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- [email protected]
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- [email protected]
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Goddam, the propagandized shitlibs descended on this in force to blurt out the usual preprogrammed mantras (“human nature!” “the Nordic model!” “AES is evil!”). @[email protected] can we get some of this reactionary propaganda purged?
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Full communism is shit because by definition a few people decide what acceptable for everyone to live
Where is that definition? The way I understand “full communism”, is basically anarchism and equality, absence of private property. Common means of production I.e. (and this is probably why it’s having a bad reputation) the opposite of autocratism as you seem to define it.
I even dare to say we never had anything close to it on a bigger scale (probably because it doesn’t fit in human nature).
Communism is about fully collectivized economy globally, anarchism is more about horizontal communalized production. They have different analysis of class and the state and thus Marxists take the position of historical materialists. To the contrary, communism absolutely fits with human nature, which itself is malleable and depends on given material conditions.
The goal is a voluntary state of self-governance, however at a large scale there is usually some committee or authority that is “supposed” to direct everyone towards that.
Historically that power has always been corrupted by the few and communism is never achieved.
Yeah true, I don’t deny that, I’m even so pessimistic, to say that even if we have a benevolent dictator giving up dictatorship when the goal has been achieved, that the system is too unstable to exist for a longer time…
So IMO while we should navigate towards a system that is very close to communism, we should probably at least factor in game theory, and try to avoid means that are fundamentally opposed to communism (or at least anarchism), like autocratism (as we have seen multiple times in the past).
anarchy as a model of government in a scale of 8 billion people makes no sense and would be basically the most violent ends up getting everything. As a mental experiment in the rainbow and lollipop world is alright and I would definitely be onboard, but in practice it makes no sense because you need too much power to enforce it, and that is where the corruption would originate.
But my main point was not to only criticise communism, but also capitalism. I don’t think communism is achievable and I don’t think pure unregulated capitalism is the only crap we can aim for. Hence middle point or just nuance.
Online people, specially online USA people, are very prone to “choose a team and die for it” or “we have to go full communism or it doesn’t make sense” or “communism is bad so let’s do 100% uncontrolled capitalism”. There is no middle point for these wankers (which is very convenient for the politicians and wealthy people, as they get to abuse the argument of reducing everything to the absurd)
That is why I said “doesn’t fit human nature”. At least on a bigger scale, probably too much encoded “survival of the fittest” (group of humans if you will) , that seems to clash with real communism (when trying to explain it based on evolutionary terms). This can and does work on a smaller scale though (might’ve even be a thing evolutionary, hunter gatherers etc.).
Btw. Reality is already more nuanced, as there’s no pure *ism, it’s almost always a spectrum of various idiologies. Even USA, although it’s probably closest to what most understand of “capitalism”.
USA is a sad example of propaganda, probably because of late stage capitalism messing with the reward system (e.g. social networks), leading to among other things, polarity…
Maybe we need to settle into some kind of middle ground, where people are allowed to own stuff
You’re right that we shouldn’t necessarily be looking at extreme ends of any spectrum, but this isn’t a thing. Communism has issue with private goods - goods owned BY A COMPANY/STATE used to make profit. It has no issue with PERSONAL goods - things an individual owns and uses.
I get the knee jerk reaction to the extreme positions, but it’s best to characterize both correctly, instead of relying on literally the propaganda talking point of “there’s no personal owners under communism”.
At the end of the day is doesn’t matter what -ism you prefer, they all suffer for corruption and rot.
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yeah I hear you, as European is very tiresome and surprising to listen to the USA binary logic… I just hope is “just” the online USA people, otherwise they are cooked (although it would explain the second victory of trump)
The more I learn about different systems of government the more it seems clear the best one would be a mixture of a couple different ones.
that’s why governments should act as a counterweight to capitalism by redistributing ressources
Pretty much every time someone offers an extreme as a solution it’s a case of “easy answers to hard problems”. The real optimal solution is almost always very nuanced, but dumb people just latch onto extremes because they’re easier to understand.
Take farming as an example. Under the Soviet Union it was a textbook communism command system, and it was insanely inefficient with massive food shortages. But conversely you don’t want it to be 100% privatized either because then it will devolve into a few mega monopolies that just grow cash crops like almonds which destroy the local ecosystems.
