Yeah… the working class kicked the Tzar out while the vanguard-boy was chilling in Switzerland though, then after being sponsored by Germany he just gave them a whole country as reward, and when that country organized itself to fight off the Germans and practice what the vanguard-boy himself had previously called “right to self-determination” they just went there and crushed that organization, famously inviting peasant leaders to meetings that were just traps to kill them… while fascism was rising, the Comintern doctrine was to oppose every anti-fascist organization that wasn’t submitted to the vanguard, the KPD even supported a literal Nazi-backed referendum just to oppose social democrats, who they’d call fascists while ignoring the actual fascists. In Spain the vanguard went on to outlaw and actively fight, kill and imprison leaders of every anti-fascist organization that were actually fighting off a fascist regime that lasted until 1978… the vanguard did an amazing job destroying anti-fascist resistance in Europe while fascism was on the rise, then the vanguard that became the “socialism in one country” held a beautiful Nazi-Soviet parade in Brest-Litovsk and didn’t move a finger against fascism until they were directly attacked, and then they rewrite history to pretend they were fighting against it all along.
the working class kicked the Tzar out while the vanguard-boy was chilling in Switzerland
The working class agitated by whom exactly, I wonder? Very good way to reframe a political refugee, I guess to you Snowden is “chilling in Russia”?
after being sponsored by Germany he just gave them a whole country as reward
My fucking god, are you seriously against the Bolsheviks ending the Russian involvement in WW1?!
Knowing that WW2 happened, I don’t know how you can possibly defend the Makhnovshchina either, they would have been annihilated by Nazism. The Bolsheviks did the correct thing by industrializing the region, and if you oppose this you simply don’t do materialist analysis of history.
the KPD even supported a literal Nazi-backed referendum just to oppose social democrats, who they’d call fascists while ignoring the actual fascists
Look! This guy is defending the murder of Rosa Luxembourg! Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
In Spain the vanguard went on to outlaw and actively fight, kill and imprison leaders of every anti-fascist organization
Lmfao, I’m Spanish myself so this bs doesn’t fly.
Go ahead, give me a list of the known and proven victims of Soviet repression in Spain, I’ll wait. I fucking wish the USSR had been closer geographically to us, unfortunately at such long distance it wasn’t possible to provide more material aid… The rest of the world just looked and you’re ok with it from what I see, as Gernika was being bombed by Nazis, France and UK looked the other way. Only the USSR sold weapons, tanks and planes to the antifascists Spanish republicans to defend themselves against Nazism.
didn’t move a finger against fascism until they were directly attacked
Absolute bullshit. When Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Nazis (and the Poles), the USSR proposed a joint attack on Nazis together with France and Poland, both of which refused. Stalin offered to send a million troops to France in exchange for an anti-Nazi mutual defense agreement, which France refused.
What a fucking great job at historical revisionism, absolutely unhinged.
lol, despite the name, bolcheviks were a minority party of the Revolution, even the mencheviks had more people and influence… but sure, it was the vanguard-boy that did everything. Never skip your propaganda for breakfast.
Are you saying the nazis would have killed the anarchists and other Ukrainian communist organizations anyway, so the bolcheviks did the right thing by killing them first? (while actively protecting German interests and telling people to just accept they belonged to Germany now… someone has to pay for that secure train, right?)
If you are Spanish and don’t know the history of the CNT-FAI, the largest revolutionary organization you ever had, and how Moscow preferred to fight it instead of the fascists, that’s simply sad.
couldawouldashoulda, what Stalin actually did in the real world, instead of the speculative one, was to take the best deal. The other European countries didn’t want to hand him Poland so he accepted dividing with the nazis, and didn’t move against the nazis until he was attacked… he couldawouldashoulda various theoretical things, but the material reality is a bit different. I’m sorry it doesn’t sound so glorious as “The Great Patriotic War” propaganda piece.
You can write as long a comment as you want to avoid my question: how many people did the Soviet red terror murder in Republican Spain. Give me the fucking numbers, since you’re the one bringing it up. Until you back your statements with data, I refuse to engage further, because otherwise you may very well be making shit up
Yes yes, you got me, the CNT-FAI was made up by me.
As I said, it’s just sad that you don’t know the history of socialism in your own country. Hopefully, one day you will learn socialism beyond what the party wants you to know.
Oh, so you have no actual data and the entire analysis you’re making is based on western + francoist anticommunist peopaganda! “The fucking evil judeobolsheviks ruined anarchism in Spain!!! Numbers? I don’t have any, why do you ask?” You could have started there buddy
I honestly have no idea what numbers you are asking for, I said that in the middle of a fight against actual fascists, the antifascists had secured Barcelona and most of Catalonia, and the Moscow-backed party was ordered to fight the antifascists instead of the fascists… it wasn’t just the anarchists, there were several marxist organizations as well, they were outlawed by the Soviets and their leaders arrested or killed, and you can find it even in your party-approved documents because those are historical facts… I’m really sorry that they don’t sound so cool and glorious as all the party propaganda. I’m gonna change what I said, it’s not sad that you don’t know the history of antifascist resistance in your on country. It’s pathetic.
The USSR did do a revolution. And the end result of it was a fascist state-capitalist hellscape under Stalin, and authoritarian state-capitalist shithole after
Because of said fascist state-capitalist hellscape, generals had to get on their hands and knees and beg Stalin to let them lead the defense of the USSR as the Nazis blew their way through USSR territory. Thus causing the single greatest death toll of any single nation in the war
Oh yeah, and the proletariat never came even close to owning the means of production, eliminating the system of capital, or eliminating the state, or really anything Marx preached.
