And yet Hard Times created Vladimir “why nobody wants to be friends with me after I tried so hard to please them” Putin.
The meme is clearly wrong if you had just advanced one more block of history.
You just need some photo of Yeltsin and Putin in the last panel along with the flag switch
I've never understood this phrase because if it's true then it's literally impossible to deviate from the pattern, idk what they're trying to say/what they're complaining about.
Explains why liberals love quoting it so much, it treats history as predetermined based on some kind of vague "cycle"
Looking at those three, maybe there is something to an aesthetic analysis of history
You think the people that raised standards of living, ended famine and raised life expectancy from the mid 30s up to 65+ and brought their country to being number 2 world superpower in under 40 years while simultaneously eliminating unemployment, providing free healthcare and eliminating homelessness suck?
Are you out of your fucking mind? This opinion is not based in reality, it is propaganda-brained.
You are not immune to propaganda.
I'm not saying I am immune to propaganda, yet there are 2 sides on that coin. Censorship I already mentioned, then we have repressions, basically encouraging ppl to accuse each other, etc.
Eliminating unemployment and homelessness was also somewhat questionable, AFAIK: after finishing a uni, the future workers were forcibly sent somewhere to work for X (3, I guess?) yrs with dorms as accommodation to live with Y else ppl in the same room (so, a glorified homeless shelter). Now imagine that somewhere in Siberia. Although, yeah, better than nothing, I guess. On a side note, zero unemployment was "official", and I personally judge their openness regarding stuff they didn't like based on the Chernobyl accident's handling.
Free healthcare is great, no questions here. However, it wasn't pioneered by the USSR, but actually dates back to Alexander the 2nd's reforms (or even earlier).
So, that's kinda it, a nonexclusive list of reasons why I refuse to glorify USSR
Censorship I already mentioned
And you completely ignored anyone pointing out the same censorship in capitalist countries.
then we have repressions
Ahh yes, capitalism, famous for not repressing political dissidents. Please don't look at Assange, or look up any of the mysterious deaths of BLM organisers, or look at the entire history of marxists being assassinated by the state. No repressions here!! The state has definitely never dropped literal bombs from planes on protesters! Nope. Never happened. The state has never blown up entire neighbourhoods with explosives to get one dissiddent family before. Nope. Never happened!
You're blind to all this shit because you're probably a beneficiary of capitalism and want to continue it, knowing full well you're a beneficiary. You ignore the heinous shit capitalists do, causing 2 world wars, slavery, and the modern heinous shit because it doesn't affect you personally and as long as that is the case you don't give a fuck. But you certainly do give a fuck about socialist states doing less bad stuff because those are a threat to your maintenance of the status quo that you benefit from.
basically encouraging ppl to accuse each other
No now you're claiming that something the nazis did as a matter of systemic society-wide policy is something the soviets did. You're doing literal actual fascist propaganda now of claiming the crimes of nazis were actually what the soviets did.
Eliminating unemployment and homelessness was also somewhat questionable
No it wasn't.
after finishing a uni, the future workers were forcibly sent somewhere to work for X (3, I guess?) yrs with dorms as accommodation to live with Y else ppl in the same room (so, a glorified homeless shelter)
Please for the love of god stop getting your information about socialism from reddit comment sections filled with literal actual nazis. Holy fucking shit.
Free healthcare is great, no questions here. However, it wasn't pioneered by the USSR, but actually dates back to Alexander the 2nd's reforms (or even earlier).
Yeah you should just be banned. You're a lost cause, a literal actual fucking moron that believes the country had ""healthcare"" at a time its life expectancy was in the mid 30s. How are you this fucking propagandised? What have you done to your brain? Do you just actively TRY to fill your head with shit? You want to believe this drivel so you seek it out? What is wrong with you? Do you ever actually think? Is there a single ounce of critical thought in your head or do you just unquestioningly believe anything anticommunist while doing everything you can to debunk in your mind anything pro communist?
