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I mean obviously if socialism didn't want a US backed coup they wouldn't dress like that.....
Wearing all that red just really gets the US going into full bloodlust.
And they wonder why we get all these migrants at our southern border. Maybe if they hadn't destabilized the entire region to the south people wouldn't be trying to escape those places.
It's shocking to me that people aren't able to connect the dots here.
I think about this every time some centrist claims that no leftist system has ever worked.
I mean the big ones people like to point at (Rushia and fucking Nazi Germany) sure as shit weren't doing communism or socialism
I don't think anyone points at Nazi Germany as an example of a leftist system. They were literally fascist lol
I don't think anyone points at Nazi Germany as an example of a leftist system
I've seen many idiots do that unfortunately
Both Crowder and Shapiro have claimed this. They point out that the Nazi party was the 'National Socialist German workers' party' and claim that's enough for it to be socialist, and then also claim Russia is a communist country.
The USSR was a communist country. A normal use of that term is that a country communist is one that's run by a communist party.
If you mean it didn't achieve communism, well duh communism is a hypothesized society achieved through socialism where the state ceases to exist. No socialists, including the people of the USSR, would think that their nation-state has achieved communism as that's oxymoronic. They would think of it as a transitional socialist state.
There's a Hitler quote somewhere, in some letter that was like "we laugh at the fools who think our ideology has anything to do with the socialism of the bolsheviks"
There was another one where he says "I didn't want to kill the Jews, but they're all communists"
Someone with a better ability to keep track of sources than me probably knows where to find them
You may be referring to a line from Mein Kampf, volume 2, chapter 4.
The fact that we had chosen red as the colour for our posters sufficed to attract them to our meetings. The ordinary bourgeoisie were very shocked to see that, we had also chosen the symbolic red of Bolshevism and they regarded this as something ambiguously significant. The suspicion was whispered in German Nationalist circles that we also were merely another variety of Marxism, perhaps even Marxists suitably disguised, or better still, Socialists. The actual difference between Socialism and Marxism still remains a mystery to these people up to this day.
The charge of Marxism was conclusively proved when it was discovered that at our meetings we deliberately substituted the words ‘Fellow-countrymen and Women’ for ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ and addressed each other as ‘Party Comrade’. We used to roar with laughter at these silly faint‐hearted bourgeoisie and their efforts to puzzle out our origin, our intentions and our aims.
And the other paraphrase sounds like a reply to Planck:Planck began his intercession on behalf of Haber, even going so far as to say that without the latter’s chemical process for obtaining ammonia from the nitrogen of the air “the previous war would have been lost from the beginning.” To this remark Hitler retorted: “I have nothing at all against the Jews themselves. But the Jews are all Communists, and these are my enemies — it is against these that I am fighting.”
It's always as a "See!! Socialism bad!!" but yep they were literally fascist, Rushia too and yet here we are with people still thinking communist Rushia was communist.
Jewish holocaust scholars don't like it when you call the USSR fascist
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
That sucks. USSR by definition was a fascist regime so I don't really care what they want
How do holocaust scholars relate to the USSR being facist or not? Facist ≠ Nazi though fascism leads directly to the kind of ideas the Nazis hold
Saying that Facists are Facists is trivializing the holocaust? How's that work? The fact Nazis were Facists doesn't trivialize the fact that other groups are also Facists. Facists like to kill people that's kind of their whole ideology. Fascist ideology leads directly to the kind of ideas the Nazis had.
The soviets sacrificed tens of millions of lives to save you and the rest of the world from the Nazis. Show some fucking respect.
Soviet Union will eternally be among the greatest nations of all times and humanity will forever be in its debt for the sacrifices of the Red Army in its victorious struggle to defeat Nazism. Soviet Union bled in the millions so that everyone could live. No greater sign of love by a nation has been given.
Fascism is when you destroy Nazi Germany and end the Holocaust which the Nazis started, rescuing countless Jews and other people from Nazi death camps. I am extremely historically literate.
If you're tired, just give up. It's better in the collective:)
Facists [sic] like to kill people that’s kind of their whole ideology.