The hellscape of the USSR with its abolition of unemployment through guaranteed jobs, abolition of homelessness through guaranteed housing, free education to the highest level, universal healthcare, retirement pensions at 60 years of age (55 for women), highest level of unionization in the world at the time, lowest inequality rates, complete alphabetization and the more than doubling of life expectancy. So horrifying.
The Bolsheviks correctly predicted an attack by capitalist nations and started the fastest industrialization in history up to that point in 1929, growing the Soviet industrial output by 15% yearly up to 1941. Without this, there is simply no possibility that the Soviets would have defeated Nazism, and every nation between Germany and the Urals would have suffered the same degree of extermination that the Poles did. There is no way around it: through the undeniable defeat of Nazism thanks to planned successful rapid industrialization, the Soviets saved tens of millions of lives.
The hellscape of the USSR with its abolition of unemployment through guaranteed jobs
Ah yes, the self reported statistic of elimination of unemployment in the USSR.
Hey, did you know Trump has also eliminated unemployment and ushered in a new golden age for America? The source of this I formation is the exact same as the USSR unemployment stats.
Source: Trust me, bro!
But hey, I am more inclined to believe the USSR eliminated unemployment what with them having the same unemployment policy that the Confederacy had for black Americans
, abolition of homelessness through guaranteed housing, free education to the highest level, universal healthcare, retirement pensions at 60 years of age (55 for women), highest level of unionization in the world at the time, lowest inequality rates, complete alphabetization and the more than doubling of life expectancy. So horrifying.
And in all that time, the USSR never came close to proletariat rule, elimination of the system of capital, nor giving the means of production to the proletariat.
Not to mention the fact most of this bullshit is
Still self reported by an authoritarian state and thusly unreliable
Sure as fuck not happening under Stalin who, again, only got into power because the revolution was a failure in achieving communism, or even socialism
You know where else accomplished extreme improvements to the working class has happened without a bullshit Marxist-Leninist revolution? Scandinavian countries. You know, countries that vastly embody the ideals of Marx more than the USSR, China, or any self proclaimed communist country has.
The Bolsheviks correctly predicted an attack by capitalist nations
They didn’t “predict” shit. Anyone with a working prefrontal cortex would have foreseen the capitalist class powers of the world would scramble to crush any upset to their order.
HOWEVER, the working people did not see this order upset. They saw it swapped with another order of ruling capitalists, but at the state level.
Did the state give the workers some benefits? Sure. Did it also employ mass slavery, mass murder, falsify its own numbers, and set a solid-hard barrier that outright permanently prevented proletariat rule, the proletariat owning the means of production, and elimination of the system if capital like was the fucking point of communism?
Yes.
and started the fastest industrialization in history up to that point in 1929, growing the Soviet industrial output by 15% yearly up to 1941.
“During Joseph Stalin’s crash-industrialisation drive, workers lost their right to participate in the functioning of the enterprise, and their working conditions deteriorated.[9] In 1940, for example, a decree was promulgated and became law stating that a worker could be arrested if he had three accumulated absences, late arrivals or changed jobs without the official authorisation.[9] Shock work, which meant that workers had to work past regular hours, was introduced alongside central planning.[9] During World War II the pressure on workers increased and it was expected of them to take on Herculean efforts in their work.[9] In the post-war years conditions did not improve but in fact worsened in some cases.”
And we all know the super necessary policies put forth during this industrialization which I’m sure the proletariat absolutely needed and wasn’t at all total absurd fascist bullshit that showed the state didn’t give a fuck about anything other than consolidating power during that period
All while, just like other capitalist countries, the ruling class lived in luxary and isolation from the consequences of their failures.
Without this, there is simply no possibility that the Soviets would have defeated Nazism,
And it can be equally argued that without the colossal monopolies of Carnegie and Rockefeller that the US would not have had the industrialization and resources to successfully fight in WWII.
You can make stupid fucking arguments like that all you want. However, it falls flat when you stop to think about it for more than a second and see the glairing problems it has
There are countless different ways the Soviet Union could have rapidly industrialized without the autocratic, and under Stalin outright fascist, rule against their own people. Just because it did happen under autocracy, doesn’t mean autocracy was necessary for it to happen.
The Soviet Union didn’t begin to defeat the Nazis until after millions of excess deaths had occurred. All deaths that could and would have easily been prevented if the USSR had actually prioritized putting the right military leadership in charge of the military rather than purging the military to consolidate power for Stalin and weakening the USSR with a bullshit war on Finland. Not to mention the horrifying effect mass slavery and starvation had on the proletariat before the Nazis attacked so that they were even further weakened when the time
The USSR also relied heavily on outside aid from the USA and UK due to the lack of resources and military hardware when they needed it the most, and the colossal waste of said resources and hardware with total misdirection of the defense of the country under Stalin.
and every nation between Germany and the Urals would have suffered the same degree of extermination that the Poles did.
Oh yeah, forgot about that. How did Stalin allying with Hitler and invading Poland help industrialize the country and bring about happiness and good times to the proletariat? How exactly did that help achieve the goals of communism?
My dude, have you seen the fucking death toll of the USSR?
There is no way around it: through the undeniable defeat of Nazism thanks to planned successful rapid industrialization, the Soviets saved tens of millions of lives.
