I'd even replace communism with socialism. Since it's also vilified in the US, but it's a broader term which is, to me, more relevant nowadays.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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What do you mean? Socialism is generally just the process of building Communism.
There exists socialist theory outside of marxism-leninism
Yes, there does, but the idea of a Socialism that would not eventually work itself towards Communism is silly, that assumes a stagnant system that cannot advance.
Well I'd say communism is a type of socialism, where the latter is the ideal to strive for a better society for everyone, to intervene to help those who cannot help themselves. Communism tries to achieve this goal by making the means of production into communal ownership. With the State enforcing strict wealth equality. But it's still socialism with economic inequality at the beginning but fair and strong wealth redistribution in the end: equity.
This isn't really accurate. Socialism is the domination of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, ie worker ownership of the Means of Production, and the path towards Communism, an eventual stateless, classless, moneyless society.
Are you familiar with Communist theory? Equity isn't the goal, fulfilling everyone's needs is.
I consider myself a socialist/leftist and my primary concern right now is not to dominate the bourgeoisie. It's mainly to get them to stop tax evasion so we can fund our public schools and hospitals. And if they could stop voting for candidates who are in coalition with the far right that'd be nice too!
That's Social Democracy, ie what the Nordic Countries are, not Socialism and not Leftism.
Oh boy I'm no social democrat. A radical socialist if you prefer. You can have radical ideas like ending capitalism or taxing inheritance to 100% while still being for democracy and not being a revolutionary.
All of the policies you described were those of Social Democrats, though. Additionally, Revolutionary Socialists are still for Democracy, just not bourgeois democracy, which makes Socialism impossible.
Downvote spam report: 1/4th of the downvotes on this one (so far) are from zero-content accounts.
zero-content accounts
🙄
Again with this. Just for context, how many of the upvotes are zero-content accounts?
Who could have done this
Interesting. How do you find that out?
Admins can see voting patterns.
Admins can see who upvotes and downvotes, I'm pretty sure.
This implies the CIA disinfo was some kind of oopsie
The purpose was that the disinformation was so bad that it shocked even the professor
Agreed, the professor’s mouth and eyebrow should be flipped around.
communism always fails because it's authoritarian, that's the same reason the west, the east and everything else will fall
Ah yes it was the CIA that did the Holodomor
Famines were common occurrence before the revolution, and were in fact a major driver behind it. USSR doubled life expectancy in just 20 years. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. the Semashko system of the USSR increased lifespan by 50% in 20 years. By the 1960's, lifespans in the USSR were comparable to those in the USA:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union
- https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5054/index1.html
Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 peroid while having better nutrition:
During the 1932 Holodomor Famine, the USSR sent aid to affected regions in an attempt to alleviate the famine. According to Mark Tauger in his article, The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933:
While the leadership did not stop exports, they did try to alleviate the famine. A 25 February 1933 Central Committee decree allotted seed loans of 320,000 tons to Ukraine and 240,000 tons to the northern Caucasus. Seed loans were also made to the Lower Volga and may have been made to other regions as well. Kul'chyts'kyy cites Ukrainian party archives showing that total aid to Ukraine by April 1933 actually exceeded 560,000 tons, including more than 80,000 tons of food
Some bring up massive grain exports during the famine to show that the Soviet Union exported food while Ukraine starved. This is fallacious for a number of reasons, but most importantly of all the amount of aid that was sent to Ukraine alone actually exceeded the amount that was exported at the time.
Aid to Ukraine alone was 60 percent greater than the amount exported during the same period. Total aid to famine regions was more than double exports for the first half of 1933.
According to Tauger, the reason why more aid was not provided was because of the low harvest
It appears to have been another consequence of the low 1932 harvest that more aid was not provided: After the low 1931, 1934, and 1936 harvests procured grain was transferred back to peasants at the expense of exports.
Tauger is not a communist, and ultimately this specific article takes the view that the low harvest was caused by collectivization (he factors in the natural causes of the famine in later articles, based on how he completely neglects to mention weather in this article at all its clear that his position shifted over the years). However, its interesting to see that the Soviets really did try to alleviate the famine as best as they could.
To be clear, that was authoritarianism, not communism.
Ah, communism is like unicorns. Many people like them but nobody have seen them alive. Because every communist state is not communist but authoritarian.
aUthOriTarIaN
The endless "that wasn't Communism, it was authoritarianism" lines come from liberals sympathetic to the ideas behind liberalism, but who have not read theory nor truthfully examined AES states. No more, no less.
Actually yeah, I think just about every so called communist state is what would be called a failed workers state by the non authoritarian socialists.
And those "non-authoritarian socialists" are liberals.
Trotskist.
Ah, Trots. Spending more time splintering among themselves and refusing to work together to actually get anything done since Trotsky himself.
When does a Communist country become authoritarian? This line is always repeated by sympathetic liberals that haven't read theory yet think they know enough to judge Leftist movements.
It’s a problem of psychology and scale. The communist system becomes susceptible to bad actors the larger the group becomes.
In point of fact: I fully agree that many Latin countries, absent US bullshittery, intervention, and fomenting of coups in the first Cold War, would probably mostly have wound up being successful.
But I absolutely do not agree that the USSR or the PRC should be held up as paragons of virtue of what a Communist system should be. They were very quickly corrupted by authoritarian leaders and cliques from the get go, which is genuinely antithetical to true communism.
It’s a problem of psychology and scale. The communist system becomes susceptible to bad actors the larger the group becomes.
How? What makes it more susceptible in ways that Capitalism is better?
In point of fact: I fully agree that many Latin countries, absent US bullshittery, intervention, and fomenting of coups in the first Cold War, would probably mostly have wound up being successful.
Cuba is doing pretty well despite the brutal embargo.
But I absolutely do not agree that the USSR or the PRC should be held up as paragons of virtue of what a Communist system should be. They were very quickly corrupted by authoritarian leaders and cliques from the get go, which is genuinely antithetical to true communism.
No, they were not. This is vibes-based analysis mixed with Red-Scare propaganda. The USSR and the PRC were both Socialist (and the PRC remains so to this day). What do you mean by them being "quickly corrupted by authoritarian leaders?" You mean that they elected the wrong leaders in your eyes, that they should have gone against democracy?
Inequality shot far down in the USSR, and the Working Class was in control. That was absolutely Communism in action, regardless of your vibes-based analysis. Obviously many things also went wrong, they all had their struggles, but they were actually existing Socialism and should be analyzed as such.
I highly suggest reading Blackshirts and Reds.