How much does your brain freak the fuck out when I tell you that the soviet gulag system had a lower death rate in the 1950s, over 70 years ago, than they do in current, modern day, american prisons?
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.Can you stop that "but capitalists..." crap?
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.
plus some of my family history and talking with older folks who actually lived in USSR.
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.
Forgot about that one. The number's cool and everything, the question is - how it was obtained.
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.
The older generation in Russia that actually lived during it are overwhelmingly pro-USSR.
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,
There's a reason we're communists, we want to abolish states.
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
I fuwking said USSR sucks, not communism/socialism sucks, so I'm not comparing it to damn capitalism.
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.
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).
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.
So why not do just that instead of "proletariat dictatorship"? , and that state inevitability starts protecting itself and oppressing others. Let ppl organize, let ppl decide for themselves
Why not read a book? Then you'd already know the answer to this question.
Having any state basically creates another class holding power to itself
You don't know what class is. Refer to reddit.com/r/socialism/wiki/class. A page I happened to write.
and that state inevitability starts protecting itself and oppressing others
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.
let ppl decide for themselves
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.
When you say the USSR sucks, you are saying that you prefer the alternative for its time, the US.
Nope, I'm saying that USSR sucks, and just that.
East Palestine [...]
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).
Refer to reddit.com/r/socialism/wiki/class
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
you are functionally saying here is "let the bourgeoisie use all of their wealth to maintain their power"
goes the same direction as accusations of protecting capitalists
Nope, I'm saying that USSR sucks, and just that.
Compared to what?
That's the point.
Bad does not exist without a baseline.
That's cool, yet that's not the only way to divide the society into classes.
We're not liberals. The liberal definition of class is ill-defined, wishy washy and dogshit, completely impossible to use scientifically.
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".
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?
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? 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.
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And, frankly speaking, I doubt all that ppl can one day (or gradually) just give up the accumulated power.
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.
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).
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.
Yeah, that's mostly what I remember from history textbooks at school, plus some stuff I observed from living in a relatively small town in Russia, plus some of my family history and talking with older folks who actually lived in USSR.
Crazy thing about anecdotal evidence is that I can have some too that literally directly discredits yours having known some oldheads of my own. So whose internet anecdote friend wins out lmao.
The number's cool and everything, the question is - how it was obtained. For example, newborn mortality and that of mothers that gave birth might've taken a huuuge toll, and then it obviously decreases when we roll out proper hygiene and vaccination.
Even if it is average and not proper accounting of the actual lifespan, if there are so many child/birthing deaths that your life expectancy is getting dragged that far down... that is sign of a deeply unhealthy society.
Was that done in the tsar Russia? Idk.
Extremely easy information to find... https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041395/life-expectancy-russia-all-time/
Also, even if Alex the Second was a bit of a liberal tsar (conditions were still terrible for most), do you know what happened under his evil-minded tyrant of a son Alexander III? Because politics are not stagnant.
Yeah, anecdotal evidence suck in general. Guess I'll dig deeper now that discussion sparked some interest 🤣
that is sign of a deeply unhealthy society
A (huge) bit of a stretch, but I can attribute some of that to old habits dying hard and general state of medicine at the time. I mean Semmelweis discovered that treating tools and medical apparel with chlorine vastly reduces the risk of developing childbed fewer around 1850, and before that having more gore and gross around seemed desirable, and even then the idea was mostly rejected :/ Definitely not the only reason, but a possible one for sure.
do you know what happened under his evil-minded tyrant of a son Alexander III
I don't remember the details, but yeah, dude decided to unload a shit ton of conservatism :/
Yeah, being new to lemmy, I didn't know I've accidentally offended what seems like the whole server until it was too late 😬
Soviet union was significantly better than anything that was before or after
Well, I like their tech, or rather that everything came with schematics ootb, but other than that... Idk, some stuff still seems too restrictive for me: all that iron curtains, needing the party's approval on stuff you can listen_to/perform/read, etc
It's no different than what creators have to do in the West when trying to appease their editors/producers/executives, only they are only concerned with what will net the most money.