Ideally there would be a combination of private farmers with government oversight to prevent negative social externalities. But your average Fox News junkie or tankie doesn’t have the patience or rationality to understand that.
Schrodinger’s Soviet Union, simultaneously starving AND eating better than Americans
That… Is not what bleys said at all…
And hold on… Are you seriously just using 1983 as proof that there were never mass food shortages in the USSR? Because that’s a hell of a picked cherry there.
Vavilov would turn in his grave, if he were actually given a proper grave, and if he had any muscles remaining after Stalin starved him to death in a Gulag for trying to solve the USSR’s famine problem.
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@[email protected] fumbled the mention in my prev comment, so making sure I’m not stealth-mentioning you
Edit: this was literally the most concilliatory take of all time and still got censored. HELLO CRINGE DEPT??
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They literally always are
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No one has really tried socialism, except for the rich for some shitty reason.
Several socialist states have and do exist. State assistance in capitalism is not socialism for the rich, it’s just the class nature of the state within capitalism.
No, and as usual liberals love to infantilize people they disagree with. There is no good mix of socialism/communism and capitalism, they are polar opposites on the political scale.
Yes … There is no way to adopt socil principals into a market economy … I mean social security cant be done ? And worker coops (aka the means of Produktion being controller by workers aka communism) cant exist in capitalism …
/s just to make sure …
It can temporarily but what is happening to all of those things (dismantling of social pension, destruction of unions, continually rolling back labor rights, etc) is an inherent and natural conclusion of capitalism
By accruing capital as the goal you will inherently incentivize consolidation and open many avenues for corruption. Even if you said “capitalism but no billionaires” or some other regulation all it takes is time. People who reach the max will cheat to gain even more, whether that’s hiding wealth, exerting pressure on politicians to change laws to their favor, etc. you’re handing control of the state to the wealthy
The things you described happen in spite of capitalism and the natural conclusion is that they will be dismantled to serve a select few extremely greedy individuals who would rather increase net wealth by 0.02% than stop scores of people from suffering
That is very much not a necessity - it is out current Situation and it is easy to think/feel it is ‘inevitable’ but we shoukdnt forget that Ehen the industrial Revolution (and therby the Basis of modern capitalism) bot rolling 90℅ of people in those countries Were Leading lives in (to us) unimaginable squalor and in basically all countries the buttom 2/3 of the countries Were either not allowed to vote or had their votes count less than that of the rich.
Still they managed to achieve better wages more democracy, coops that still persist to this day (e.g. the Genossenschaftsbanken in Germany, Migros in switzerland, Mondragon in Spain, and many more) , social security and much more. It is within living memory thst the top marginal taxrate in the US was 90% It may feel inevitable that capital concentrates at the top but it isnt - the time before World war 1 and especially the time after world war 2 show that And it is defeatist to assume that change cannot be attained just cause it is hard.
Wait, so you are saying that government cannot balance the two? There has been no successful balancing of capitalist and socialist principles in any country in our existence?
Correct.
Effectively managing an empire off the backs of third world labor is not “success”.
No, society cannot have 2 entities that own the means of their production. It either belongs to the working class or it doesn’t.
I agree about the infantalizing part, but not the mixing. There can and should be different factions able to secure space for how people want to live. Majority rule with respect to the minority. Communes should be just as enabled to exist as other groupings, organizations, and jurisdictions.
Incorrectomundo. I hate communism because my family was repressed by Stalin.
I mean, i wouldn’t say that stalinism is communism
Well when interacting with people on ml, stalinism and whatever China and Russia is right now is the best communism.
Literally no-one on .ml would say that, but you shitlibs have never been above lying, so I shouldn’t be surprised
Well that type of communism is the only one we’ve seen so…
Cuba is the same for example, or China.
China is the worst example, they are capitalists who implemented a few communist ideas, generally, every single one of them are not communist, they just call themselves like tgat because they took 2 or 3 communist ideas, that’s it
Have you heard about Mao? There is more to china than how it is today.
mao wasnt communist either
So who was?
Your family definitely had it coming
Exhibit A
You probably also have it coming
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Probably will with the way the US is bringing back old diseases
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Lol cope
Come at me. I may die, but I’m taking twenty of you with me.
