Those of us who refused to join in the Soviet bashing were branded by left anticommunists as “Soviet apologists” and “Stalinists,” even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society. Our real sin was that unlike many on the Left we refused to uncritically swallow U.S. media propaganda about communist societies. Instead, we maintained that, aside from the well-publicized deficiencies and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist systems that were worth preserving, that improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in meaningful and humanizing ways. This claim had a decidedly unsettling effect on left anticommunists who themselves could not utter a positive word about any communist society (except possibly Cuba) and could not lend a tolerant or even courteous ear to anyone who did.
Saturated by anticommunist orthodoxy, most U.S. leftists have practiced a left McCarthyism against people who did have something positive to say about existing communism, excluding them from participation in conferences, advisory boards, political endorsements, and left publications. Like conservatives, left anticommunists tolerated nothing less than a blanket condemnation of the Soviet Union as a Stalinist monstrosity and a Leninist moral aberration.
That many U.S. leftists have scant familiarity with Lenin’s writings and political work does not prevent them from slinging the “Leninist” label. Noam Chomsky, who is an inexhaustible fount of anticommunist caricatures, offers this comment about Leninism: “Western and also Third World intellectuals were attracted to the Bolshevik counterrevolution [sic] because Leninism is, after all, a doctrine that says that the radical intelligentsia have a right to take state power and to run their countries by force, and that is an idea which is rather appealing to intellectuals.” Here Chomsky fashions an image of power-hungry intellectuals to go along with his cartoon image of power-hungry Leninists, villains seeking not the revolutionary means to fight injustice but power for power’s sake. When it comes to Red-bashing, some of the best and brightest on the Left sound not much better than the worst on the Right.
When the first anticommunist upheavals began in Eastern Europe in 1989, there were those on the Left who said that if the people in those countries discovered that they didn’t like the free-market system they could always return to some variant of socialism. As I argued at the time, this was hardly a realistic view. Capitalism is not just an economic system but an entire social order. Once it takes hold, it is not voted out of existence by electing socialists or communists. They may occupy office but the wealth of the nation, the basic property relations, organic law, financial system, and debt structure, along with the national media, police power, and state institutions, have all been fundamentally restructured. The resources needed for social programs and full employment have been pilfered or completely obliterated, as have monetary reserves, markets, and natural resources. A few years of untrammeled free-market marauding has left these nations at the point of no foreseeable return.
The belief propagated by the free-market “reformers” is that the transition from socialism to capitalism can only be made through a vast private accumulation of capital. The hardship inflicted by such privatization supposedly is only temporary. The truth is, nations get stuck in that “temporary” stage for centuries. One need only look at Latin America.
Like other Third World nations, the former communist countries are likely to remain in poverty indefinitely, so that a privileged few may continue to enjoy greater and greater opulence at the expense of the many. To secure that arrangement, the corporate class will resort to every known manipulation and repression against democratic resurgence. In these endeavors they will have the expert assistance of international capital, the CIA, and other agencies of state capitalist domination.
According to Noam Chomsky, communism “was a monstrosity” and “the collapse of tyranny” in Eastern Europe and Russia is “an occasion for rejoicing for anyone who values freedom and human dignity” I treasure freedom and human dignity yet find no occasion for rejoicing. The postcommunist societies do not represent a net gain for such values. If anything, the breakup of the communist states has brought a colossal victory for global capitalism and imperialism, with its correlative increase in human misery, and a historic setback for revolutionary liberation struggles everywhere. There will be harder times ahead even for modestly reformist nationalist governments, as the fate of Panama and Iraq have indicated. The breakup also means a net loss of global pluralism and a more intensive socio-economic inequality throughout the world.
Ah, the traditional leftist meme format reappears.
Nature is healing!
And yet Biden is going to accelerate it even more. Absolutely no win between the two.
I am to the point where I am just waiting for Biden to come into office and listen to these smug idiots try to convince themselves everything is OK when he's pushing austerity and taxing the fuck out of us to bail out the rich.
Mainstream media is significantly influenced by the US Government in order to manufacture your consent, and leftist movements throughout history have been fucked over by the US
Fuck off
Not open mouthed kissing Biden is helping Drumpf
Real shit
The quicker he is disregarded, the better it will be for the left.
He is an old tree long past its prime. He stunts new growths, and many learn nothing apart from him. The burning fires of a passionate youth brings rebirth and renewal.
just listen/read Chomsky for his encyclopedic knowledge of US imperialist adventures. I've long disregarded Chomsky when it comes to actually trying to create a better world. He thinks the US is the best country ever and has come closest to his vision of Socialism, he's a privileged academic, and free speech /information is the most important to him.
Not only is Chomsky wrong about voting, the Minimalist Program is much less compelling than Government and Binding.
Real talk, he just got tired of lefties pronouncing his name “Gnome” and decided to fuck with us.
Not only are they not on the ballot in my state, they're somehow not even accepted as a write in.
Greens are an even worse joke, they keep people invested in electoralism without the expectation that they'll ever win.
Oof, silly you, don't you know it's all screenshots here? Seriously though, I checked before I posted but not the electoralism community, my bad
I understand making the argument that voting Biden is the best choice, but shaming people for voting for someone that actually represents them, or shaming people that don't vote because they feel powerless? That's just really shitty, and undemocratic, really.
Has anyone here ever physically pulled a lever to vote?
All of my votes since since the mid 2000s were Scantron, and before that I did two actual paper count ballots, that were still fill in the blank but hand counted.