The fact that you haven’t informed yourself on the topic doesn’t mean the information isn’t there. You’re lying about my information coming from self-reported data, the information I’m giving primarily comes from Albert Szymanski’s “Human Rights in the Soviet Union”, a book compiling data about the USSR primarily obtained from western academia. You can keep yourself uneducated though.
never came close to proletariat rule, elimination of the system of capital, nor giving the means of production to the proletariat
You’re repeating the same thing 3 times to make it sound more impressive. I’ve already provided numerical evidence for the lowest rates in inequality and highest welfare state in the region for a continued 70 years can only be that “the dictators on top happened to be benevolent”. This is not material analysis and doesn’t hold up, otherwise you’d expect similar outcomes in other dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia or Iran, but you don’t see that.
You know where else accomplished extreme improvements to the working class has happened without a bullshit Marxist-Leninist revolution? Scandinavian countries
Wow, little nations with ten million people each which live off of the exploitation of the global south just like the rest of Europe. Such a wonderful example.
HOWEVER, the working people did not see this order upset. They saw it swapped with another order of ruling capitalists
I’ve already provided NUMERICAL EVIDENCE that this isn’t the case. Inequality rates were the lowest in history, and when the system was dismantled, inequality rose massively. You keep repeating that lie after I’ve literally PROVEN YOU WRONG.
Did it also employ mass slavery
No. High imprisonment rates on the eve of and during the biggest war the world has ever seen don’t amount to mass slavery. Prison labor at no time represented more than 3% of total labor in the USSR, this peak being during the harshest of WW2, and already in the 1950s it was reduced to something anecdotal. You can find good NUMERICAL EVIDENCE of this in Alec Nove’s “An Economic History of the USSR” and in Robert C. Allen’s “Farm to Factory”, both very interesting and dense books on the socialist economy of the USSR throughout its existence. Again, PROVEN WRONG BY EMPIRICAL DATA. You claim yourself a leftist and you literally are only parroting anticommunist false propaganda.
"During Joseph Stalin’s crash-industrialisation drive, workers lost their right to participate in the functioning of the enterprise, and their working conditions deteriorated.[9] In 1940, for example, a decree was promulgated and became law stating that a worker could be arrested if he had three accumulated absences, late arrivals or changed jobs without the official authorisation.[9] Shock work, which meant that workers had to work past regular hours, was introduced alongside central planning.[9] During World War II the pressure on workers increased and it was expected of them to take on Herculean efforts in their work.[
Oh wow, you’re telling me that in the largest war in human history, workers had to do herculean efforts to defeat the Nazis? Nah, they should have kept to their 8h a day while being genocided. You’re fucking ridiculous.
And let’s not forget the wonderful gems of “the state rapidly industrializing” at the expense of the working class in that period of time
Again, dumbass take based on vibes and not numerical evidence. Before Stalin, life expectancy in the USSR was less than 30 years of age. By the time he died it was ALMOST 60 years of age. Claiming that the peasant majority and the working class didnt benefit from industrialization is the most uneducated take I’ve seen. People literally went from plowing the land with their hands to using tractors, you fucking class traitor.
Also, let’s show your coherency. First you claim:
They didn’t “predict” shit. Anyone with a working prefrontal cortex would have foreseen the capitalist class powers of the world would scramble to crush any upset to their order
Sometime later you claim:
And we all know the super necessary policies put forth during this industrialization which I’m sure the proletariat absolutely needed
Are you fucking serious? The industrial output of the USSR grew 15% YEARLY between 1929 and 1941, year by which 30% of GDP was dedicated to military defense against Nazism. IF THERE HAD BEEN NO RAPID INDUSTRIALIZATION, THE ENTIRETY OF UKRAINE, BELARUS, POLAND, CENTRAL ASIA AND THE MAJORITY OF RUSSIA WOULD HAVE BEEN GENOCIDED BY NAZIS. You literally said it was obvious. Can you be more dishonest?
the ruling class lived in luxary
I LITERALLY PROVIDED NUMERICAL EVIDENCE THAT THIS IS FALSE. YOU ARE SIMPLY FUCKING LYING, YOU PIECE OF SHIT. LEARN TO INTERPRET A GRAPH
There are countless different ways the Soviet Union could have rapidly industrialized
Again fucking uneducated take. THERE HAD BEEN NO COUNTRY TO HAVE A RAPID INDUSTRIALIZATION UNTIL THE BOLSHEVIKS DID IT. LITERALLY NOWHERE ON THE FUCKING PLANET. Give me a fucking historical example prior to the USSR of rapid industrialization. You’re being an ahistorical ass.
The Soviet Union didn’t begin to defeat the Nazis until after millions of excess deaths had occurred.
Are you telling me that the country that didn’t begin to industrialize until 1929 AND ONLY DID SO BECAUSE OF BOLSHEVISM should have just magically defeated the Nazi blitzkrieg which RAN OVER THE WORLD POWER OF FRANCE IN A MATTER OF WEEKS?! You’re literally fucking delusional.
The USSR also relied heavily on outside aid from the USA and UK due to the lack of resources and military hardware when they needed it the most
“Heavily” does a lot of work there, buddy. The USSR received less than 2000 tanks from the USA, for comparison they manufactured 20.000 T-34 tanks. However, I do appreciate the USA’s role in aid to the USSR. I don’t see how that’s an argument against the Soviets, somehow accepting military aid against Nazis is bad?
Oh yeah, forgot about that. How did Stalin allying with Hitler and invading Poland
Literal fucking fascist historical revisionism. I’ll reply to this in a following comment because it’s too big a lie to dismantle in one comment.
That’s a lot of moronic cope and a total waste of time spam fucking both irrelevant points and dribble.
To compress things, and also seeing your ass got banned, I’ll sum up my reply as so.
You have fundamentally failed to refute any of my points whatsoever, and are relying on statistics irrelevant to them.