That… wasn’t the point of Fascism. Frankly, I’d be surprised if you could name the countries or regions where the Italian Fascists committed their massacres.
The point of Fascism was to forcibly save capitalism from the concessions that the lower classes won. I recommend listening to this: https://lemmy.today/post/315713
Fascism is when you oppose fascism.
Do you even understand what the words you're using mean?
Stalin tried to resign 3 times and wasn't allowed to. Weird thing for a dictator to not be allowed to do.
Ignoring everything else wrong about your one sentence, a dictatorship needn't be helmed by a single person. Brazil was a dictatorship from the 60s to the 90s, and had 6 different presidents during that time.
Cuba follows a really similar system to the soviets system and it is probably as close to a democracy as you can get in a capitalist world, so how is it that the USSR was undemocratic? Did the evil russkies implement council democracy but forgot to actually do it???? Just like they implemented the Washington Consensus post-breakdown but forgot to do the American-"democracy"??
Okay, what about the whole soviets and sharing power with trade unions thing? What about their innovations in participatory democracy. The USSR were hyperdemocratic, even on war footing, at least until destalinization happened and the bureaucracy started taking hold.
His sentence isn't wrong. Stalin did try to resign multiple times (four actually). When his fourth resignation was rejected by the party he then attempted to abolish his own position entirely.
Here are some of the documented ones:
May 1924, 23-31 (Marxist Internet Archive, "The Trotskyist Opposition Before and Now") ( https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1927/10/23.htm#1)
It is said that in that "will" [Lenin's Testament - ZB] Comrade Lenin suggested to the congress that in view of Stalin's "rudeness" it should consider the question of putting another comrade in Stalin's place as General Secretary. That is quite true. Yes, comrades, I am rude to those who grossly and perfidiously wreck and split the Party. I have never concealed this and do not conceal it now. Perhaps some mildness is needed in the treatment of splitters, but I am a bad hand at that. At the very first meeting of the plenum of the Central Committee after the Thirteenth Congress [Undefined date of this attempt, however, within the Thirteenth Congress and thus anywhere within the 23rd to the 31st - ZB] I asked the plenum of the Central Committee to release me from my duties as General Secretary. The congress itself discussed this question. It was discussed by each delegation separately, and all the delegations unanimously, including Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev, obliged Stalin to remain at his post.
What could I do? Desert my post? That is not in my nature; I have never deserted any post, and I have no right to do so, for that would be desertion. As I have already said before, I am not a free agent, and when the Party imposes an obligation upon me, I must obey.
A year later I again put in a request to the plenum to release me, but I was again obliged to remain at my post.
What else could I do?
August 19, 1924 (Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied, p. 244):
To the Plenum of the CC [Central Committee] RCP [Russian Communist Party]
One and a half years of working in the Politburo with comrades Zinoviev and Kamanev after the retirement and then the death of Lenin have made perfectly clear to me the impossibility of honest, sincere political work with these comrades within the framework of one small collective. In view of which, I request to be considered as having resigned from the Pol[itcal] Buro of the CC.
I request a medical leave for about two months.
At the expiration of this period I request to be sent to Turukhansk region or to the Iakutsk oblast', or to somewhere abroad in any kind of work that will attract little attention.
I would ask the Plenum to decide all these questions in my absence and without explanations from my side, because I consider it harmful for our work to give explanations aside from those remarks that I have already made in the first paragraph of this letter.
I would ask comrade Kuibyshev to distribute copies of this letter to the members of the CC.
With com[munist] greet[ings], J. Stalin.
December 27, 1926 (Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied, p. 244):
To the Plenum of the CC [Central Committee] (to comrade Rykov). I ask that I be relieved of the post of GenSec [General Secretary] of the CC. I declare that I can work no longer in this position, I do not have the strength to work any more in this position. J. Stalin.
