ppl decide for themselves
The USSR is the biggest demonstration of socialism's success, going from feudal backwater to world super power and first in space despite the entire world fighting it and claiming "human nature" requires the incentive of capital to innovate. You are absolutely attacking socialism by attacking it, your direct comparative is its main competitor for its time, the US. When you say the USSR sucks, you are saying that you prefer the alternative for its time, the US.
East Palestine, 2023. Or the time the US sprayed entire cities with bacteria. Or smoking. Or climate change. And so on and so forth. There are countless times capitalists have done significantly worse shit than have the world's first major accident with a nuclear facility.
Why not read a book? Then you'd already know the answer to this question.
You don't know what class is. Refer to reddit.com/r/socialism/wiki/class. A page I happened to write.
Yes that is precisely the point. To take the existing state which is currently a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and flip it, turning it into a dictatorship of the proletariat. Currently the state represses the proletariat and protects itself. The point is to have it repress the bourgeoisie and protect itself until proletariat are in power everywhere worldwide.
What you are functionally saying here is "let the bourgeoisie use all of their wealth to maintain their power". Without repressing them, you will not get anything other than capitalism, because their wealth creates an incredibly large power imbalance within society. Do you have the same power as Bezos under liberal democracy? Do you as a petty prole on an average wage have the same power as those that can own and direct entire media companies? No. Do you fuck. And that's entirely ignoring the fact that prole media is repressed on top of that.
Just wanted to say that I really appreciate the effort here, even if you're talking to a smug anti-communist "leftist" who clearly isn't interesting in learning anything or having their worldview examined in the slightest.
Yeah, I guess asking you to stop putting the words in my mouth is too much, so here we go.
Nope, I'm saying that USSR sucks, and just that.
One more "but capitalists"; completely not the point; next. Although, one moment: I don't blame them for the accident, shit happens; I blame them for not disclosing it in time so that those who they were "protecting" could take preventive measures (like taking some normal iodine greatly reduces the consequences of exposure to the radioactive iodine-131 due to thyroid not trying to process that crap).
That's cool, yet that's not the only way to divide the society into classes. For example, when state exists, one can assign each member of the society a number from 0 to 1 (or 100, whatever you like) representing their power over others. Then we draw the line at, say, 0.4, and assign the ones above an "oppressor" class, while the ones below become "oppressed".
Or we can go a simpler root and ask ourselves if Stalin or those close to him still belong to proletariat. Sure, technically they don't "own" private property, nor do they directly exploit those below on the food chain, yet the conditions of living and the scope of obtainable goods are vastly different. And, frankly speaking, I doubt all that ppl can one day (or gradually) just give up the accumulated power. Instead, they'll find another problem to solve, than another, and another.
Alternatively, we say "fuck the state", and abolish both private property and any verticals of power. Mb just explaining to ppl the gist of what direction to move in (e.g. friendship is magic, unicorns are cool, you should cooperate with each other and not become slaves, etc).
So, that's basically why putting
goes the same direction as accusations of protecting capitalists
Compared to what?
That's the point.
Bad does not exist without a baseline.
We're not liberals. The liberal definition of class is ill-defined, wishy washy and dogshit, completely impossible to use scientifically.
That's fucking stupid. It's even less defined than the liberal definitions of class. Wtf is the definition of "power" and "oppression" in your completely fantasy made up version of class nobody except you use?
And? Oh god forbid that the leaders of the fucking country, democratically elected through a bottom-up system have literally any extra things. You're acting like having a car because you're an important figure that needs to get places quickly or a drink of whisky makes someone a different class is fucking absurd.
Good job that's not what fucking happens then? Please for the love of god actually READ marxist theory instead of passively learning it through comments and this level of debate pervert shit. It's infuriating because it's so god damn obvious you don't actually know anything.
People do not say magically one day "I want to abolish the state today, let's do that now". For fuck's sake. It is a process of redistribution of resources as and when the conditions that caused the creation of those resources are changed for them to no longer exist.
How's that working out for you? Is that gonna happen before or after climate change kills several hundred million people? What's your plan for when the fascism ramps up because hundreds of millions of climate refugees destabilising capitalist societies are going to be a serious problem? Ask the fascists nicely to stop repressing the refugees and let them in? Pretty please! Jesus christ. This is what lack of materialism does to MF. Assuming you even do magically achieve revolution with this fantasy of asking people to do it spontaneously (lol) how's your magical newly abolished plot of land without a state gonna stop the fascists next door to your country from moving in? Asking them nicely?
Look, we're about to retread already debated ground here so instead of go back and forth on this I'm gonna ask you to read Marx's Conspectus on Statism and Anarchy, it is Marx in his own words going through several of the arguments you're about to make. He quotes Bakunin's words then responds in line, like a forum thread, fun! It's a good replacement for going over that shit here and tbh I can't be arsed doing over a 250 year old debate that was settled at the First and Second International. It's basic stuff.