I keep repeating the same 3 points: proletariat rule, elimination of the system of capital, and proletariat ownership of the means of production because, and this proves you don’t know shit about communism, THATS THE FUCKING POINT OF COMMUNISM. THE USSR FUNDAMENTALLY FAILED ON ALL 3 FRONTS GLORIOUSLY. ALL SELF PROCLAIMED COMMUNIST NATIONS HAVE FAILED ON ALL 3 FRONTS (with an arguable somewhat exception of Yugoslavia under Tito).
Gradual improvements to the working class’s way of life ultimately means jack shit if they’re still under the authoritarian thumb of the state. You’re like the mother fuckers desperately trying to argue “well some slave owners treated their slaves much better than others!” To defend people like Washington owning slaves. They’re still slave owners. And the USSR was still an autocratic State-Capitalist shithole that failed to achieve, let alone pursue, communism
You’d save yourself a whole lot of time and embarrassment if you simply acknowledge the failure of Marxist-Leninist states like the USSR, China, Vietnam, etc at achieving communism. You don’t have to give in to Western propaganda and pretend those states were/are worse than the West in every way. There’s a lot of things the USSR, China, etc had/have done better than the West. Doesn’t mean they’re communist, doesn’t mean they’re good, doesn’t mean their states deserve to exist, and sure as fuck doesn’t mean their proletariat was ever free and prosperous.
how the fuck was it state capitalist if it was planned economy lmao
stuff takes time, USSR was first attempt, certainly not the last, we learn from the mistakes and improve upon them but discrediting the whole revolution is not very communist. No one has achieved communism ever and no one knows how long will it take, maybe we needed revolution through more european states to establish a stable order of socalist states so trade couldve been better? no one really knows, but some revolutionaries did try, bitching on them sitting in your home acheievs nothing
Literally no state deserve to exist but I dont get this selective outrage against marxist leninst states. No one in their right mind claims that these states had acheived communism, even the soviet union called itself “socialist”
how the fuck was it state capitalist if it was planned economy Imao
Damn, immediately outing yourself as having no knowledge of a topic out of the gate.
Since you don’t understand how those things aren’t mutually exclusive, I’ll paste the Wikipedia summary and link it.
"State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, centralized management and wage labor). The definition can also include the state dominance of corporatized government agencies (agencies organized using business-management practices) or of public companies (such as publicly listed corporations) in which the state has controlling shares.[1] The term has been used as a pejorative by Marxists, liberals and neoliberals. However, it has also served as a programmatic label for developmentalist and neomercantilist projects in reaction to imperialism.[2]
A state-capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts as a single huge corporation, extracting surplus value from the workforce in order to invest it in further production.[3] This designation applies regardless of the political aims of the state, even if the state is nominally socialist.[4] Some scholars argue that the economy of the Soviet Union and of the Eastern Bloc countries modeled after it, including Maoist China, were state capitalist systems, and Eastern and Western commentators alike assert that the current economies of China and Singapore also constitute a mixture of state-capitalism with private capitalism."
Too bad that isn’t the critique. The critique, and accurate analysis of the Soviet Union isn’t that it was too slow to achieve socialism or communism, but that it had fundamentally abandoned attempts to achieve it in favor of establishing and maintaining its state-capitalist autocracy.
The same has happened in China.
USSR was first attempt,
An attempt that failed and redirected to state-capitalism at damn near the inception of the USSR, if not earlier.
certainly not the last,
And all other attempts by revolution, most notably ones assisted by the USSR for imperial purposes (like China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc) also failed much for similar reasons.
Turns out the reality is, the closest societies to reach towards the main principles of communism:
Proletariat rule
Elimination of the system of capital
Proletariat ownership of the means of production
Are Scandinavian countries. Are they there yet? No. But they’re the closest examples in history of getting there, and socialism and communism isn’t even their primary ideologies.
Yet they embody why Marx preferred democracy as the means of achieving socialism and communism.
we learn from the mistakes and improve upon them but discrediting the whole revolution is not very communist.
Tankies and any self proclaimed Marxist-Leninist can never claim to have learned from history. Their entire world view is comprised of cognitive bias and straight up falsehoods.
And I’m not dismissing the entire revolutions. I’m dismissing the notion that the leadership of said revolutions, and of the subsequent Marxist-Leninists states, ever gave a shit to actually pursue any of the principles of communism during g or after the revolution.
The pigs and farmers always ended up indistinguishable.
No one has achieved communism ever and no one knows how long will it take,
And no self proclaimed communist nation, least of all any autocratic nation, has ever put in genuine effort I to achieving it. They abandon it because, just as with the bourgeoisie prior to the revolution, those in power consolidate their power and hold it tightly for life. They become the new bourgeoisie. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
The only way to ensure proletariat rule, elimination of the system of capital, and proletariat ownership of the means of production, is to give those things to the proletariat. There’s no need for delay.
What time the state does exist, it must exist solely as a tool for the proletariat to dictate. Not the other way around d as we’ve seen in the USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, etc.
maybe we needed revolution through more european states to establish a stable order of socalist states so trade couldve been better?
Economic woes themselves weren’t the only nail in the coffin for the USSR, its puppets or Yugoslavia. The core issue for all those countries was authoritarianism. Glaring problems that never got solved or were made worse because autocracy doesn’t fucking work, and it sure as fuck doesn’t hold interest in the good of the proletariat.
no one really knows, but some revolutionaries did try, bitching on them sitting in your home acheievs nothing
You could argue that for all internet activity. I don’t see you going Rambo on the bourgeoisie
Its always good to have open discussions criticizing the failures of revolutions. Its how we learn. Its how we do better in the future.