Hell yeah dude, you’re 12
Lol sure you are
Larp lol
💀
Yeah
So you had a family of Nazis?
Lmao what a terrible take
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Outright anti-communist misinformation getting upvoted. Nice “leftwing” com you have here
Never forget the USSR ended the war while the US protected us capitalist interests in Germany.
Lol, sure, let’s remove comments correcting your revision of history.
Doesn’t change the facts though and makes this communities moderation look very bad.
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Never forget the alliance ended the war.
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They got deleted because they were a troll like yourself
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Nazi adjacent then?
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Can’t follow rules they gotta go
What’s wrong with you? Are you trolling to abuse your mod “powers”?
What a life you must have.
There are only 6 rules and this mother fucker managed to break everyone of them
Maybe but what’s about you treating everyone as a nazi if stalin attacked them?
Clearly because everyone Stalin repressed deserved it, lmfao.
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I think an old crusty cumsock could have a better take than that.
Stalin saved europe from the Nazis, lol.
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Nonaggression pact is not an alliance
He was never an ally to Nazis. That’s ahistorical. He signed a non aggression pact, just like all the rest of the powers at the time.
And he was the last one to do it, because he was begging the UK and France for an alliance against Germany.
The agreement 🤝 also included dividing Europe into spheres of influence. Which makes the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact the only agreement on that list not between two axis powers that can be morally condemned without the benefit of hindsight.
You have no idea what was in any of the other pacts lol
You certainly don’t.
“No u!”? Wow, fucking good one.
Sounds like he would do anything to buy time to build up an army that would go on to defeat the Nazis.
Like wasting soldiers and ammunition to invade Finland, also giving the Nazis another ally in the process?
You’re blaming Finnish Nazis on Stalin lol?
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And then?
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This is historical revisionism. WWII was started by Nazi Germany.
Never happened, try harder halfwit
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it is unclear if this refers to Liskow or another German deserter
This is completely ahistorical. The entire reason Stalin signed the treaty is because he knew Hitler would attack the USSR eventually, and they needed time to prepare and also didn’t want to fight a war on two fronts (because the red army was busy saving China from the Japanese).
You didn’t address anything I wrote.
They did, and also everything you wrote was fucking moronic
You have poor reading comprehension. I thought you guys loved reading books.
Anyway, my entire comment was about how Stalin trusted Hitler so much that he let Barbarossa unfold as a surprise attack. Everything I wrote dealt specifically with that. FlyingCircus ignored what I wrote and went off on a tangent about the alliance in general.
I said nothing about why Stalin allied with Hitler. I want to know why he took Hitler his word, refused to station defensive troops, disbelieved his own intelligence agencies, and executed German communists who gave their lives to warn the USSR about the imminent invasion.
That’s what my comment is about.
None of that shit happened, get a job
His only choice was to sign a treaty with Hitler, because Britain and France refused to become allies with Stalin. Britain and France thought it best to let the communists and fascists fight it out and hopefully destroy each other.
Stalin signed a non aggression pact and then began rapidly industrializing his country, knowing dman well that Hitler would eventually break the treaty.
Then Stalin defeated the Nazis.
Yeah Hitler forced him to take half of Poland as well right?
It’s very fucking telling how mad you people get that Stalin didn’t let Hitler have all of Poland. Literally whining that the holocaust wasn’t even worse.
Particularly monstrous when you remember most of that territory was just Ukrainian under polish occupation
The half that Poland took from the Soviets in 1921?
The half the Soviets tried to take from Poland 1918-1921.
Do you think before you type?
Because it sounds like you’re saying it’s okay to ally with the Nazis as long as your motivation is vengeance
Do you not know how to read? That’s not what I’m saying at all, lmao.
You went off on a tangent. My point was why he believed Hitler, not why he allied with him.
Did he? Seemed like he was preparing to go to war with Germany for a long long time, lol.
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Kay?
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
After having a secret pact with Hitler to split Europe. For countries like Poland the WW2 occupation didn’t end until 1989, because USSR “saved us Nazis” by imposing their own regime.