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On one hand, we have making stuff that lends you in jail or otherwise gets you in trouble with the govt, and on the other one - stuff that makes you no money [which is also not exactly correct since you can even publish stuff under CC and still make money (e.g. Cory Doctorow, LukHash, etc) as long as said stuff has an audience]
No mate. You're not looking at this correctly.
There is an absolutely huge quantity of stuff you simply can not put in media because you will lose your job in the industry. That's censorship, it's just smartly hidden censorship that is one step removed from any "official" capacity but everyone still knows it's there.
Sure you can publish under CC, good luck getting blacklisted from everything else forever though.
"The Red Scare never happened because why would anyone have to be scared into hating commies?"
Another r*dditor hog who cares only about cooming and what type of funko pops you can buy. Come back when you have a soul.
The problem with dunking on libs is that they just ignore all of your actual, concrete insults, and so to continue the dunking one most fall back on surface-level insults and ideas coined by reactionaries.
We should just quote the 11 kinds of liberalism at them until they go away (except for the funko pop part, thats a funny dunk, keep that part)
I understand the temptation, so don’t feel bad
Tbh only the cooming part is sus at all, everything else is an accurate dunk. And people here seem to like the “coom” meme so I guess that’s whatever too
it's a good thing people don't need money to live, huh, you fucking moron
Why is it that the world’s inequality skyrocketed after the dissolution of the USSR? Why is it that liberals glamorize the swift period where Russia stripped its own copper and made people desperate enough to want Putin? The capitalists no longer had a threat against them. Even today, China is an industrial and financial threat, not an ideological one.
Even if the USSR “sucked,” they were the ones encouraging revolution and decolonization, and that resulted in countries demanding a seat on the world stage. That’s not to say these countries all succeeded or even good today, but the western capitalists actually sweat when people were dissatisfied. Now? Fuck it. Just watch the marvel and eat the burger. It’s the end of history!
Did I say capitalism doesn't suck? As far as I can tell, I, in fact, didn't. I generally like communistic and anarchistic ideas, but not the methods USSR used
IMO, communism, as I understand it, actually doesn't, yet achieving it through socialism (as USSR tried) is not the way, instead going the collectivist anarchism route and straight up ditching the vertical power structures is better.
Like when you keep states, they start protecting themselves/oppressing othets and turn into a class of their own, thus eliminating the possibility of them self-disdolving when the society becomes classless.
Although it's not that I've read a whole lot on the topic, so it may be much more complicated than that
In a vacuum, that sounds great. But it totally fails to recognize the existence of imperialist capitalist powers that will fucking destroy you if you try that on a scale that gets in their way. The USSR looked the way it did not because of what they were trying to build, but because of what was necessary to prevent their destruction. Once capitalism is gone, it's a very different story
Is it necessary to threaten them, tho? Just showing ppl around better living is possible while not calling yourself a scary communist and not making direct moves towards converting the other countries (and instead being generally friendly) may work, I hope (and then said others try the same stuff on their own). The only problem in that case is the possibility of being attacked before achieving moderately well self-sufficiency, tho, and I'm not sure how high it is
There are two options here.
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Your project is small enough to not be of any concern to capitalists. You don't claim any valuable resources, and you don't have much industrialization. Your social structure might be great, but you lack the amenities that most modern people would consider essential for a "good life". You could potentially keep this project going for a while within an anarchist framework, but you're not going to change the world.
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You have abundant resources and adequate industrialization. (Somehow you acquired these without capital or violent revolution?) You are demonstrating an attractive alternative to the capitalist system and are sitting on resources that could be valuable to some major business interests. They WILL try to use state power fucking kill you, if they aren't able to corrupt you and buy you out. You will be gaslighted by every major media outlet, your parents will think you're a baby killing terrorist, and the US military will be preparing an invasion at your border. If you don't adopt a militant, disciplined organizational structure to combat these moves, the commune will be defeated.