The glairing problem of these revolutions aren’t the actual revolutionaries. Its the leadership that betrayed them.
Literally no state deserve to exist but I dont get this selective outrage against marxist leninst states.
Curation is absolutely essential to all successful movements. We can’t navigate a minefield if we don’t remove the guy who keeps trying to push the group onto the mines.
Marxist-Leninista are a cancer to the communist movement. A colossal misdirection that has only succeeded in damaging the success of communism for what will likely turn into centuries.
We cannot allow M-Ls to misdirect the greater leftist population into fighting for a lost cause that doesn’t even attempt to achieve their ideals, but rather leads to the opposite in many significant ways.
We aren’t the right wing. We don’t just blindly accept anyone who even somewhat pretends to be on our side.
No one in their right mind claims that these states had acheived communism, even the soviet union called itself “socialist”
The USSR lied about that. They weren’t even socialist. They were an autocratic state-capitalist society.
Socialism also requires the big 3:
Proletariat rule
Elimination of the system of capital
Proletariat ownership of the means of production
The USSR had none of these, and made no attempts to achieve either of them. Their state consolidated power and kept it until it collapsed.
What about the Baltic states? Occupied by Russia twice in the last century. Against their will. Their people deported to Siberia to suffer and Russians imported to replace them and russify those countries? People fought and died to break out of the USSR. And that’s just a drop in the ocean of atrocities they committed.
Please stop spreading this bullshit propaganda and defending atrocious, heinous, murderous pieces of shit, unless of course you are the same heinous piece of shit.
Shithole USSR was as imperialist as shithole russia is now. Only seek to occupy land, rape and deport people, and leave nothing but ruin behind.
Somehow a lot of Lemmy tends to forget about how the deal USSR made with Nazi Germany to divide and split Europe amongst themselves? And only fought Nazis to defend their occupied lands.
I am not a blind defender of every ml experiment but you are a liberal bro, you are the probelm. You people kill millions im global south and bitch about human rights in your country lol.
What are you even talking about, MrSmith? The Nazis marched all the way from Berlin and took everything on the way to the USSR and the USSR marched all the way to Berlin as they crushed 80% of the Nazi forces and when they were done the US and UK were very clear that they had no problem with more Nazis - openly former Nazi officials were put in charge of West Germany, openly former Nazi officers were put in charge of NATO, and NATO supported Nazi collaborators throughout all of Europe. The USSR had the choice of either releasing the totally destroyed territories to their own devices while the West actively fomented a Nazi resurgence or they had to attempt to rebuild what the war destroyed and actively prevent the still existing Nazi threat from re-emerging and invading Russia yet again.
There is absolutely nothing in any of the primary sources to suggest that the USSR was pursuing active imperialism - not in the philosophy, not in the rhetoric, not in the meeting minutes, not in the letters, nothing.
Like when they start stuff like “vanguardism”?
Well, they did do a revolution using vanguardism, and saved Europe from fascism. Different context in backwards feudal Russia than industrial England
Yeah… the working class kicked the Tzar out while the vanguard-boy was chilling in Switzerland though, then after being sponsored by Germany he just gave them a whole country as reward, and when that country organized itself to fight off the Germans and practice what the vanguard-boy himself had previously called “right to self-determination” they just went there and crushed that organization, famously inviting peasant leaders to meetings that were just traps to kill them… while fascism was rising, the Comintern doctrine was to oppose every anti-fascist organization that wasn’t submitted to the vanguard, the KPD even supported a literal Nazi-backed referendum just to oppose social democrats, who they’d call fascists while ignoring the actual fascists. In Spain the vanguard went on to outlaw and actively fight, kill and imprison leaders of every anti-fascist organization that were actually fighting off a fascist regime that lasted until 1978… the vanguard did an amazing job destroying anti-fascist resistance in Europe while fascism was on the rise, then the vanguard that became the “socialism in one country” held a beautiful Nazi-Soviet parade in Brest-Litovsk and didn’t move a finger against fascism until they were directly attacked, and then they rewrite history to pretend they were fighting against it all along.
The working class agitated by whom exactly, I wonder? Very good way to reframe a political refugee, I guess to you Snowden is “chilling in Russia”?
My fucking god, are you seriously against the Bolsheviks ending the Russian involvement in WW1?!
Knowing that WW2 happened, I don’t know how you can possibly defend the Makhnovshchina either, they would have been annihilated by Nazism. The Bolsheviks did the correct thing by industrializing the region, and if you oppose this you simply don’t do materialist analysis of history.
Look! This guy is defending the murder of Rosa Luxembourg! Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
Lmfao, I’m Spanish myself so this bs doesn’t fly.
Go ahead, give me a list of the known and proven victims of Soviet repression in Spain, I’ll wait. I fucking wish the USSR had been closer geographically to us, unfortunately at such long distance it wasn’t possible to provide more material aid… The rest of the world just looked and you’re ok with it from what I see, as Gernika was being bombed by Nazis, France and UK looked the other way. Only the USSR sold weapons, tanks and planes to the antifascists Spanish republicans to defend themselves against Nazism.
Absolute bullshit. When Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Nazis (and the Poles), the USSR proposed a joint attack on Nazis together with France and Poland, both of which refused. Stalin offered to send a million troops to France in exchange for an anti-Nazi mutual defense agreement, which France refused.
What a fucking great job at historical revisionism, absolutely unhinged.
lol, despite the name, bolcheviks were a minority party of the Revolution, even the mencheviks had more people and influence… but sure, it was the vanguard-boy that did everything. Never skip your propaganda for breakfast.