The reason why Russia doesn’t even recognize WW2 and call it The Great Patriotic War that started in 1942 is exactly because Stalin worked with Nazis through Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Hitler backstabbed Stalin via Operation Barbarossa.
And Poland signed a pact with the Nazis to carve up Czechoslovakia, so fuck’em. They were also occupying part of Ukraine and still cry about the Soviets taking it back
And then Stalin defeated the Nazis, right?
With US equipment and waves and waves of Ukrainians.
Lol. The US barely helped at all in the grand scheme of the USSR VS the Nazis.
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Lmao, majority? You’re delusional.
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If you’re an ahistorical imperial propaganda enjoyer, sure, I guess?
Double genocide theory is literal fascist propaganda, which even has its own Wikipedia page, lmao.
a term used to refer to the claim that the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union against Eastern Europeans constitute a genocide that was equivalent in scale and nature to the Holocaust, in which approximately six million Jews were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany. The theory first gained popularity in Lithuania after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991
Scholars have criticized the double genocide theory as a form of Holocaust trivialization.
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And you’re saying that that excess mortality is the same as the systematic genocide of over 10 million people by Nazi Germany? That makes you a Nazi apologist and a holocost trivializer. Very lib of you, lol.
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Lmao. To know someone as stupid as you thinks I’m a moron makes me immensely proud. Re read that double genocide theory page and understand that you are repeating literal historically documented fascist propaganda.
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By “divvy up Poland”, you mean “soviet land that Poland took in the early 1920s”, I’m sure.
Your knowledge of history seems entirely non existent, besides “enemies of my capitalist imperialist genocidal empire are bad and have always been bad, despite literally saving the world from the Nazis”
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Lmao, yeah buddy, any history book. Maybe start with a glance at the Wikipedia page
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👍
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Why don’t you fucking do some reading, and tell me.
Get new material
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Classic .ml drivel
History is .ml drivel? Sounds very liberal of you, lol.
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Gargle them yourself, you fucking lazy liberal.
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?? That’s not what I said at all, I said suck your own nuts, fucking lazy removed lol. Not a big reader are you?
He also aided the Nazis in their fight against German communists and hurt China’s revolution.
So a flawed person like the rest of us.
Wtf is this nonsense?
He also aided the Nazis in their fight against German communists and hurt China’s revolution.
Gonna need some sources on both of these.
None of this is evidence, it’s just other people making the same dumbass claims
Given Trotsky is a primary source and the Jacobin article cites a primary source what would constitute as evidence to you?
Actual fucking evidence, duh. Trotsky telling a story is worth as much as you telling a story, fuck all.
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
Stalin was a totalitarian dictator that happened to lead a country experimenting with socialism/communism.
Does Trump’s treatment of certain groups represent the totality of what is possible under capitalism?
To be clear, I’m not a fan of Stalin or Trump. It just seems weird to hate a political theory/ideology because a power-hungry asshole said it was his ideology.
A power hungry asshole was in charge under this “system”. It will happen again. This is what always happens. Those systems do not work.
Which systems? Democracy? Communism? All systems?
Democracy, capitalism, communism.
It doesn’t matter how you change the rules of the game, the psychopathic mass murderers always adjust and find the way to the top.
If the system doesn’t matter, then why do you specifically hate communism?
Oh, but it does.
If the population is kept uneducated, poor, and fearful they don’t have the energy, understanding, or organization to keep the assholes in check. It’s way easier turn a country to dictatorship and/or fascism when everyone is stressed and struggling.
There is no perfect system, but they are systems that can build a population that is at least asshole resistant.
communism is stateless and classless. there is no top
You don’t have a clue what matters
Ideology and education does help though. We need a system with antibodies against self serving sociopaths rising to power.
State education comes with brainwashing baked in. Do communist countries allow homeschooling?
That’s the sweet thing with democracy, you kick them out without needing a bloody revolution.
It doesn’t seem to be working in the USA now, is it? They find a way to brainwash the masses into voting for them.
Brainwashing starts with deprivation. Those with wealth in the US have been manipulating the system into serving the wealthy at the expense of the rest of the country. It isn’t an inevitability, it’s a flawed underlying system and a capitalist class willing to take advantage of every opportunity to cement their own power.
Who the hell thinks the USA of all places is a full fledged democracy lol.