December 19, 1927 (Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied, p. 245) (https://livrozilla.com/doc/796199/pelo-socialismo):
Stalin: Comrades! For three years [Suggesting there could be more resignation attempts unbeknownst to me - ZB] I have been asking the CC [Central Committee] to free me from the obligations of General Secretary of the CC. Each time the Plenum has refused me. I admit that until recently conditions did not exist such that the Party had need of me in this post as a person more or less severe, one who acted as a certain kind of antidote to the dangers posed by the Opposition. I admit that this necessity existed, despite comrade Lenin's well-known letter [Lenin's Testament - ZB], to keep me at the post of General Secretary. But these conditions exist no longer. They have vanished, since the Opposition is now smashed. It seems that the Opposition has never before suffered such a defeat since they have not only been smashed, but have been expelled from the Party. It follows that now no bases exist any longer that could be considered correct when the Plenum refused to honor my request and free me of the duties of General Secretary. Meanwhile you have comrade Lenin's directive which we are obliged to consider and which, in my opinion, it is necessary to put into effect. I admit that the Party was compelled to disregard this directive until recently, compelled by well-known conditions of inter-Party development. But I repeat that these conditions have now vanished and it is time, in my view, to take comrade Lenin's directive to the leadership. Therefore I request the Plenum to free me of the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee. I assure you, comrades, that the Party can only gain from doing this.
Dogadov: Vote without discussion.
Vorshilov: I propose we reject the announcement we just heard.
Rykov: We will vote without discsussion...We vote now on Stalin's proposal that he be freed from the General Secretaryship. Who is for this proposal? Who is against? Who abstains? One.
The proposal of comrade Stalin is rejected with one abstention.
Stalin: Then I introduce another proposal. Perhaps the CC [Central Committee] will consider it expedient to abolish the position of General Secretary. In our Party's history there have been times when no such post existed.
Voroshilov: We had Lenin with us then.
Stalin: We had no post of General Secretary before the 10th Congress.
Voice: Until the 11th Congress.
Stalin: Yes, it seems that until the 11th Congress we did not have this position. That was before Lenin stopped working. If Lenin concluded that it was necessary to put forward the question of founding the position of General Secretary, then I assume he was prompted by the special circumstances that appeared with us before the 10th Congress, when a more or less strong, well-organized Opposition within the Party was founded. But now we proceed to the abolition of this position. Many people associate a conception of some kind of special rights of the General Secretary with this position. I must say from my experience, and comrades will confirm this, that there ought not to be any special rights distinguishing the General Secretary from the rights of other members of the Secretariat.
Voice: And the duties?
Stalin: And there are no more duties than other members of the Secretariat have. I see it this way; There's the Politburo, the highest organ of the CC; there's the Secretariat, the executive organ consisting of five persons, and all these five members of the Secretariat are equal. That's the way the work has been carried out in practice, and the General Secretary has not had any special rights or obligations. The result, therefore, is that the position of General Secretary, in the sense of special rights, has never existed with us in practice, there has been only a collegium called the Secretariat of the CC. I do not know why we need to keep this dead position any longer. I don't even mention the fact that this position, called General Secretary, has occasioned in some places a series of distortions. At the same time that at the top no special rights or duties are associated with the position of General Secretary, in some places there have been some distortions, and in all the oblasts there is now a struggle over that position among comrades who call themselves secretaries, for example, in the national CCs. Quite a few General Secretaries have developed, and with them in the localities special rights have been associated. Why is this necessary?
Shmidt: We can dismiss them in the localities.
Stalin: I think the Party would benefit if we did away with the post of General Secretary, and that would give me the chance to be free from this post. This would be all the easier to do since according to the Party's constitution there is no post of General Secretary.
Rykov: I propose not to give comrade Stalin the possibility of being free from this position. As concerns the General Secretaries in the oblast and local organs, that should be changed, but without changing the situation in the CC. The position of General Secretary was created by the proposal of Vladimir Il'ich. In all the time since, during Vladimir Il'ich's life and since, this position has justified itself politically and completely in both the organizational and political sense. In the creation of this organ and in naming comrade Stalin to the post of General Secretary the whole Opposition also took part, all those whom we have now expelled from the Party. That is how completely without doubt it was for everyone in the Party (whether the position of General Secretary was needed and who should be the General Secretary). By which has been exhausted, in my opinion, both the question of the "testament" (for that point has been decided) and exhausted by the Opposition at the same time just as it has been decided by us as well. The whole Party knows this. What has changed now after the 15th Congress and why is it necessary to set aside the position of General Secretary.