Are you saying the nazis would have killed the anarchists and other Ukrainian communist organizations anyway, so the bolcheviks did the right thing by killing them first? (while actively protecting German interests and telling people to just accept they belonged to Germany now… someone has to pay for that secure train, right?)
If you are Spanish and don’t know the history of the CNT-FAI, the largest revolutionary organization you ever had, and how Moscow preferred to fight it instead of the fascists, that’s simply sad.
couldawouldashoulda, what Stalin actually did in the real world, instead of the speculative one, was to take the best deal. The other European countries didn’t want to hand him Poland so he accepted dividing with the nazis, and didn’t move against the nazis until he was attacked… he couldawouldashoulda various theoretical things, but the material reality is a bit different. I’m sorry it doesn’t sound so glorious as “The Great Patriotic War” propaganda piece.
You can write as long a comment as you want to avoid my question: how many people did the Soviet red terror murder in Republican Spain. Give me the fucking numbers, since you’re the one bringing it up. Until you back your statements with data, I refuse to engage further, because otherwise you may very well be making shit up
Yes yes, you got me, the CNT-FAI was made up by me.
As I said, it’s just sad that you don’t know the history of socialism in your own country. Hopefully, one day you will learn socialism beyond what the party wants you to know.
Oh, so you have no actual data and the entire analysis you’re making is based on western + francoist anticommunist peopaganda! “The fucking evil judeobolsheviks ruined anarchism in Spain!!! Numbers? I don’t have any, why do you ask?” You could have started there buddy
I honestly have no idea what numbers you are asking for, I said that in the middle of a fight against actual fascists, the antifascists had secured Barcelona and most of Catalonia, and the Moscow-backed party was ordered to fight the antifascists instead of the fascists… it wasn’t just the anarchists, there were several marxist organizations as well, they were outlawed by the Soviets and their leaders arrested or killed, and you can find it even in your party-approved documents because those are historical facts… I’m really sorry that they don’t sound so cool and glorious as all the party propaganda. I’m gonna change what I said, it’s not sad that you don’t know the history of antifascist resistance in your on country. It’s pathetic.
The hellscape of the USSR with its abolition of unemployment through guaranteed jobs, abolition of homelessness through guaranteed housing, free education to the highest level, universal healthcare, retirement pensions at 60 years of age (55 for women), highest level of unionization in the world at the time, lowest inequality rates, complete alphabetization and the more than doubling of life expectancy. So horrifying.
The Bolsheviks correctly predicted an attack by capitalist nations and started the fastest industrialization in history up to that point in 1929, growing the Soviet industrial output by 15% yearly up to 1941. Without this, there is simply no possibility that the Soviets would have defeated Nazism, and every nation between Germany and the Urals would have suffered the same degree of extermination that the Poles did. There is no way around it: through the undeniable defeat of Nazism thanks to planned successful rapid industrialization, the Soviets saved tens of millions of lives.
Ah yes, the self reported statistic of elimination of unemployment in the USSR.
Hey, did you know Trump has also eliminated unemployment and ushered in a new golden age for America? The source of this I formation is the exact same as the USSR unemployment stats.
Source: Trust me, bro!
But hey, I am more inclined to believe the USSR eliminated unemployment what with them having the same unemployment policy that the Confederacy had for black Americans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_in_the_Soviet_Union?wprov=sfla1
And in all that time, the USSR never came close to proletariat rule, elimination of the system of capital, nor giving the means of production to the proletariat.
Not to mention the fact most of this bullshit is
You know where else accomplished extreme improvements to the working class has happened without a bullshit Marxist-Leninist revolution? Scandinavian countries. You know, countries that vastly embody the ideals of Marx more than the USSR, China, or any self proclaimed communist country has.
They didn’t “predict” shit. Anyone with a working prefrontal cortex would have foreseen the capitalist class powers of the world would scramble to crush any upset to their order.
HOWEVER, the working people did not see this order upset. They saw it swapped with another order of ruling capitalists, but at the state level.
Did the state give the workers some benefits? Sure. Did it also employ mass slavery, mass murder, falsify its own numbers, and set a solid-hard barrier that outright permanently prevented proletariat rule, the proletariat owning the means of production, and elimination of the system if capital like was the fucking point of communism?
Yes.
“During Joseph Stalin’s crash-industrialisation drive, workers lost their right to participate in the functioning of the enterprise, and their working conditions deteriorated.[9] In 1940, for example, a decree was promulgated and became law stating that a worker could be arrested if he had three accumulated absences, late arrivals or changed jobs without the official authorisation.[9] Shock work, which meant that workers had to work past regular hours, was introduced alongside central planning.[9] During World War II the pressure on workers increased and it was expected of them to take on Herculean efforts in their work.[9] In the post-war years conditions did not improve but in fact worsened in some cases.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_working_class?wprov=sfla1
And let’s not forget the wonderful gems of “the state rapidly industrializing” at the expense of the working class in that period of time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_in_the_Soviet_Union?wprov=sfla1
And we all know the super necessary policies put forth during this industrialization which I’m sure the proletariat absolutely needed and wasn’t at all total absurd fascist bullshit that showed the state didn’t give a fuck about anything other than consolidating power during that period
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933?wprov=sfla1
All while, just like other capitalist countries, the ruling class lived in luxary and isolation from the consequences of their failures.
And it can be equally argued that without the colossal monopolies of Carnegie and Rockefeller that the US would not have had the industrialization and resources to successfully fight in WWII.