Stalin was the most popular person in the USSR for his entire time in the CPSU, and could have been ousted at any time had this changed. It would have been antidemocratic to depose him.
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Does popularity imply ethics? Morality? Soundness of policy?
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What exactly does “antidemocratic” imply? Are antidemocratic activities intrinsically wrong?
My grandmother in law was dragged before the KGB to answer why her 4 year old had coloured the colours of thier territories flag (before annexation into the USSR).
I think it’s pretty naive to reject that people could genuinely have grievances against a government or government policy. Slavery was popular. Gang rape is very democratic.
Although thier issues were with a government and not the concept of “communism”, I think the onus is on you to charitabley acknowledge that distinction. Being the grown up comes with infinitely more responsibility than privilege… and people who don’t understand that aren’t actually the grown ups.
The idea that Stalin was simultaneously a totalitarian dictator while also being tremendously popular among the people presents a false reality. Either Stalin was a genuinely unpopular ruler with total control, or he was a popularly supported and therefore legitimized leader of a socialist country. Regarding the questioning of your grandmother, I think what’s at most to blame is the reactionary nationalist elements that the soviets were forced to take seriously, as they did indeed become vectors for terrorism within the Soviet Union.
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Anything’s possible when you make shit up
Lmfao
The CIA provided initial backing for every major group that currently shapes the information the public receives. FB, google, Oracle (originally a CIA project headed by Ellison); Palantir, I’m sure the AI big boys as well. Not so secret VC fund called In Q Tel. It’s why they’re all mask off fascists now; it’s also why moderate dems are almost worse than the out and proud fascists
The CIA provided initial backing for every major group that currently shapes the information the public receives. FB, google, Oracle (originally a CIA project headed by Ellison); Palantir, I’m sure the AI big boys as well. Not so secret VC fund called In Q Tel. It’s why they’re all mask off fascists now; it’s also why moderate dems are almost worse than the out and proud fascists
that and watching the soviet version of it crash and burn
It doesn’t matter. China is rapidly outpacing the US and material reality will force people to reevaluate the lies fed to them by the CIA.
Chinamaxxing can’t be stopped. People will look at them and say “I want a society like theirs” and there’s nothing propaganda can do.
All these stupid beliefs people have will evaporate into nothing in the face of Chinese people having healthier, happier, longer lives.
I don’t know that it’s as clean as this makes it sound.
Obviously communism was made to be the boogeyman. But it’s not some panacea.
You’re right, it’s not some panacea. It’s part of a spectrum that helps keep the overton window away from corporate oligarchy. By effectively banning communism and socialism for couple of decades Americans got left with corporate democracy and corporate oligarchy as the only choices.
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Support for Imperial Russia in a so called “leftist” com. Nice
In all cases, the inability of the vast majority to stand up to a very small minority is the crux of the problem.
Psychopathic narcissists will find their way to the top of any power structure if there aren’t ways to actively prevent that or stifle it when it inevitably starts to happen.
Don’t know if that’s even possible. I suspect not.
Yeah that’s what I think too.
Europe is kind of a possibility, we can have an outlier (like Orbàn) without it all crumbling down because we are so many. The system must change slow enough so that a human doesn’t have time to change it enough. And rock solid institutions I guess.
Read “The Brothers”, about John Foster and Alan Dulles.
This has everything you need to know about why you, if you’re an American, think the things you do.
Americentrism
Doesn’t matter where you live, US culture and politics affects you. That’s just how global empires work, it’s not anything-centric to recognize verifiable facts.
Capitalists always love to come out of the woodwork to defend it whenever someone discusses communism as a good thing.
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you can leave
latest epstein distraction. McArthy hearings will legitimize more anti-communist ai data-centers. it’s the new woke label
East Germans beg to differ.
if they were communist for claiming to be, is the DPRK democratic?
As do Romanians.
Romanians, Poles, Czechs, Sloviakians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvianians… Ukrainians.
the USSR was not communist.
you could even say it was slightly MORE capitalist than most western countries at that time.
it was state capitalist
What are you talking about? USSR was the world’s flagship country governed by Communist Party under Marxism-Leninism.
It pretty much influenced China and rest of the communist countries around the world.