That's why, to Marxists, the primary goal is a military victory over capitalism. Of course the socialist states that remain will not represent the end goal, and we shouldn't expect them to "wither away" without effort. But if capitalists can no longer command state power, the viability of the kind of society we want suddenly becomes plausible
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Is it necessary to threaten them, tho? Just showing ppl around better living is possible while not calling yourself a scary communist and not making direct moves towards converting the other countries (and instead being generally friendly) may work, I hope
communism is necessarily an international project so "not making direct moves towards converting other countries" is kinda hard in that framework. Even if you do aim for socialism in one country, the capitalists will oppose you regardless and spread propaganda about you, sanction you, and threaten to invade you. This is literally what is happening with China right now. They are (actually very frustratingly to us communists) explicitly not trying to export revolution abroad, and yet they still get tarred with endless propaganda about how they're doing totalitarian repression and genocide in Xinjiang and all the factories need to have suicide nets and they all have unsafe working conditions and so on. Compare this to a nearby country like South Korea, which has totalitarian control except by corporations (like Samsung) and much worse social problems.
How much time does the American media spend complaining about South Korea's authoritarianism and suicide rates, etc, compared to China's, if authoritarianism and social issues were the actual problems that America cared about? How much time does the American media spend complaining about Israel's genocide in Palestine and the fences and surveillance cameras and the EXTREMELY totalitarian conditions that Palestinians have been under for DECADES, if totalitarianism and genocide were the actual problems that America cared about? No, America only fearmongers and spreads propaganda about China because they're seen as a threat to them, despite China trying their utmost for many years to appease the United States. Literally all the Chinese government talk about is "win-win cooperation" and so on, while government committees in America denounce China every other day and try and prepare for war with them.
China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and created a superpower out of little more than a series of colonies. It has much better transport infrastructure and builds entirely new cities to contain the housing problem and is taking big, meaningful steps towards turning housing from an "investment" for the bourgeoisie into a public good instead. China is the prime example of "showing ppl around better living is possible while not calling yourself a scary communist and not making direct moves towards converting the other countries". And because of American propaganda and astroturfing, many Westerners hate China with a burning passion, instead of seeing the many, many successes. Many don't even really know why they hate China, at least compared to other countries that have worse problems with repression like India, Israel, and South Korea, and instead seem to essentially believe that making Tiananmen Square jokes and Winnie the Pooh jokes are like, these deeply funny and edgy things that if you say them in a game chat, then Chinese players are going to be dragged out of their home or something, which is... like, so inherently fucking ridiculous of a belief to have that truly, only dumbfuck brainwashed Westerners could be stupid enough to believe it. It's almost as stupid as Westerners who think that North Koreans think unicorns are real and dozens of other bizarre myths. Honestly, at a certain point, it feels like Western media and intelligence agencies are just making fun of Americans and Europeans. "Alright, what myth should we make up next? Let's say... hmm... let's say that Chinese people think that the Earth is flat, and North Koreans don't believe in the Moon because Kim Jong Un said it doesn't exist. God, our citizens are so fucking stupid that they'll lap this shit right up."
Not sure what you mean here. 'Cause so far it's about encouraging others to overthrow the govt in hopes of establishing a communistic paradise and not why I'm prohibited to think USSR in particular sucked.
Although mb smth along the lines of said stuff being "inevitable" which my pacifistic ass still doesn't agree to. Linking to a particular message can help
ah yes, the people who did this:
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suck just as much as the people who did this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogroms_in_the_Russian_Empire
something something dril tweet 'zero difference between good thing and bad thing' smug self satisfied reddit/stormfront user surprised more knowledgable people don't take his confidently wrong statements as indisputable truth direct from the godhead