You can make stupid fucking arguments like that all you want. However, it falls flat when you stop to think about it for more than a second and see the glairing problems it has
No. No it didn’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union?wprov=sfla1
The fact that you haven’t informed yourself on the topic doesn’t mean the information isn’t there. You’re lying about my information coming from self-reported data, the information I’m giving primarily comes from Albert Szymanski’s “Human Rights in the Soviet Union”, a book compiling data about the USSR primarily obtained from western academia. You can keep yourself uneducated though.
You’re repeating the same thing 3 times to make it sound more impressive. I’ve already provided numerical evidence for the lowest rates in inequality and highest welfare state in the region for a continued 70 years can only be that “the dictators on top happened to be benevolent”. This is not material analysis and doesn’t hold up, otherwise you’d expect similar outcomes in other dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia or Iran, but you don’t see that.
Wow, little nations with ten million people each which live off of the exploitation of the global south just like the rest of Europe. Such a wonderful example.
I’ve already provided NUMERICAL EVIDENCE that this isn’t the case. Inequality rates were the lowest in history, and when the system was dismantled, inequality rose massively. You keep repeating that lie after I’ve literally PROVEN YOU WRONG.
No. High imprisonment rates on the eve of and during the biggest war the world has ever seen don’t amount to mass slavery. Prison labor at no time represented more than 3% of total labor in the USSR, this peak being during the harshest of WW2, and already in the 1950s it was reduced to something anecdotal. You can find good NUMERICAL EVIDENCE of this in Alec Nove’s “An Economic History of the USSR” and in Robert C. Allen’s “Farm to Factory”, both very interesting and dense books on the socialist economy of the USSR throughout its existence. Again, PROVEN WRONG BY EMPIRICAL DATA. You claim yourself a leftist and you literally are only parroting anticommunist false propaganda.
Oh wow, you’re telling me that in the largest war in human history, workers had to do herculean efforts to defeat the Nazis? Nah, they should have kept to their 8h a day while being genocided. You’re fucking ridiculous.
Again, dumbass take based on vibes and not numerical evidence. Before Stalin, life expectancy in the USSR was less than 30 years of age. By the time he died it was ALMOST 60 years of age. Claiming that the peasant majority and the working class didnt benefit from industrialization is the most uneducated take I’ve seen. People literally went from plowing the land with their hands to using tractors, you fucking class traitor.
Also, let’s show your coherency. First you claim:
Sometime later you claim:
Are you fucking serious? The industrial output of the USSR grew 15% YEARLY between 1929 and 1941, year by which 30% of GDP was dedicated to military defense against Nazism. IF THERE HAD BEEN NO RAPID INDUSTRIALIZATION, THE ENTIRETY OF UKRAINE, BELARUS, POLAND, CENTRAL ASIA AND THE MAJORITY OF RUSSIA WOULD HAVE BEEN GENOCIDED BY NAZIS. You literally said it was obvious. Can you be more dishonest?
I LITERALLY PROVIDED NUMERICAL EVIDENCE THAT THIS IS FALSE. YOU ARE SIMPLY FUCKING LYING, YOU PIECE OF SHIT. LEARN TO INTERPRET A GRAPH
Again fucking uneducated take. THERE HAD BEEN NO COUNTRY TO HAVE A RAPID INDUSTRIALIZATION UNTIL THE BOLSHEVIKS DID IT. LITERALLY NOWHERE ON THE FUCKING PLANET. Give me a fucking historical example prior to the USSR of rapid industrialization. You’re being an ahistorical ass.
Are you telling me that the country that didn’t begin to industrialize until 1929 AND ONLY DID SO BECAUSE OF BOLSHEVISM should have just magically defeated the Nazi blitzkrieg which RAN OVER THE WORLD POWER OF FRANCE IN A MATTER OF WEEKS?! You’re literally fucking delusional.
“Heavily” does a lot of work there, buddy. The USSR received less than 2000 tanks from the USA, for comparison they manufactured 20.000 T-34 tanks. However, I do appreciate the USA’s role in aid to the USSR. I don’t see how that’s an argument against the Soviets, somehow accepting military aid against Nazis is bad?
Literal fucking fascist historical revisionism. I’ll reply to this in a following comment because it’s too big a lie to dismantle in one comment.
That’s a lot of moronic cope and a total waste of time spam fucking both irrelevant points and dribble.
To compress things, and also seeing your ass got banned, I’ll sum up my reply as so.
how the fuck was it state capitalist if it was planned economy lmao
stuff takes time, USSR was first attempt, certainly not the last, we learn from the mistakes and improve upon them but discrediting the whole revolution is not very communist. No one has achieved communism ever and no one knows how long will it take, maybe we needed revolution through more european states to establish a stable order of socalist states so trade couldve been better? no one really knows, but some revolutionaries did try, bitching on them sitting in your home acheievs nothing Literally no state deserve to exist but I dont get this selective outrage against marxist leninst states. No one in their right mind claims that these states had acheived communism, even the soviet union called itself “socialist”
Damn, immediately outing yourself as having no knowledge of a topic out of the gate.
Since you don’t understand how those things aren’t mutually exclusive, I’ll paste the Wikipedia summary and link it.