You can argue that Marxism-Leninism is not what Marx talked about, and because of that it wasn’t a real communism, but with that definition there isn’t a recognized communist country that wasn’t influenced by Marxism-Leninism.
How horrible it must’ve been to contain their nazism for a few decades after losing the war.
Glad they can fully show their true colors again.
I like the taste of communism, but every time it’s on the menu it’s slathered in political purges.
“i want the world to be better, but I don’t want to have to actually do anything to or about the people actively making it worse”
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
Yeah I read that in elementary school, then I kept reading and eventually moved on to nontiction. You don’t have to be eager to do things that are unpleasant but entirely necessary. Gandalf went on to deal out a shitload of death and judgement, all of which was entirely necessary to reach his goal.
Gandalf went on to deal out a shitload of death and judgement, all of which was entirely necessary to reach his goal.
Looks to me like you haven’t moved yet to non-fiction.
Why, because I remember what I’ve read previously? Do you not?
You seem to have problem mixing up fiction with non fiction when talking about the real world.
Learn to read
Gandalf went on to deal out a shitload of death and judgement
Um… what? Yeah, you might want to go back and re-read LOTR from an adult perspective. Seems you missed a lot.
See, though, for me it’s the people that say
death and judgement, all of which was entirely necessary to reach his goal
That worry me the most. Who, exactly, are we being required to kill, here?
There’s no amount of “adult perspective” that’s gonna change LoTR into anything other than a war story, yes actually a lot of people die in it, learn to read dumbass
But you weren’t talking about people dying. You were talking about Gandalf ‘dealing out a shitload of death and judgement’.
Which, he has, like, one of the lowest body counts in the book, dude. He killed that stupid Balrog after it tried to murder his friends. Maybe a few of the Minas Tirith invaders? But most of that fight he was trying to save Faramir.
And the only person he ‘passed judgement on’ was Saruman, and that was only after an okay from the higher-ups. And all he did then was kick him out of the wizards. That’s it.
Kinda think maybe you should learn to read. Or maybe learn the joy of re-reading.
I believe in communism but I think the idea that Stalinism should be rehabiliated is very wrong for multiple reasons. If you look at academic consensus about the great purge and excess mortality under Stalin, it’s something like 1.7% of the USSR population dead and 7.2% “passing through the gulag system”. These are not acceptable numbers.
About 3.3 million people killed in the great purges, and sure it was different times. But I do not tolerate any ideology if it takes that much blood to realize it. If you are unwilling to say “this was wrong and must never ever happen again” any attempt to mobilize enough people will fail and be opposed by communists like me.
Imagine it. If you had a socialist revolution in the USA, how many people would you have to execute for crimes against humanity or punished in gulags? How many would have to be imprisoned? How many reeducated in something like afternoon schools?
I can’t imagine more than 10.000 people would need to be prosecuted and executed for crimes against humanity. That is two orders of magnitudes difference.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d go ham too. A lot of people contributed to the denigration, corruption and slaughter of people in many countries around the world, for preventing action on climate change. There needs to be justice, and only ultimate justice can serve for betraying humanity. But outside such extremes, the death penalty is objectively morally wrong.
For most just purging them out of political power would be enough, taking away their wealth and convicting them without punishment to prevent them from holding positions of power in the future and limiting their rights a little. Together with forcing a lot more of the dumbass followers to attend afternoon schools to learn so they can’t feign ignorance.
Trying to rehabiliate Stalinism is completely mental to me. I’m sure there are good concepts in Stalinism, but as a political ideology it needs to be condemned and consigned.
That doesn’t mean people are not willing to do the work.
PS: 1.7%
3.3%would be 5.8 megadeaths in the US and 7.7 megadeaths in the EU. Based on historical evidence, that is what Stalinism would lead to. It would be quite rational to extend the laws against incitement of racial hatred in Europe to ban speech in favor of such violence.The idea that the purges were “Stalinism” is ahistorical. If anything, the documentary evidence suggests that the purges happened at the urging of the wider populace as a revenge against the excesses of the kulaks and bourgeoisie, and that Stalin spent his energy trying to curb the worst of the purges. Also, the Soviet state in the wider provinces was very weak at that time, so many of the purges happened without much oversight from Stalin or other central leaders.