Stalin: The Opposition has been smashed.
(A long discussion followed, after which:)
[continued in reply]
Voices: Correct! Vote!
Rykov: There is a proposal to vote.
Voices: Yes, yes!
Rykov: We are voting. Who is for comrade Stalin's proposal to abolish the post of General Secretary? Who is opposed? Who abstains? Noone.
October 16, 1952 (http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1954-2/succession-to-stalin/succession-to-stalin-texts/stalin-on-enlarging-the-central-committee/):
This article was taken from the Russian newspaper Glasnost devoted to the 120th Anniversary of Stalin’s birth, was the last speech at the CC [Central Committee] CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] before Stalin died. The text was being published for the very first time in the Soviet Union...
...MOLOTOV – [Glasnost -] coming to the speaker’s tribune completely admits his mistakes before the CC, but he stated that he is and will always be a faithful disciple of Stalin.
STALIN – (interrupting Molotov) This is nonsense. I have no students at all. We are all students of the great Lenin.
[Glasnost -] Stalin suggested that they continue the agenda point by point and elect comrades into different committees of state.
With no Politburo, there is now elected a Presidium of the CC CPSU in the enlarged CC and in the Secretariat of the CC CPSU altogether 36 members.
In the new list of those elected are all members of the old Politbiuro – except that of comrade A. A. Andreev who, as everyone knows now is unfortunately completely deaf and thus can not function.
VOICE FROM THE FLOOR – We need to elect comrade Stalin as the General Secretary of the CC CPSU and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
STALIN – No! I am asking that you relieve me of the two posts!
MALENKOV – coming to the tribune: Comrades! We should all unanimously ask comrade Stalin, our leader and our teacher, to be again the General Secretary of the CC CPSU.
Same attempt (A. I. Mgeladze, Stalin. Kakim ia ego znal. Strannitsy nedavnogo poshlogo. p. 118):
At the first Plenum of the CC [Central Committee] of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] called after the XIX Congress of the Party (I had been elected member of the CC and took part in the work of this Plenum), Stalin really did present the question of General Secretary of the CC CPSU, or of the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. He referred to his age, overwork, said that other cadres had cropped up and there were people to replace him, for example, N.I. Bulganin could be appointed as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, but the CC members did not grant his request, all insisted that comrade Stalin remain at both positions.
So is it not like the west where you need to run for each term but more like a normal job with periodic reviews? i.e. in the west, leaving the position at the end of the term is sort of the "default" in terms of the mechanics (with staying requiring being opted-into).
The positions are elected by a vote at the supreme soviet assembly, those positions are elected by the soviets (councils) below the assembly, and those are elected by the soviets below that, and so on down to the lowest level where the local constituents vote.
In the party it's generally considered a "duty" though, especially among those that participated in the revolution like Stalin who treated loyalty to the organisation, self-sacrifice and subordination to it as a significant and necessary part of what made the revolution succeed. Thousands of people literally sacrificing their whole lives for the goal.
As such, Stalin wouldn't break a decision of the assembly just as he wouldn't want anyone else to. If they said they still needed him in his post he did his duty and stayed despite not wanting to.
He largely held equal powers to everyone else on the Council of Ministers, the position of Chairman didn't have special powers. The General Secretary role of the party was invented by Lenin with the intention of it being used to break opposition in the party (perform purges). Once Stalin had successfully performed his purges and prevented split in the country/civil-war he saw the position as having completed its purpose and wanted rid of it, he didn't like the cult of personality around himself and wanted people to view the government in a collective capacity rather than an individual leader kind of way. That's obviously not what ended up being the perception though. Lots of hero worship got in the way.