"State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, centralized management and wage labor). The definition can also include the state dominance of corporatized government agencies (agencies organized using business-management practices) or of public companies (such as publicly listed corporations) in which the state has controlling shares.[1] The term has been used as a pejorative by Marxists, liberals and neoliberals. However, it has also served as a programmatic label for developmentalist and neomercantilist projects in reaction to imperialism.[2]
A state-capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts as a single huge corporation, extracting surplus value from the workforce in order to invest it in further production.[3] This designation applies regardless of the political aims of the state, even if the state is nominally socialist.[4] Some scholars argue that the economy of the Soviet Union and of the Eastern Bloc countries modeled after it, including Maoist China, were state capitalist systems, and Eastern and Western commentators alike assert that the current economies of China and Singapore also constitute a mixture of state-capitalism with private capitalism."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism?wprov=sfla1
Too bad that isn’t the critique. The critique, and accurate analysis of the Soviet Union isn’t that it was too slow to achieve socialism or communism, but that it had fundamentally abandoned attempts to achieve it in favor of establishing and maintaining its state-capitalist autocracy.
The same has happened in China.
An attempt that failed and redirected to state-capitalism at damn near the inception of the USSR, if not earlier.
And all other attempts by revolution, most notably ones assisted by the USSR for imperial purposes (like China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc) also failed much for similar reasons.
Turns out the reality is, the closest societies to reach towards the main principles of communism:
Are Scandinavian countries. Are they there yet? No. But they’re the closest examples in history of getting there, and socialism and communism isn’t even their primary ideologies.
Yet they embody why Marx preferred democracy as the means of achieving socialism and communism.
Tankies and any self proclaimed Marxist-Leninist can never claim to have learned from history. Their entire world view is comprised of cognitive bias and straight up falsehoods.
And I’m not dismissing the entire revolutions. I’m dismissing the notion that the leadership of said revolutions, and of the subsequent Marxist-Leninists states, ever gave a shit to actually pursue any of the principles of communism during g or after the revolution.
The pigs and farmers always ended up indistinguishable.
And no self proclaimed communist nation, least of all any autocratic nation, has ever put in genuine effort I to achieving it. They abandon it because, just as with the bourgeoisie prior to the revolution, those in power consolidate their power and hold it tightly for life. They become the new bourgeoisie. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
The only way to ensure proletariat rule, elimination of the system of capital, and proletariat ownership of the means of production, is to give those things to the proletariat. There’s no need for delay.
What time the state does exist, it must exist solely as a tool for the proletariat to dictate. Not the other way around d as we’ve seen in the USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, etc.
Economic woes themselves weren’t the only nail in the coffin for the USSR, its puppets or Yugoslavia. The core issue for all those countries was authoritarianism. Glaring problems that never got solved or were made worse because autocracy doesn’t fucking work, and it sure as fuck doesn’t hold interest in the good of the proletariat.
Curation is absolutely essential to all successful movements. We can’t navigate a minefield if we don’t remove the guy who keeps trying to push the group onto the mines.
Marxist-Leninista are a cancer to the communist movement. A colossal misdirection that has only succeeded in damaging the success of communism for what will likely turn into centuries.
We cannot allow M-Ls to misdirect the greater leftist population into fighting for a lost cause that doesn’t even attempt to achieve their ideals, but rather leads to the opposite in many significant ways.
We aren’t the right wing. We don’t just blindly accept anyone who even somewhat pretends to be on our side.
The USSR lied about that. They weren’t even socialist. They were an autocratic state-capitalist society.
Socialism also requires the big 3:
The USSR had none of these, and made no attempts to achieve either of them. Their state consolidated power and kept it until it collapsed.
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The Soviet Union totally not trying to restore imperial Russian borders:
(Edit: better alt text, maybe?)
Yeah, the USSR famously annexed itself Poland… wait, it didn’t, Poland remained its own country after the war
What about the Baltic states? Occupied by Russia twice in the last century. Against their will. Their people deported to Siberia to suffer and Russians imported to replace them and russify those countries? People fought and died to break out of the USSR. And that’s just a drop in the ocean of atrocities they committed.
Please stop spreading this bullshit propaganda and defending atrocious, heinous, murderous pieces of shit, unless of course you are the same heinous piece of shit.
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“When you lose an argument, scream nonsense” - Putin bot’s rule #4.
Don’t pull a muscle with those mental gymnastics, troll.
I thought you tagged me to avoid engaging me? You’re like 50 years old anyway
Nothing like a Spanish person who wasn’t even alive during or anywhere near USSR spreading pre-prepared propaganda copy-pastas about it.
They saved fuck-all.
Shithole USSR was as imperialist as shithole russia is now. Only seek to occupy land, rape and deport people, and leave nothing but ruin behind.
Somehow a lot of Lemmy tends to forget about how the deal USSR made with Nazi Germany to divide and split Europe amongst themselves? And only fought Nazis to defend their occupied lands.
source: trust me bro
Thanks for raising your hand, but after glancing at your profile, you’re getting a tag.
I am not a blind defender of every ml experiment but you are a liberal bro, you are the probelm. You people kill millions im global south and bitch about human rights in your country lol.
Wat
What are you even talking about, MrSmith? The Nazis marched all the way from Berlin and took everything on the way to the USSR and the USSR marched all the way to Berlin as they crushed 80% of the Nazi forces and when they were done the US and UK were very clear that they had no problem with more Nazis - openly former Nazi officials were put in charge of West Germany, openly former Nazi officers were put in charge of NATO, and NATO supported Nazi collaborators throughout all of Europe. The USSR had the choice of either releasing the totally destroyed territories to their own devices while the West actively fomented a Nazi resurgence or they had to attempt to rebuild what the war destroyed and actively prevent the still existing Nazi threat from re-emerging and invading Russia yet again.
There is absolutely nothing in any of the primary sources to suggest that the USSR was pursuing active imperialism - not in the philosophy, not in the rhetoric, not in the meeting minutes, not in the letters, nothing.
Ok ml bro.
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I don’t read slop
Lmao