Of course, Stalin was the leader, and so ultimate responsibility lies with him, as he himself admitted, but the purges were not some machine born of ideology, they were the reaction of a brutalized country against their former oppressors that got out of hand, combined with a clean-out of spies and saboteurs who were plotting against the USSR at the behest of western capitalists.
I recommend Prole’s Pod’s “Stalin Era” series to learn more. They go over the actual historical evidence, much of which was only declassified in the last decade or so.
Thanks, interesting perspective. I think you can explain a lot at a time where they didn’t have radio broadcasts but only newspapers and not a strong grasp over the country and people were bitter and resentful.
Why do you think it important to rehabilitate the purges and Stalinism? Like what is the political theory or strategy behind that would be lost if we don’t all agree to rehabilitate Stalinism?
Maybe that is a more productive question than arguing why the purges must never be rehabilitated.
There was clearly an institutional and political component to it in the form of the NKVD was there not? Did they or did they not torture to get false confessions from political adversaries? Or is that also ahistorical?
You could argue that the times required an iron fist and hammer to rule the people and prevent the revolution from being lost by letting traitors go free. This might very well be true. It’s possible that this was unavoidable at the time, but that doesn’t mean it can be condoned or rehabilitated.
If those two things (institutional+necessary) are even halfway true, I do not see how you can separate the purges from Stalinism, from that political era.
And the comment I replied to was about the purges being necessary work to make the world better. If that is the current view, then it is hypocritical or sophistry to say the “necessary” purges and Stalinism are separate.
Furthermore it does not explain why Khrushchev denounced it and called it an abuse of power. I’ve read comments that this makes him a traitor. But it is either true and it was an “abuse of power” or it is not true and Krushchev lied made it all up.
It is possible it is as you say, a social phenomenon that Stalin was unable to stop. The will of the people. And that Krushchev wanted to draw a line behind it and blame it all on Stalin. Make him the scapegoat. If I were to write this as a novel with a captivating romantic twist, it would have been Stalin writing to his successor in a secret letter to blame it all on him - to let him bear the shame of the killings and terror that got out of hand.
But we live in the real world. In the end the purges did happen. We cannot view life as cheap any more. The numbers might be only half of what is cited as consensus, but it’s still orders of magnitudes too high. And the death and suffering of millions demands justice.
Even if all that you say is true, what happened must be condemned. And what other name than Stalinism would you give to what happened?
Why do you do this to me? Why do I have to listen to 20 hours of podcasts or read the historical tomes cited there to form a more accurate view on the history? The body count isn’t going to move much. Why do you do this to yourself? Why not say “the purges were bad and must never happen again, not lets move the fuck on!”? Instead you argue passionately about the minutia of this era of terror?
EDIT: Link to podcast episodes
I can’t imagine more than 10.000 people would need to be prosecuted and executed for crimes against humanity
3.3% would be 5.8 megadeaths in the US1.7% would be 2.3 millionish, and your cops and soldiers added together are about 2.8 million… The numbers sound right to me, I think the problem is your imagination.
Sorry I meant to write 1.7% which would be 5.8 of 341 million in the US.
Yeah, I realised I forgot the veterans too and there’s nearly 16 million of them so 6 million people isn’t going to be nearly enough for the US. Your police have killed 10,000 people in the last decade, you’re not going to change anything with those numbers.
Wordy+stupid
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Yeah
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I’m not going to find it now but couple of months ago I was visiting a typical Spanish town and saw a poster announcing party organized by the Communist Party of Spain. Just some beer and music. Normal thing. No one is scared of it here.
No one is freaking out about far right parties (except in Germany). Why would we freak out about the far left?
We should be freaking out about far right parties, though
Why shouldn’t we freak out about extremist parties?
I think what I was trying to say is that people weren’t really freaking out about MAGA. Sure, a lot of people did say it’s a fascist movement but the media, the Democrats and I think the public in general weren’t really on board. For most people it was a valid political movement. MAGA is not a dirty word like ‘communist’. If the public is not freaked out about anti-democratic movement like MAGA they shouldn’t be freak out about communism either.
You’re wrong, they should freak out about both.
You just sound like some apologist.