The only thing he got wrong is that Stalin tried to resign four times. Delete your account.
You're moving the goalposts. Obviously a succession of dictatorships is possible, even with a preservation of an overarching dictatorial system. However, you can't have a dictatorship where the so-called dictator doesn't even have the authority to resign unilaterally. Try "oligarchy" next time and you'll get more interesting responses.
Dictatorships are when almost the entire population supports the government. Democracy is when corporations own all candidates and the electoral college designed by slaveowners almost 300 years ago decides all presidential elections. I am a critical thinker.
The USSR was a dictatorship
No it wasn't. This is propaganda. Even the CIA admits that it is propaganda in this document:
Show
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
Democracy under socialism is simply structured differently. You need to study it properly.
Show
Several countries that you support today still use a system very much like this. Cuba and Vietnam for example. A solid video on Cuban democracy is here: https://youtu.be/2aMsi-A56ds
All the socialist countries built on this system.
Lol I get the feeling that kinda opinion isn't popular round here
Really? Weird. It's always really well received at the Nazi bars I visit.
Must just be a coincidence though.
(I don't actually visit Nazi bars, for the record—not knowingly anyway)
Have you considered that you seem to know almost nothing about this and therefore shouldn't share your opinion like it's some kind of fact?
Does it take a lot of effort to achieve levels of liberalism this high or were you just made in a lab like this
Correct. They are both idiots who pointed at Nazi Germany as an example of a leftist system.
Nazi Germany wasn't left and the USSR, which included more than Russia, was a transitional socialist country lol.
Even the DDR wasn't doing socialism. The public had to be all-in the idea, or they were discredited or arrested. It was an authoritarian autocracy acting in the name of socialism.
That is indeed what your capitalist NGOs tell you with unlimited funds.
Consider that socialism is about control over the means of production, of deposing the capitalist system, and that your dismissal of the DDR as socialist didn't address that at all. Do you think it's possible you've been lied to?
No, I think I'm far enough on the left to be aware of capitalist propaganda. In all fairness to you, my statement did not treat the subject with the appropriate nuance the subject should require.
The DDR was socialist. However, it was state socialism, which in my opinion is not ideal and not something we should strive to replicate. Yes, the means of production were "owned by the people," but the state tasks itself with protecting the people. And therein lies the problem with state socialism - the state is easily commandeered by a corrupt minority who then uses the governmental apparatus to run an authoritarian regime. Precisely what happened in the DDR and the USSR.
We should be able to recognize the imperfections in prior socialist attempts, without immediately calling it "capitalist NGO propaganda."
There was no issue re: nuance in your statements, they were just nonsensical and revealed a lack of understand the basic ideas of the topic. This trend has continued with this reply.
The DDR was socialist. However, it was state socialism, which in my opinion is not ideal and not something we should strive to replicate.
The framing of socialism as ownership of the means of production goes hand-in-hand with control over the state. It's how it was originally formulated by Marx, Engels, etc. The term "dictatorship of the proletariat" is stated in the same breaths and texts and concepts. There is no such thing as non-state socialism in this conception, the only conception that is relevant to this discussion.
This is something a person would know if they had ever read even a basic summary of this topic.
Yes, the means of production were "owned by the people," but the state tasks itself with protecting the people. And therein lies the problem with state socialism - the state is easily commandeered by a corrupt minority who then uses the governmental apparatus to run an authoritarian regime.
You're even using the liberal NGO lexicon for this description! Vague generalizations about authoritarianism and cute little stories with no grounding in reality.
We should be able to recognize the imperfections in prior socialist attempts, without immediately calling it "capitalist NGO propaganda."
It's not hard to identify a poor understanding when you have, you know, actually learned about these things. And interacted with thousands of people just like you and know why they parrot such nonsense. If you had an informed or valid criticism that would be something to talk about, but we are not in that situation. I think we are looking at a graduate of Reddit University, with all the intellectual humility that implies.
I don't always agree with everything you post, but this is >100% on point.
It'd be boring here if we all agreed on everything. Disagreement is how we learn from each other. :)
